Points of View from the Brain's Eye View: Subjectivity and Neural Representation

Conscious experiences are supposed by many to be subjective in the sense of being perspectival or from a point-of-view (see, for example Nagel 1974, 1986 and Tye 1995). Allegedly, the subjectivity of consciousness is beyond the grasp of science, which is objective (Nagel 1986). If you wanted a scientific understanding of consciousness, how would you solve the problem of subjectivity? One strategy would be to deny that consciousness is really subjective. Another might be to deny that science is really objective. Yet a third, and the one I favor, conserves both the subjectivity of experience and the objectivity of science. I present a way of looking at subjectivity and objectivity that allows for an objective, scientific—indeed, neuroscientific—understanding of the subjectivity of conscious experience. My general strategy will be to assimilate the subjectivity of experience to the subjectivity of certain mental representations and give an account of how the subjectivity of representation can be understood within an objective naturalistic framework. My account is naturalistic in that I sketch a neuroscientifically informed philosophical account of what it means for mental representations to be subjective (that is, perspectival or imbued with a point of view). Previous accounts–such as those advocated by understand subjective representations as akin to indexical linguistic expressions. My alternative account does not make indexicality a requirement of subjectivity.