ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Galen Strawson

Okay, imagine you are a very small child who is just learning about language, maybe you are just starting to learn new words every day. Well, today we are going to talk about a man named Galen Strawson.

Now, Galen Strawson is a really smart man who likes to think a lot about something called philosophy, which is kind of like thinking about the big questions in life - like, "why are we here?" or "what makes something good or bad?"

One big thing that Galen Strawson thinks about is the idea of "the self". Do you know what "the self" means? It means who you are as a person - your thoughts, your feelings, your personality, your memories. It's what makes you you.

So, Galen Strawson thinks that "the self" is actually really important, because he believes that without it, we wouldn't really be able to understand who we are or what our lives mean.

But, some other really smart people called philosophers disagree with Galen Strawson. They think that the self is actually not that important, and that it might not even really exist at all!

So, Galen Strawson spends a lot of time thinking and writing about why he believes that the self is so important, and why other people might be wrong when they say that it doesn't really exist.

Does that make sense, little one?