The Idiosyncrasy Principle: A New Look at Qualia.
Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science November 1, 2022 M Salti, D Bergerbest
Qualia, the individual subjective experience, remains neglected in consciousness research because the objective scientific perspective misses its subjective nature. In 1974, Thomas Nagel suggested studying qualia requires an 'objective phenomenology method' to describe subjective character independently. This paper introduces an 'idiosyncrasy principle' framework, where subjectivity depends on the idiosyncratic composition of physical properties into qualia, conceptualizing an idiosyncratic transfer function between the world and its representation. The main challenge is obtaining an objective measure of another's perspective. Numerosity, uniquely, allows reporting subjective experience objectively. Based on this, the authors propose a neurocognitive research plan to delineate such transfer functions, enabling one person to adopt another's perspective and link qualia to its mechanism.