Over the last few weeks, we have navigated two very different maps of the mind: Daniel Dennett’s world, where consciousness is an evolutionary user-illusion, and David Chalmers’ Hard Problem, which suggests a universe split between physical facts and mental properties.

However, as we move deeper into the mystery, we encounter a thinker who suggests that both are working with a faulty definition of the world. Galen Strawson is a Real Physicalist. He doesn’t believe in ghosts or souls, but he has arrived at a conclusion that flips our understanding of reality: If physicalism is true, then matter itself must be conscious.

The Realization: Not on the Same Team

I’ll be honest: when I first started reading Chalmers and Strawson, I was convinced they were on the same team. Both argue that subjective experience is a fundamental part of the universe. I had them both labeled as Property Dualists, assuming they both believed that in addition to physical properties like mass, mental properties also exist. They both stood in opposition to Dennett, who views those mental properties as an illusion.

But Strawson and Chalmers are actually in a heated debate. Strawson is a vocal critic of Dualism. He believes that if physicalism is true, we shouldn’t be adding extra layers to the world; we should be redefining what physical means from the ground up.

The Myth of Dead Matter

Strawson’s starting point is an attack on what he calls PhysicSalism—the common assumption that physical stuff is exactly and only what we see in a high school physics textbook: mathematical points and dead billiard balls clacking in a void. Most of us assume that matter is inherently non-conscious “gray meat” that somehow begins to feel once sparked with electricity.

Strawson argues that we actually have no idea what the intrinsic nature of matter is. Physics is brilliant at telling us how an electron behaves—its mass, charge, and spin—but it is silent on what the electron is in and of itself.

The Detective Story: The Silence of Physics

Physics is like a world-class detective who has found the fingerprints of matter but has never actually seen the culprit. Think of a game of chess. Physics is the grandmaster who has mapped every rule of the game. He can tell you exactly how the Knight moves, but if you ask what the pieces are actually made of—wood, plastic, or pure energy—the rules are silent.

Physics describes matter using dispositions—what it does to other things. But matter cannot just be a set of behaviors; there must be something doing the behaving. The physicist Arthur Eddington famously agreed, noting that physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little. We know its mathematical structure, but we are silent on its inner nature. Strawson’s genius is realizing that because physics is silent about the internal nature of matter, it has no right to claim that matter is dead.

The Law of No-Emergence: Something from Nothing?

In science, we see emergence all the time, like liquidity. But liquidity is just a new way for molecules to behave in space. Strawson’s No-Emergence argument states that it is logically impossible for feeling to emerge from non-feeling stuff. You can’t get wetness if you don’t have molecules, and you can’t get redness if the building blocks of the universe are void of experiential quality.

If there is no experience in the fundamental constituents of the universe, Strawson argues, then no amount of complex arrangement can ever bring it into being. If you want a conscious brain, you must start with conscious building blocks. Otherwise, consciousness is a miracle—something appearing out of thin air once matter gets complex enough.

How to Build a Subject: Strawson vs. Chalmers

If both men agree that an electron might be conscious, how do they view the Subject differently? For David Chalmers, the subject is a Result. He looks at the world through the lens of Information and Psychophysical Laws. In his view, matter carries information, and when processed a certain way, the laws of the universe switch on the light of experience. To Chalmers, the electron carries raw data that, under the right laws, becomes a subject. The subject is the result of an equation.

For Galen Strawson, the subject is a Nature. He thinks Chalmers’ idea of laws switching on a light is still too close to magic. He argues that you don’t need a law to turn matter into a subject because matter is a subject. The electron doesn’t carry information that then becomes a subject; the electron is a tiny, primitive subject of experience. The glow is what the electron is made of. The subject is the fundamental reality of the physical world.

The Conscious Electron: A Tale of Two Panpsychisms

While Strawson insists consciousness is the nature of matter, Chalmers is more interested in the laws connecting matter to mind. Chalmers flirted with the idea that electrons might have a flicker of experience, but for him, it’s Matter + Laws = Mind. Strawson thinks this is a dualist myth. He believes the electron’s consciousness is its very identity. For him, it’s Matter = Mind.

The Subtle Divide: The Plus vs. The Is

It comes down to how you define Matter. Chalmers takes the Plus View (Property Dualism). He accepts the standard definition of matter as dead, so if the universe is conscious, it must be because there are extra properties—physical properties plus mental properties.

Strawson takes the Is View (Real Physicalism). He thinks adding extra laws is an unnecessary complication. We don’t need extra properties because we’ve been wrong about the physical ones all along. The mental property is the physical property. For Strawson, the insideness of an atom is its experience.

Why Philosophical Zombies Are Impossible

This distinction explains why Strawson thinks Chalmers’ Philosophical Zombie argument is flawed. To Chalmers, a Zombie is possible because you could imagine a world where the matter is the same, but God forgot the consciousness laws. The hardware is there, but the software isn’t running.

To Strawson, a Zombie is a contradiction. If you have the matter, you already have the experience. They are the same thing. Asking for a physical brain without consciousness is like asking for a circle that isn’t round. If you built a perfect physical duplicate of a human, that being would have to be conscious, because consciousness is what those atoms are.

The Science of the Inside

Strawson looks at the only piece of matter whose internal nature we actually know: the human brain. When a neuroscientist looks at a brain, they see the outside—the firing neurons. But because you are a brain, you see it from the inside as a symphony of colors and thoughts. Strawson suggests that consciousness is what the inside of matter looks like. There is no mystery of how the brain produces the mind because they are just two ways of describing the same physical event. Experience is the physical reality of the brain experienced from the first-person perspective.

Evolution: Organizing the Wakefulness

In Strawson’s view, evolution didn’t produce consciousness as a new feature. Instead, it organized pre-existing, conscious building blocks into complex structures. We didn’t evolve a mind; we are matter that has become complex enough to have a unified perspective. Consciousness was there from the Big Bang; evolution just gave it a voice.

Conclusion: A Foundation of Experience

While Chalmers is adding a new floor to the house of science to make room for the mind, Strawson is telling us that the mind was already part of the foundation. Strawson doesn’t make the mind a miracle; he makes matter extraordinary. He allows us to keep the rigor of physical science without having to deny the reality of our own inner lives. By redefining matter as inherently experiential, Strawson offers a version of physicalism that is actually real.

But what if even Real Physicalism isn’t enough? What if the mind isn’t just a part of matter, but a separate substance that exists alongside it? Next week, we’ll step away from the physicalist camp entirely to look at the modern defenders of Substance Dualism—the thinkers who believe the ghost in the machine is very real, and very separate.

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Deepen Your Journey: Suggested Reading

If Strawson’s argument for Real Physicalism has sparked your curiosity, these resources are the best places to start. Please note that the links below are affiliate links; if you choose to purchase through them, I earn a small commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you, which helps support the continued research and writing of this series.

• Real Materialism by Galen Strawson: This is the definitive collection of Strawson’s essays. It’s dense, but it is the most complete defense of the idea that a truly physicalist world must be a conscious one.
• The Consciousness Paradox by Galen Strawson: A more accessible entry point for those interested in his specific critique of why we misunderstand the word physical.
• Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc. by Galen Strawson: A collection of more personal and accessible essays. It’s a great way to get a feel for his writing style and his broader views on the self and experience.
• The Character of Consciousness by David Chalmers: To truly understand the rivalry discussed today, you have to read the other side. This is Chalmers’ masterpiece on why he believes extra laws are necessary to explain the mind.