Strawson Quotes & Sayings

Free will is the thing you have to have if you're going to be responsible in this all-or-nothing way. That's what I mean by free will. That's what I think we haven't got and can't have. — Galen Strawson

Now (obviously) a sentence's truth - even when we hold the sentence's meaning fixed - depends on which world we are considering. "Brown is Prime Minister" is true in the actual world but, since Brown need not have been Prime Minister, there are countless worlds in which "Brown is Prime Minister" is false: in those worlds, Brown did not succeed Tony Blair, or never went into politics, or never even existed. And in some other worlds, someone else is Prime Minister - David Cameron, P. F. Strawson, me, Madonna, or Daffy Duck. In still others, there is no such office as Prime Minister, or not even a Britain; and so on and so forth. So a given sentence or proposition varies its truth-value from world to world. — William G. Lycan

It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of 'the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as if statements could, in respect of their formal powers, be grouped in mutually exclusive classes, like animals at a zoo in respect of their species. But to say that a statement is of some one logical form is simply to point to a certain general class of, e.g., valid inferences, in which the statement can play a certain role. It is not to exclude the possibility of there being other general classes of valid inferences in which the statement can play a certain role — Peter Frederick Strawson

It is true that 'I seem to see a table' does not entail 'I see a table'; but 'I seem to feel a pain' does entail 'I feel a pain'. So scepticism loses its force - cannot open up its characteristic gap - with regard to that which ultimately most concerns us, pleasure and pain. — Galen Strawson

If someone harmed or tortured or killed one of my children I'd feel everything almost anyone else would feel. I'd probably have intense feelings of revenge. But these feelings would fade. In the end they're small and self-concerned. Only the grief would last. — Galen Strawson

If I talk about my handkerchief, I can, perhaps, produce the object I am referring to out of my pocket. I can't produce the meaning of the expression, " my handkerchief ", out of my pocket. Because Russell confused meaning with mentioning, he thought that if there were any expressions having a uniquely referring use, which were what they seemed (i.e. logical subjects) and not something else in disguise, their meaning must be the particular object which they were used to refer to. Hence the troublesome mythology of the logically proper name. — Peter Frederick Strawson

To ask to be forgiven is in part to acknowledge that the attitude displayed in our actions was such as might properly be resented and in part to repudiate that attitude for the future; and to forgive is to accept the repudiation and to forswear the resentment. — Peter Frederick Strawson

Sometimes we need to speak oddly to see clearly. — Galen Strawson

Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic. — P. F. Strawson

If someone treads on my hand accidentally, while trying to help me, the pain may be no less acute than if he treads on it in contemptuous disregard of my existence or with a malevolent wish to injure me. But I shall generally feel in the second case a kind and degree of resentment that I shall not feel in the first. If someone's actions help me to some benefit I desire, then I am benefited in any case; but if he intended them so to benefit me because of his general goodwill towards me, I shall reasonably feel a gratitude which I should not feel at all if the benefit was an accidental consequence unintended or even regretted by him, of some plan of action with a different aim. — Peter Frederick Strawson

It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument - their intellect - which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously. — Galen Strawson

No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms. — P. F. Strawson

You do what you do - in the circumstances in which you find yourself - because of the way you are. So if you're going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you're going to have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are - at least in certain mental respects. But you can't be ultimately responsible for the way you are (for the reasons just given). So you can't be ultimately responsible for what you do. — Galen Strawson