Beyond the Cartesian Self

The gap between first-person and third-person accounts of consciousness cannot be eliminated by reducing subjective experience to objective data, especially when the science aims to study the first-person perspective itself. Drawing on Carnap and Schrödinger, the author argues that such reduction leaves out essential aspects of conscious experience. Various approaches attempting to bridge this gap are reviewed, along with conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues surrounding the distinction.

Study at a glance

Abstract

I review a number of approaches that attempt to deal with the gap that seems to exist between first-person and third-person accounts of consciousness, and some of the conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues that surround this distinction. I argue, with reference to Carnap and Schrödinger, that one cannot simply reduce data from the first-person perspective to third-person data, without remainder, especially when the very subject matter of the science includes the first-person perspective.