The Depth(s) of the Twentieth Century

Starting question

Strawson presents a compact indictment of a mid-to-late twentieth-century philosophical habit: reversing what he takes to be the natural explanatory order. Across desire, belief, meaning, emotion, consciousness, objects, powers, causation, and existence, he was taught that the outward, behavioural, dispositional, or experiential pattern explains the apparently prior inner or metaphysical fact. He thinks these reversals are the wrong way round. > It seemed to me that all these claims were the wrong way round. > I still think they’re all the wrong way round, but I feel a little less insecure.

Then Node

Philosophical atmosphere

Strawson frames the list autobiographically: he took up philosophy in 1972 and encountered a family of claims presented as the sophisticated view of central topics. The joke of the title is that these were supposed to be philosophical depths, but to him they often looked like inversions. > I took up philosophy in 1972, and this... is what I was given to understand.

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Then Pro / Supporting Point

General form of inversion

The repeated structure is: not X explains Y, but Y explains X. Wanting is explained by trying; belief by behaviour; meaning by correct use; anger by expression; consciousness by observable dispositions. Strawson’s target is this broad explanatory style rather than one isolated doctrine.

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Then Node

Objects reversed

Objects are treated as posits from experience rather than as causes of experience. Strawson presents the idea as: tableish experiences do not occur because a table is there; the table is there because of the pattern of experiences. > I don’t have tableish experiences because there’s a table in front of me. There’s a table in front of me because I have certain tableish experiences.

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The Depth(s) of the Twentieth Century — Galen Strawson

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