Skip to content

First-Person Experience and the Scientific Exploration of Consciousness

Brian D. Josephson

1996 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-322-85017-1_38 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Citations 3
Key points Argues that conscious experience is difficult for science because of its personal, individualistic character, and that saying an individual's experience is merely the functioning of that individual's brain does not fully resolve the problem, since experiences differ so greatly in nature from brain processes.

Abstract

What makes conscious experience a difficult or confusing subject for science to deal with is its personal or individualistic character (that is to say the fact that a given experience is an experience apparently tied to a particular individual). It is in this respect very different from the other phenomena studied by science, where while the phenomena may be observed by a particular individual they are considered to be in principle independent of that individual. To say that an individual’s experience is merely the functioning ofthat individual’s brain does not fully resolve the problem, since experiences are so very different in nature from brain processes. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.