Abstract
In recent debates on phenomenal consciousness, a distinction is sometimes made, after Levine (2001) and Kriegel (2009), between the “qualitative character” of an experience, i.e. the specific way it feels to the subject (e.g. blueish or sweetish or pleasant), and its “subjective character”, i.e. the fact that there is anything at all that it feels like to her. I argue that much discussion of subjective character is affected by a conflation between three different notions. I start by disentangling the three notions in question, under the labels of “for-me-ness”, “me-ness” and “mineness”. Next, I argue that these notions are not equivalent; in particular, there is no conceptual implication from for-me-ness to me-ness or mineness. Empirical considerations based on clinical cases additionally suggest that the three notions may also correspond to different properties (although the claim of conceptual non-equivalence does not depend on this further point). The aim is clarificatory, cautionary but also critical: I examine four existing arguments from subjective character that are fuelled by an undifferentiated use of the three notions, and find them to be flawed for this reason.
Highlights
1.1 The Subjective Character of ExperienceExperiences have intentional properties: they represent the world as being a certain way
Levine calls them Bqualitative character^ and Bsubjectivity^, respectively; Kriegel uses the terms Bqualitative character^ and Bsubjective character^, a pair I will prefer for its uniformity
In the literature on phenomenal consciousness, a wide range of alternative terms are used to talk about subjective character
Summary
Experiences have intentional properties: they represent the world as being a certain way. In recent debates on consciousness, a further distinction is sometimes made, following Levine (2001) and Kriegel (2009), between two dimensions of phenomenality itself. Within the complete phenomenal character of an experience – what it is like for me to have the experience – we can place the emphasis, and fix our attention, on two different aspects: the qualitative character – what it is like for me to have it – and the subjective character – what it is like for me to have it. As Kriegel puts it, subjective character captures what remains constant across experiences, while qualitative character captures what changes: On the scheme I have adopted, bluish-for-me-ness, reddish-for-me-ness, trumpetish-for-me-ness, and so on are all phenomenal characters that are determinates of the determinable something-for-me-ness (or plain for-me-ness for short). Kriegel casts the difference between subjective character and qualitative character as a difference between a determinable and its determinates
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