About

Uriah Kriegel is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Rice University. His official research areas include the philosophy of mind, with interests spanning all the perennial problems of philosophy and their historical approaches. Currently, he is focused on three main projects: exploring the value of consciousness and its epistemic, ethical, and aesthetic significance; investigating the nature of moral awareness and its emotional, rational, or combined foundations; and examining fundamental ontology, specifically the ontological categories of the basic units of reality and how to identify them. Kriegel has authored several books, including 'Brentano's Philosophical System,' 'The Varieties of Consciousness,' 'The Sources of Intentionality,' and 'Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory.' His scholarly work also includes numerous articles addressing topics such as consciousness, intentionality, aesthetic value, and metaphysics, contributing significantly to contemporary philosophical discourse.

Research topics

• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Linguistics
• Law
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong

  2025-08-13 · 2 citations

  bookSenior author

  "Is there such a thing as a moral truth taught by nature itself and independent of ecclesiastical, political, and every other kind of social authority? Is there a moral law that is natural in the sense of being universally and incontestably valid—valid for men at all places and all times, indeed valid for any being that thinks and feels—and are we capable of knowing that there is such a law? ... My own answer is emphatically affirmative." —Franz Brentano, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong Franz Brentano is one of the founding figures of twentieth century philosophy, celebrated for introducing the concept of intentionality as well as making significant contributions to ethics, philosophy of psychology and logic. He counted Sigmund Freud, Rudolf Steiner and Edmund Husserl amongst his students, and Freud wrote to his teacher to express his great admiration for him. The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong is Brentano's most important book on ethics and moral philosophy. Hailed by the Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore as 'a far better discussion of the most fundamental principles of Ethics than any others with which I am acquainted', it is based on an important lecture Brentano delivered in Vienna in 1889 and the product of many years of reflection on its subject matter. Breaking with earlier arguments that ideas of right and wrong are innate, Brentano seeks to overcome a major challenge: if there is no such thing as objective moral goodness, can our moral judgments themselves still be objective, independent of context or human conventions? Brentano's answer is that they can, but only if we understand correctly the function of moral thought and discourse. His bold and highly original insight is that emotions are a precondition for moral knowledge and our experience of them can be right or wrong: if it is correct or fitting to love something we can say it is good, and if it is fitting to hate it, it is bad. Moving deftly through key figures in the history of philosophy, including Descartes and John Stuart Mill, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong is a pioneering work of ethics that continues to influence both analytical and phenomenological traditions in philosophy. This Routledge Classics edition includes a helpful account of Brentano's life and major works and a Foreword, both by Uriah Kriegel, explaining some of Brentano’s core ideas and arguments. Also included are a significant excerpt from Brentano's The Foundation and Construction of Ethics, and a historically important review by G.E. Moore of The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong on the book's first publication.

  PublisherDOI

• Folk Ontology and the Meta-Problem of Consciousness: Commentary on Weisberg-Physicalism

  Journal of Consciousness Studies · 2025-07-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Josh Weisberg develops a form of physicalism which attempts to (a) show why there is no ultima facie explanatory gap between consciousness and the physical world, while (b) making us see why there nonetheless is a prima facie explanatory gap. The former constitutes a solution to the problem of consciousness, the latter a proposal regarding the meta-problem of consciousness (the problem, roughly, of understanding why there is a problem of consciousness to begin with). Together, they are intended to produce a debunking explanation of the explanatory gap, and a comprehensive approach to the philosophical puzzlement generated by the existence of consciousness in an otherwise purely physical world. I will argue that Weisberg-physicalism is less successful on the meta-problem of consciousness than on the first-order problem and will sketch an alternative approach, one that traces the problem of consciousness back to the structure of our folk ontology.

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• What is knowledge by acquaintance?

  Noûs · 2025-04-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Russell famously posited a type of knowledge distinct from and irreducible to propositional knowledge, which he called knowledge by acquaintance . In recent years, several epistemologists have reignited interest in knowledge by acquaintance, pointing out an array of theoretical jobs it is serviceable in performing. Nonetheless knowledge by acquaintance continues to be met with resistance and disregard. I surmise that this has partly to do with the specific conception of knowledge by acquaintance propounded by Russell and many of his followers – what I will call here the “classical conception” of knowledge by acquaintance. At the heart of this conception are two theses, which I will label relationalism and infallibilism and try to articulate more fully in what follows. The main aim of this paper, however, is to construct an alternative notion of knowledge by acquaintance – fallibilist and non‐relationalist – and argue that this alternative conception is just as fit to perform the theoretical jobs identified by proponents of knowledge by acquaintance. The hope is to thereby rescue knowledge by acquaintance from its relationalist and infallibilist associations, the better to foster its wider acceptance.

