{"id":800,"date":"2026-02-20T17:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=800"},"modified":"2026-02-20T17:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:08:12","slug":"circling-around-the-transcendental-the-conscious-subject-as-the-limit-of-nature-in-raymond-tallis-philosophy-and-in-phenomenology","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=800","title":{"rendered":"Circling Around the Transcendental: the Conscious Subject as the Limit of Nature in Raymond Tallis\u2019 Philosophy and in Phenomenology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Forthcoming in&nbsp;<em>The Palgrave Companion to the Philosophical Humanism of Raymond Tallis,&nbsp;<\/em>New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This chapter reconstructs and critically assesses Raymond Tallis\u2019 critique of scientific naturalist accounts of consciousness, which for all their diversity share a basic commitment to explaining consciousness by reifying it. My aim is to bolster Tallis\u2019 critique of naturalism by drawing on the theoretical resources of Husserlian phenomenology. I reconstruct Tallis\u2019 argument that consciousness, as the condition of possibility for explicitness, cannot be explained with reference to empirical objects and their causal relations. I show that this Tallisian argument structurally parallels Husserlian arguments for the explanatory primacy of consciousness understood as the condition for the intelligibility of objects. I then show that in spite of Tallis\u2019 advance over naturalist accounts, he maintains a residual, problematic objectivism insofar as he, too, ultimately looks to the mode of being of objects when identifying the principles for the individuation of conscious subjects. I argue that this residual objectivism leads Tallis into the circularity of individuating consciousness, the condition of possibility for explicit things, by referencing an explicit thing: the body, understood as an object in space. In contrast, I argue that the principle for the individuation of the subject is the self-constitution of internal time consciousness as described by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. I conclude that to resolve this circularity and bolster his anti-naturalist position, which sees consciousness as not only epistemically foundational but also as ontologically irreducible in a way that is inconsistent with scientific naturalism, Tallis would benefit from more explicitly engaging with transcendental phenomenology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can find the above chapter draft: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/130240610\/Circling_Around_the_Transcendental_the_Conscious_Subject_as_the_Limit_of_Nature_in_Raymond_Tallis_Philosophy_and_in_Phenomenology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-black-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/?page_id=780#paper_abstracts\" style=\"background-color:#e9dfd4c7\"><strong>back to Research<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forthcoming in&nbsp;The Palgrave Companion to the Philosophical Humanism of Raymond Tallis,&nbsp;New York: Palgrave Macmillan. This chapter reconstructs and critically assesses Raymond Tallis\u2019 critique of scientific naturalist accounts of consciousness, which for all their diversity share a basic commitment to explaining consciousness by reifying it. My aim is to bolster Tallis\u2019 critique of naturalism by drawing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-800","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/800\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elena.holmgren.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}