The Subjectivity of Subjective Experience: A Representationalist Analysis of the First-Person Perspective

Abstract

Abstract. Before one can even begin to model consciousness and what exactly it means that it is a subjective phenomenon one needs a theory about what a first-person perspective really is. This theory has to be conceptually convincing, empirically plausible and, most of all, open to new developments. The chosen conceptual framework must be able to accommodate scientific progress. Its ba-sic assumptions have to be plastic as it were, so that new details and empirical data can continuously be fed into the theoretical model as it grows and becomes more refined. This paper makes an attempt at sketching the outlines of such a theory, offering a representationalist analysis of the phenomenal first-person perspective. Three phenomenal target properties are centrally relevant: “mine-ness ” (phenomenal appropriation; the sense of ownership), “selfhood ” (the con-scious experience of being someone), and “perspectivalness ” (a structural fea-ture: phenomenal space as a whole is organized around a center, a supramodal point of view). This contribution analyzes these properties on a representational as well as on a functional level of description. The author introduces new con-