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• Phenomenal Beauty: Toward an Aesthetic of Conscious Experience

  Journal of Consciousness Studies · 2025-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper defends four main theses. First, at least some conscious experiences are aesthetically valuable. Second, phenomenal consciousness as a whole – as a general phenomenon – is plausibly an aesthetically valuable addition to the universe. Third, the fact that something like phenomenal consciousness exists in a world otherwise consisting in particles mindlessly buzzing in mostly empty space merits the kind of awe characteristic of the aesthetic category of the sublime. Fourth, given all of the above, consciousness aesthetics is a viable branch of aesthetics. A fifth and more daring thesis is also explored: that all aesthetic value is originally in consciousness.

  PublisherDOI

• Beatrice Edgell’s myth of the given

  British Journal for the History of Philosophy · 2024-04-25 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Wilfrid Sellars’ “myth of the given” had a momentous influence on 20th-century epistemology, putting under pressure the internalist foundationalism so prominent in early analytic philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the core themes in Sellars’ argument are anticipated in the work of the London philosopher and psychologist Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948). Indeed, in some respects Edgell’s argument against the myth of the given is even more compelling than Sellars’. The paper logically reconstructs and historically contextualizes Edgell’s line of argument, as emerging out of a critique of Russell’s epistemology, with the goal of showing that the “myth of the given” effectively predated Sellars by four decades.

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• Imagination, modal knowledge, and modal understanding

  2024-07-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Recent work on the imagination has stressed the epistemic significance of imaginative experiences, notably in justifying modal beliefs. An immediate problem with this is that modal beliefs appear to admit of justification through the mere exercise of rational capacities. For instance, mastery of the concepts of square, circle, and possibility should suffice to form the justified belief that a square circle is not possible, and mastery of the concepts of pig, flying, and possibility should suffice to form a justified belief that a flying pig is possible. It is thus unnecessary to try to imagine a square circle or a flying pig to justify these beliefs. In this chapter, I consider three ways to defend the epistemic role of imagination in modal epistemology against this challenge. One claims that modal beliefs simply admit of justification by two separate sources: rational capacities and imaginative experience. Another holds that while beliefs about logical or conceptual modality can be justified entirely by rational capacities, beliefs about metaphysical modality require imaginative experiences. The third, which I defend, is that imagination is relevant in the first instance not to modal knowledge but to modal understanding: even where imaginative experience is unnecessary for the justification of modal beliefs, it is indispensable for directly grasping certain modal propositions.

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• The Sublime of Consciousness

  The British Journal of Aesthetics · 2024-02-16 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The aesthetic tradition has identified as paradigmatically sublime such objects as imposing mountains and intense storms, as well as monumental art. But the tradition also acknowledges less paradigmatic cases, including sometimes mathematical structures or abstract concepts. In this paper, we argue that there is also a case for considering phenomenal consciousness—the experiential quality of subjective awareness—as a sublime phenomenon. One appreciates this, we argue, when one is struck by (fitting) awe upon contemplating (a) the perplexing existence of something like phenomenal consciousness in an otherwise completely material universe and (b) the role of consciousness in injecting meaning and value in an otherwise brutally factual reality.

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• The limits of experience: Dogmatism and moral epistemology

  Philosophical Issues · 2024-09-23 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Let “phenomenal dogmatism” be the thesis that some experiences provide some beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. A basic question‐mark looms over phenomenal dogmatism: Why should the fact that a person is visited by some phenomenal feel suggest the likely truth of a belief? In this paper, I press this challenge, arguing that perceptually justified beliefs are justified not purely by perceptual experiences’ phenomenology, but also because we have justified second‐order background beliefs to the effect that the occurrence of certain perceptual experiences is indicative of the likely truth of certain corresponding beliefs. To bring this out, I contrast “perceptual dogmatism” with “moral dogmatism”: the thesis that some emotional experiences provide some moral beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. I argue that moral dogmatism is much less antecedently appealing, precisely because the counterpart second‐order beliefs here are much less plausible.

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• Knowledge‐by‐Acquaintance First

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2024-02-26 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Bertrand Russell's epistemology had the interesting structural feature that it made propositional knowledge (“S knows that p ”) asymmetrically dependent upon what Russell called knowledge by acquaintance . On this view, a subject lacking any knowledge by acquaintance would be unable to know that p for any p . This is something that virtually nobody has defended since Russell, and in this paper I initiate a sympathetic reconsideration.

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• Event plenitude

  Synthese · 2024-07-24

  article1st authorCorresponding
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Frequent coauthors

• F. A. Triantis

  University of Ioannina

  8 shared

• H. Kirk

  Cornell University

  7 shared

• D.R.O. Morrison

  7 shared

• P. Porth

  Institute of High Energy Physics

  7 shared

• U. Gensch

  7 shared

• C. Lewin

  6 shared

• M. Walter

  6 shared

• J. Klugow

  5 shared