Matthew Ian Harding

This study advances a refutation of Physicalism. It demonstrates that it cannot, coherently, be maintained. An alternative approach based on Husserl’s ‘transcendental ego’ is developed. This is an account where the physical world is constituted by a freely acting self from a phenomenology that is ontologically neutral. By doing so, the, so-called, ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is dissolved. It will be shown that the self is compelled to attribute moral and aesthetic value to the world that it has constituted. The determinism that Physicalism engenders is shown to lead to a nihilism that makes all knowledge impossible. Genuine personal responsibility for action, is asserted within strict limits. A position is outlined that gives a role to the self in causation and one that entails the possibility of panpsychism.

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The general aim of this study is to give an analysis of perception via a speculative re-structuring of familiar sensory material to produce alternative possible spatial schemes. A process of considering ways in which experience might have been different and grounded different forms of space is used to elicit general philosophical principles which have application to actual experience. ;The first step is the identification of a phenomenology behind our perceptual beliefs--a content to experience, which is in some way separable from our system of ontological commitments. As a sequel to this, the traditional division of experience into the five senses is examined. Consideration is given to the number and nature of these sense-modalities and grounds are discovered for thinking, that some strong category divisions prevail within our sense-experience. ;Having achieved some notion of a basic phenomenology to experience and the character it bears, a re-ordering of that material to suggest alternative spatial schemes is undertaken. Initially, auditory experience is isolated and various types of sound world that could be generated out of it are outlined. This is followed by a consideration of visual experience: the possibility of a two-dimensional system. After this, issues relating to the combination of material from more than one sense are dealt with and the possibility of experiencing more than one distinct form of space at once is proposed. Discussion of tactual sense is prominent in this discussion. ;Out of the above mentioned speculations, general notions of space and the nature of objects and the relations between experience and what we take to have objective existence will have emerged. These are developed with particular reference to actual experience. Attention is given to the relationship between sensory experience and the growth of empirical knowledge and scientific belief