Subjective character of experience

The subjective character of experience is a term in psychology and the philosophy of mind denoting that all subjective phenomena are associated with a single point of view ("ego"). The term was coined and illuminated by Thomas Nagel in his famous paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Nagel argues that, because bats are apparently conscious mammals with a way of perceiving their environment entirely different from that of human beings, it is impossible to speak of "what is it like to be a bat for the bat" or, while the example of the bat is particularly illustrative, any conscious species, as each organism has a unique point of view from which no other organism can gather experience. To Nagel, the subjective character of experience implies the cognitive closure of the human mind to some facts, specifically the mental states that physical states create.

See also

• Dualism (philosophy of mind)
• Functionalism
• Hallucinations in the sane
• Inverted spectrum
• Mary's Room
• Multiverse
• Philosophical zombies
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of perception
• Physicalism
• Pragmatism
• Qualia
• Synesthesia
• The map is not the territory
• Vertiginous question

References

• Song, D. Subjective Universe: Interweaving Matter and Mind through Cyclical Time. 2020