Revelation, intuition, and essence: an investigation into anti-physicalist thinking.

Abstract

The present thesis has two aims. The first, which is taken up in Chapter I and will compose the majority of this thesis, is to demonstrate an important application of Revelation to the anti-physicalist project, one that is subtly distinct from the applications already discussed in the existing literature, which hitherto has not been explicitly appreciated. This demonstration is twofold: first, it is shown that several of the canonical anti-physicalist arguments are ultimately appeals to intuition, second, that Revelation entails that the intuition to which these arguments appeal - the intuition that conscious experience cannot be physical - should not be as ubiquitous as it is. In effect, this serves to demonstrate that those anti-physicalist arguments, despite being appeals to intuition, can hit their intended targets once the truth of Revelation is assumed. The second aim of this thesis, taken up in Chapter II, is to provide a more thorough understanding of the central (to Revelation) notion of ‘essence.’ Here, I explore two options available to the proponent of Revelation, the modal account and the real definitional account, finding flaws in both. In each case, I will argue that, in light of these flaws and their specific implications for a formulation of Revelation which adopts either of these accounts of essence, proponents of Revelation ought to look elsewhere for an appropriate account of essence. It is important to note that the truth of Revelation, although something that will need to be further defended in future anti-physicalist literature, lies outside the scope of the present thesis.

Date of Award	1 Sept 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Bill Brewer (Supervisor) & David Papineau (Supervisor)