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(2015) The science of subjectivity, Dordrecht, Springer.
An influential thesis in contemporary philosophy of mind is that subjectivity is inexplicable because it is paradoxical. Joseph Levine's Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness (2001) made this thesis explicit and connected it with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996). The peculiar claim that there is a paradox about subjectivity arises within a certain tradition and a particular set of texts, and the ways they encourage philosophers to think about the topic. In this literature, subjectivity is conceived as inner awareness of qualia. Drawing on this conception, Levine (2007, 2001) has argued that this unique form of awareness generates a paradox resisting empirical explanation. Levine concludes that the hardest part of the hard problem of consciousness is to explain how anything like a subjective point of view could arise in the world (2001, p. 174). Against this, I argue that the nature of subjective thought is not correctly characterized in terms of inner awareness, and that the problem about the subjective (first-person) point of view should be distinguished from the perennial metaphysical problem of qualia or phenomenal properties.
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Neisser, J. U. (2015). What subjectivity is not, in The science of subjectivity, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 61-80.
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