Concept

Subjective character of experience

Overview

The subjective character of experience, also referred to as subjective experience, is the first-person aspect of conscious experience. Subjective experience is commonly described as encompassing sensory experiences and mental events, including perceptions, emotions, thoughts, memories, intentions, and related conscious phenomena that arise from the unique perspective of an individual. The concept is central to philosophy of mind, psychology, phenomenology, and consciousness studies, where it is used to describe the fact that conscious experiences are directly accessible only to the subject undergoing them.

The expression subjective character of experience was introduced by philosopher Thomas Nagel in his influential 1974 essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", in which he argued that every conscious organism has its own unique point of view. Nagel maintained that although objective scientific investigation can describe the physical and functional characteristics of an organism, it cannot fully capture what it is like for that organism to have its own experiences. His argument became a landmark in discussions concerning consciousness, reductionism, and the explanatory limits of physical accounts of the mind. Although the term originated in philosophy, the study of subjective experience has expanded considerably across several disciplines. Contemporary researchers in psychology, phenomenology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and health sciences investigate subjective experience using a variety of first-person research methods, while also examining its relationship to objective behavioural and physiological measures. As a result, subjective experience is now regarded as both a philosophical concept and an important subject of empirical investigation.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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It is these two characteristics, both connected with mnemic phenomena, that distinguish perceptions from the appearances of objects in places where there is no living being. Theoretically, though often not practically, we can, in our perception of an object, separate the part which is due to past experience from the part which proceeds without mnemic influences out of the character of the object. We may define as…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
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The relatively uniform elements of touch and organic sensations are distributed among the sensations of pressure, warmth, cold, and pain. In contra-distinction to these, the special senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting present an abundance of sensations, each of which, according to its peculiar constitution, is called a quality of sensation. Each such quality is besides variable in its intensity. We can…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
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Why has the description of experience been so remote from the facts of empirical situations? To answer this question throws light upon the submergence of recent philosophizing in epistemology--that is, in discussions of the nature, possibility, and limits of knowledge in general, and in the attempt to reach conclusions regarding the ultimate nature of reality from the answers given to such questions. The reply to…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
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Subjective character of experience

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