Not really an introductory text, but useful for putting one's mind in order after reading around the subject. Includes a painstaking, but highly readable and convincing appraisal of past and current theories concerning the nature of qualitative consciousness (what it is like to be something or to see the color red). I would have liked to have read a little speculation about what the nature of consciousness could be, given the author's reservations about the various 'isms' and 'wasms', but maybe that isn't the job of philosophy. All in all a thought-provoking work, which is sure to continue to ruffle a few feathers.

The central thesis of Strawson's elegant work is that one can get a pretty good insight into the operations of the mind by carefully studying the patterns in a bowl of cole slaw. What Strawson defiantly calls, "Mental Reality", is what most philosophers of mind would call, "Chicken Drumsticks,"... and the debate goes on. Searle no doubt has read this book spends time at Berkeley hiding it in the "Chinese Language" section of the university bookstore. And Colin McGinn, soused on his gin, thinks about the brain with three sheets to the wind. Strawson would agree (and could think me under the table), though it probably wasn't wise of him to suggest that British football matches create the perfect environment to ponder deep, mysterious philosophical questions.

It is refreshing, however, to find that another philosopher rejects the idea that the mind is a computer or a computer program. Instead, Strawson sees the mind as an internet router and drops hints everywhere that he has a major stock position in Cisco. Putting calls or calling puts?

Good read.

Strawson's book is noteworthy for its declaration of faith: faith that naturalism-monism-materialism is true. (Naturalism-monism-materialism is the doctrine that there is no supernatural realm and that everything that is real is material or made out of matter. From now on I will refer to this simply as materialism.) Noteworthy because Strawson insists that materialism cannot explain or understand conscious experience as material, but that no sane person denies that conscious experience is real.

All declarations of faith raise the question Why this faith rather than some other? In Strawson's case the pertinent question is Why monism rather than dualism, and, indeed, Why not a supernatural realm as well as a natural one?

With respect to the former question, Strawson is ingenious, though, as he brings out, Locke was there first. The essence of Strawson's ingenuity here is this. Dualism comes under severe pressure to posit an immaterial stuff that the mind is which somehow makes possible thoughts, memories, etc. This immaterial stuff turns out to be such that one does not and cannot know its nature. But this allows that this allegedly immaterial stuff may, for all we know, be material, for 'matter may very well have properties of which one has no idea and that can indeed be the basis of...experiential goings-on.' Once Strawson has made this argument, I believe that, though he himself does not say this, considerations of simplicity favor monism, not to mention the avoidance of the notorious mind-body problem.

I am not entirely happy with Strawson's answer to Why monism rather than dualism? But space does not permit me to bring out why here.

I conclude with the question about a supernatural realm. Strawson says that there is no satisfactory account of mental phenomena to be found in contemporary science or philosophy or anywhere else. He suggests that this is either because some mental phenomena are fundamental, like electrical charge, or because we do not have the revolutionary physics needed to give such a satisfactory account. But why not think about a supernatural explanation for mental phenomena? There's much precedent here: What explains the Big Bang? What explains life's origin? Etc. If there's no natural answers to these questions, why not look to supernatural answers? Perhaps the reason not to is brought out by paraphrasing William James: Supernaturalism is an outbirth of that sort of philosophizing whose great maxim, according to Dr. Hodgson, is: 'Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else?'