Alastair Hannay

Who is Alastair Hannay?

Alastair Hannay is Professor emeritus at the University of Oslo. Educated in Edinburgh and London, he continues the Scottish tradition of subjective idealism. In Mental Images he argues that visual images, like physical portraits, resemble visible objects. As a kind of sensation a mental image has material properties of its own which allow it to picture. He thus contradicts Gilbert Ryle and Daniel Dennett. Hannay has translated Søren Kierkegaard, and written an intellectual biography and a monograph about his philosophy. Under Hannay's direction, Inquiry grew into a widely read philosophical journal. In Human Consciousness, Hannay reviews contemporary theories of human consciousness while maintaining a characteristic conservatism. Hannay argues that consciousness and the first-person point of view cannot be analysed or displaced by scientific materialism, nor can they be explained functionally, a view close to that of Thomas Reid, William Hamilton, and Ferrier.