Andrew Routledge
Thesis
Holism in Experience
Supervisors
Michael Scott and Joel Smith
Research area
My central interest is in exploring the internal structure of phenomenal consciousness. Is our qualitative experience composed of basic parts or elements? Can we identify simple building blocks - a jab of pain, a flash of thought, or a dot of red - and, if so, to what degree are they independent of each other? I defend a form of holism, the position that the precise qualitative character of a given experience depends upon that of other experiences. This claim is multimodal. The particular quality of what we can hear at any moment, for example, is modified by the quality of what we can see. Although holism allows for distinctions to be drawn between the different parts of experience and recognises its qualitative complexity, it denies that such parts can come apart and freely combine in any number of different ways. This approach promises to open up a new way of understanding what it is for experiences to be phenomenally unified
Teaching
Knowledge and Reality (2010-11)
Additional information
Awarded the School of Social Sciences Studentship