Consciousness in its Right Place. The Case for A Posteriori Russelian Physicalism
[eng] How does consciousness fit into physical reality? This question lies at the core of the problem of consciousness. The difficulty in answering it stems from two conflicting intuitions. Consciousness appears to be embedded within the causal fabric of the physical world, making it natural to assu...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/225044 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/225044 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/696163 |
| Access Level: | acceso embargado |
| Palabra clave: | Ontologia Filosofia del llenguatge Monisme Revelació Ontology Philosophy of language Monism Revelation |
| Sumario: | [eng] How does consciousness fit into physical reality? This question lies at the core of the problem of consciousness. The difficulty in answering it stems from two conflicting intuitions. Consciousness appears to be embedded within the causal fabric of the physical world, making it natural to assume it is a physical phenomenon like any other. Yet our subjective experiences seem so distinct from physical reality as science describes it that it's difficult to comprehend how consciousness could be physical. Some attempt to resolve the problem by rejecting one of the two core intuitions: either by denying that consciousness is physical—thus abandoning physicalism—or by dismissing the features that make consciousness seem non-physical—thereby abandoning realism about consciousness. This thesis shows that there is no good reason to compromise. It develops and defends a posteriori Russellian physicalism, a novel position that offers a physicalist realist solution to the problem of consciousness. According to this view, consciousness is, like everything else, made of basic physical stuff and nothing more and yet, its full nature eludes the austere objective descriptions of science. The first half of the thesis (chapters 1 and 2) criticises the two leading physicalist realist positions—type-B physicalism and Russellian physicalism—arguing that both fail to adequately address two central challenges prominent in the current debate: the problem of revelation and the meta-problem of consciousness. The second half (chapters 3 and 4) demonstrates how a posteriori Russellian physicalism can successfully meet both challenges. |
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