The Subject of Experience

Book excerpt: This book considers the conscious subject, the subject of experience, in particular the human subject-the self, the person. Galen Strawson examines the phenomenology of the self-he asks what is it like to have or be a self or to feel that one is or has a self-and the metaphysics of the self-Is there really such a thing as the self? If so, what is its nature? He develops a novel approach to the metaphysical questions out of the results of the phenomenological investigation, and argues, against those who say that the self is just the human being, that we can legitimately distinguish self and human being. At the same time he raises doubts about how long selves can be supposed to last, insofar as they are distinct from human beings. Moving on to the ethics and moral psychology of the self, Strawson asks whether we can really be said to lose anything in dying. He criticizes the popular notion of the narrative self, and emphasizes the differences between 'Endurers' or 'Diachronics'-people who feel that they are the same person when they consider their past and future-and 'Transients' or 'Episodics'-people who do not feel this. Strawson also considers the logic of the word T, the first-person pronoun, and the reflexive structure of conscious awareness, before examining Locke's, Humes and Kant's accounts of the mind and personal identity, and arguing that Locke and Hume have been badly mi sunder stood. The fourteen essays draw on literature and psychology as well as philosophy. Book jacket.