Things that bother me : death, freedom, the self, etc. / Galen Strawson

Includes bibliographical references.

The sense of the self -- A fallacy of our age -- I have no future -- Luck swallows everything -- You cannot make yourself the way you are -- The silliest claim -- Real naturalism -- The unstoried life -- Two years' time.

Of the essays collected here, "A Fallacy of our Age" (an inspiration for Vendela Vida's novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name ) takes issue with the commencement address cliche that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. "The Sense of Self" offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self as discontinuous, leading Strawson to a position that he sees as in some ways Buddhist. "Real Naturalism" argues that a fully naturalist account of consciousness supports a belief in the immanence of consciousness in nature as whole (also known as pan-psychism), while in the final essay Strawson offers a vivid account of coming of age in the 1960s. Drawing on literature and life as much philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.

English.