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 possible 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.
Read more about Subjective Character Of Experience: Subjective Reality, Dual-subjective Reality
Famous quotes containing the words subjective, character and/or experience:
“every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”
—Thomas Nagel (b. 1938)
“It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Consciousness never deceives.... We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)