The affectively embodied perspective of the subject

Phenomenal consciousness—what it is like to be an organism—is at least partly constituted by the capacity to feel with one's living body. The subjective character of experience, the sense that the world seems a certain way for a subject, is grounded in embodied affect: the ability to feel what happens on and inside the body. This view, called the affectively embodied perspectival view (AEP), argues that hedonic perturbation by the environment is essential to having a perspective. The argument combines empirical findings, phenomenological description, and conceptual analysis to show that subjective character cannot be fully understood without reference to bodily feeling.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper treats of phenomenal consciousness and its relation to an organism’s capacity to be hedonically perturbed by its environment. This paper offers an empirically informed, phenomenologically descriptive conceptual analysis of subjective character in terms of an organism’s ability to feel with its body. The subjective character of phenomenal consciousness is at least partially constituted by embodied affect, that is, by our ability to feel what is happening on and inside our living bodies. It is in virtue of our being able to feel with our bodies that our experiences disclose the world as seeming a certain way for us. I call this the “affectively embodied perspectival view” of subjective character (AEP).