Alida Angafor

It is often argued that objective accounts of reality leave something out, yet there is little agreement about how to characterize what is left out. Jackson’s knowledge argument invites us to locate the subjectivity of experience in experience itself, in its qualitative character, whereas Nagel invites us to locate it in the point of view from which experience is had. This thesis argues that the two are describing two sides of a single structure. Using Jackson’s Fred case, I first argue that subjectivity is located in a point of view. Then, drawing on Biro’s critique of Nagel, I argue that no feature of a point of view, whether its location, its sensory apparatus or its belonging to a subject, can by itself make experience subjective, since states such as digestion share all of these. What makes experience subjective, I argue, is not what it presents but the fact that it presents it to someone, a feature I call for-ness. I then argue that for-ness is grounded in the self, understood as one subject described in two senses, as the persisting bearer of a capacity for experience, which I call existential subjectivity, and as that same subject present in each exercise of that capacity, which I call experiential subjectivity. On this account, what escapes objective accounts is the self’s presence in each experience as the one to whom that experience presents what it presents, something objective accounts can refer to but never capture. I defend this claim against three objections, and conclude that a complete picture of reality must recognize that the world contains not only things seen from nowhere, but someone for whom the world is there.