Peter Frederick Strawson
1919-2006 · Philosophy of Language · Prominent
Strawson set out to describe the conceptual scheme we already use rather than replace it, and called that descriptive metaphysics. Persons, he argued, are not minds lodged in bodies but a primitive kind of thing to which physical and mental predicates apply at once, which dissolves the problem of other minds instead of solving it. His most read paper turned the free will argument inside out. Resentment, gratitude and forgiveness are set too deep in human life for any thesis about determinism to talk us out of them, so responsibility needs no metaphysical licence. He wrote almost nothing on ethics, and said so himself.
Signature
The position Strawson is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- leans Unchanging
- Agency
- Compatibilism
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Polity
- mildly leans Liberalism (62 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Strawson refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Perception
- Direct Realism / Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion?