The View from Among: a Relational Epistemology for Structural Approaches
Francesco Ellia, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
August 16, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/6dycm_v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that consciousness science need not choose between first-person and third-person approaches; instead, the first-person plural perspective offers a viable epistemic route to the structure of experience. Contends that this perspective is already implicit in the Qualia Structure paradigm and illustrates it with a free-report paradigm. |
Abstract
Consciousness science remains caught between a first-person approach that cannot independently corroborate its data and a third-person approach that excludes its target of explanation. We argue that this is a false dichotomy, and propose a third option, the first-person plural perspective (FPP): the position that the primary route of epistemic access to the structure of experience is the plural “we”, the field of structural features recoverable across perspectives, rather than the singular “I” or the observer’s “them”. FPP is an epistemic position, not an ontological one; it posits no group mind, and it is a modest, deflationary realist about the relational structure of experiences as they are had. We show that this is the epistemology already implicit in the Qualia Structure paradigm, and illustrate it with a free-report paradigm.