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Transcendent Reality and the Consciousness Problem

Adam Balmer

Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.7, No.1 (July 2017):1-15

Abstract

James Tartaglia makes original use of the idea of transcendence in order to answer various philosophical questions of contemporary and historical importance. I tackle the attempt to use his transcendent hypothesis to solve the problem of consciousness. Tartaglia describes the problem of consciousness as arising because we conceive of the objective world as composed of “centreless” objects and that any view that attempts to identify consciousness as a part of the world as presented to objective thought will fail since consciousness is inherently centred. His proposed solution is to suggest that a transcendent reality must be able to account for consciousness, but I argue that his characterisation of this reality entails that it too must be composed of centreless parts and thus the transcendent hypothesis fails to solve the consciousness problem.

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