Ethan Harley Field

My PhD project at the University of Liège develops and evaluates a historically informed account of phenomenal consciousness based on Samuel Alexander's “Enjoyment Theory” of the mind: an experience is conscious only if it is lived through or "enjoyed".

I have proposed a new adverbialist view of introspection as a middle ground between empiricist and rationalist views: introspection involves experiencing or your ongoing conscious states in a distinctive manner, namely “introspectively”.

Historical work on Samuel Alexander, Helen Wodehouse, G. Dawes Hicks, G. F Stout, and other early British philosophers of mind brings overlooked arguments into conversation with contemporary debates.