Phenomenal Experience and the Thesis of Revelation

Abstract

The term “revelation,” introduced by Mark Johnston (1992 ), is used in the debate about the metaphysics of color properties to refer to the view that the whole nature of color properties is given in color experience. This chapter is not concerned with the thesis of revelation in the philosophy of color but with a parallel idea that also goes by the name “revelation” in the philosophy of mind. This is the claim that the whole nature of qualia (phenomenal properties) is given in phenomenal experience. This latter thesis of revelation is by no means unfamiliar to philosophers of mind, although the name “revelation” has not always been used to identify it. Discussions on the idea of revelation can be traced to Descartes (1985 : 215–217) in his writings on the notion of a clear and distinct idea and Hume (2000 : 136) in the Treatise . 1 One can also fi nd contemporary discussions on revelation in relation to the topic of phenomenal experience and the physicalist-dualist debate about the nature of consciousness ( Strawson, 1989 ; Lewis, 1995 ; Nida-Rümelin, 2007 ; Stoljar, 2006 , 2009 ; Damnjanovic, 2012 ; Go , 2015 , 2017 ; Majeed, 2017 ; Trogdon, 2017 ). Two things are worth noting regarding the contemporary literature on revelation. First, revelation is often thought of as being in tension with physicalism. For instance, Lewis (1995 ) takes revelation to be incompatible with physicalism. More recently, Philip Go (2015 , 2017 ) has appealed to the thesis of revelation to argue against physicalism. Of course, whether there is an incompatibility between revelation and physicalism, and how this incompatibility is to be understood provided that there is one, depends on how we cash out revelation and physicalism ( see Damnjanovic, 2012 ; Trogdon, 2017 ; Stoljar, 2018 ). The second thing worth noting about the contemporary literature on revelation is that revelation is often thought of as an intuitive claim. Among those who think this way about revelation are physicalists who also acknowledge the incompatibility between revelation and physicalism. ( Lewis, 1995 : 142; McLaughlin, 2003 : 378; Braddon-Mitchell, 12 Phenomenal Experience and the Thesis of Revelation