Robert Kirk was a Scottish minister and folklorist deeply immersed in the lore of the Scottish Highlands. His work delves into the supernatural, exploring beliefs surrounding fairies, witchcraft, and ghosts. He also investigated the phenomenon of second sight, a form of heightened intuition or precognition. Kirk's scholarship offers a fascinating glimpse into the beliefs and worldview prevalent in his era.
In the late 17th century, a Scottish minister went looking for creatures of "a middle nature betwixt man and angel." Robert Kirk roamed the Highlands, talking to country folk about their encounters with supernatural creatures. This remarkable record of their testimonials offers rare glimpses into a world of everyday magic.
Consciousness is a perennial source of mystification in the philosophy of mind - how can processes in the brain amount to conscious experiences? Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ourselves as subjects of experience. He argues that there is no need for recourse to dualism or private mental objects. The task is to understand how the truth about raw feeling could be "strictly implied" by narrowly physical truths. Kirk's explanation turns on an account of what it is to be a subject of conscious perceptual experience. He offers analyses of the problems of cnsciousness, and suggests novel solutions which, unlike their rivals, can be accepted without gritting one's teeth. His sustained defence of non-reductive physicalism shows that the reader need not abandon hope of finding a solution to the mind-body problem. Robert Kirk is the author of "Translation Determined".