Subjectivity

Abstract

This chapter inaugurates the book’s investigation of the Hard Problems of consciousness by asking how subjectivity can be situated within an objective world. It begins by reframing the traditional Hard Problem through the broader lens of the Placement Problem, drawing on recent works in naturalism to clarify how subjective phenomena resist straightforward integration into a scientific ontology. The chapter then surveys major varieties of physicalism, including reductive, non-reductive, and grounding-based formulations, and examines their respective responses to canonical anti-physicalist arguments such as zombies, the subjective characters of experience, and the knowledge argument. While these strategies attempt to reinterpret apparent explanatory gaps as epistemic rather than metaphysical, persistent tensions remain. The discussion then turns to non-physicalist alternatives, including naturalistic dualism, panpsychism, neutral monism, and idealist approaches, assessing their explanatory ambitions and costs. The chapter concludes by introducing strong metaphysical emergentism as a tentative but promising position, suggesting that consciousness may represent a genuine ontological novelty that remains dependent on, yet irreducible to, the physical world.