The ''subjective character of experience'' is a term in psychology and the
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
denoting that all
subjective phenomena
A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
are associated with a single
point of view
Point of view or Points of View may refer to:
Concept and technique
* Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or thinks of something
* Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronou ...
("
ego"). The term was coined and illuminated by
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...
in his famous paper "
What Is it Like to Be a Bat?"
[Nagel, Thomas (1974) What is It Like to Be a Bat? ''The Philosophical Review'' LXXXIII, 4 (October): 435–50.]
Nagel argues that, because bats are apparently
conscious
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
mammals
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
with a way of perceiving their environment entirely different from that of
human beings
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
, it is impossible to speak of "what is it like to ''be'' a bat ''for'' the bat" or, while the example of the bat is particularly illustrative, any conscious species, as each organism has a unique point of view from which no other organism can gather
experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
. To Nagel, the subjective character of experience implies the
cognitive closure of the human
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
to some facts, specifically the
mental state
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definiti ...
s that
physical states create.
Subjective reality
Subjective character of experience implies that the perception of all things, concepts, and "truths" in the universe differs between individuals: we all live in different worlds, each of which may have things in common, because of our unique perspectives on our worlds. The only thing to which one can hold oneself is something one has experienced or perceived. Until someone has had an experience of something the object or concept within itself is not "real." Someone in Africa is aware of the existence of fire and sees it but for an Inuit who has never seen fire before the fire does not exist in the same way. The idea of the subjectivity of one's "reality" also hints at an aspect of
moral relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
, that each person's opinions are the only things they can hold themselves to.
See also
*
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
Dualism most commonly refers to:
* Mind–body dualism, a philosophical view which holds that mental phenomena are, at least in certain respects, not physical phenomena, or that the mind and the body are distinct and separable from one another
** ...
*
Functionalism
*
Hallucinations in the sane
Anomalous experiences, such as so-called benign hallucinations, may occur in a person in a state of good mental and physical health, even in the apparent absence of a transient trigger factor such as fatigue, intoxication or sensory deprivation.
T ...
*
Inverted spectrum The inverted spectrum is the hypothetical concept, pertaining to the philosophy of color, of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees—one's qualia—are systematically different from the colors t ...
*
Mary's Room
The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The experim ...
*
Multiverse
The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The di ...
*
Philosophical zombies
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie argument is a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that imagines a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have consciousness, conscious ex ...
*
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
*
Philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world.cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-epi ...
*
Physicalism
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substanc ...
*
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
*
Qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
*
Synesthesia
Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who re ...
*
The map is not the territory
References
*
*Song, D. ''Subjective Universe: Interweaving Matter and Mind through Cyclical Time.'' 2020
{{DEFAULTSORT:Subjective Character Of Experience
Consciousness studies
Subjective experience