The science of consciousness has long focused on the mechanisms that generate conscious content—the so-called “hard problem”—yet it has systematically suspended a more fundamental question: why is such content bound to a unique, enduring first-person perspective? This paper refers to this as the problem of ownership, or the problem of individuation. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have...
The Problem of Perspectival Ownership: A Philosophical Framework for Conscious Individuality Consciousness research has focused predominantly on the "Hard Problem" of subjective experience, yet a more foundational issue persists: the Problem of Perspectival Ownership. Why does a given stream of experience belong to this particular first-person perspective (“mine”) and not another? This paper...