Keiran Bateman

Profile

I am a first-year PhD student and researcher at the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, having joined the department in 2022 as a grateful recipient of the PRHS Doctoral Scholarship.

My current research involves the application of process metaphysics to panpsychism, as a means of accounting for the emergence of consciousness in the material world. Panpsychism is at present subject to several issues limiting its explanatory power, and has not yet offered an account of just how subjective experiences arise from fundamentally ‘consciousness-involving’ material things. My research seeks to relieve panpsychism from its so-called combination problem, and bolster its explanatory capacity by applying a processual metaphysical structure to its fundamental picture of reality. Ultimately, I make the claim that the relations between conscious entities will be sufficient in accounting for the emergence of o-consciousness.

Talks and Conferences:

Research Paper, Dec 2022: ‘Inelegant Solutions: Composite Subjectivity and the Simplicity Argument for Panpsychism’ at PGR Seminar in Philosophy, University of Leeds.

Conference Paper, May 2022: ‘“A Doctrine of Continuity”: An Ecological Perspective on Whitehead’s Process Theism’ at European Society for the Study of Science and Theology XIX, Ålesund, Norway.

Research interests

My other areas of research interest are:

• Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics
• Philosophy of Science
• Process and Causation
• Philosophy of Psychedelics 
• Historical Conceptions of Mind

Qualifications

• MA in Political Philosophy, 2021 - Royal Holloway, University of London
• BA in History, 2020 - Royal Holloway, University of London

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Metaphysics and Mind