Raw Feeling

Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ourselves as subjects of experience; he argues that there is no need for recourse to dualism or private mental objects.



Consciousness is a perennial source of mystification in the philosophy of mind: how could processes in the brain amount to conscious experiences? Robert Kirk uses the notion of 'raw feeling' to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ourselves as subjects of experience; he argues that there is no need for recourse to dualism or private mental objects. The task is to understand how the truth about raw feeling could be strictly implied by narrowly physical truths. Kirk's explanation turns on an account of what it is to be a subject of conscious perceptual experience. He offers penetrating analyses of the philosophical problems of consciousness and suggests novel solutions which, unlike their rivals, can be accepted without gritting one's teeth.