Abstract
This chapter examines the subjectivity of consciousness. Many philosophers like Chalmers and Searle hold that consciousness is necessarily subjective or first person in character. Subjectivity is an ontological feature of consciousness. They hold that consciousness is always given to a subject or self because there is no consciousness without the conscious self or subject.
The subject of consciousness is the metaphysical locus of consciousness and its contents. That is why the self has been so central to the understanding of mind and consciousness. Those who deny the centrality of the self go to the other extreme of denying any subjective centre of consciousness. For them, consciousness needs no subjective locus because consciousness is not very different from the brain states.
The objective or third-person approach to consciousness fails to understand consciousness because it cannot explain meaning and intentionality arise at all. Therefore there is a need to accept a transcendental self to give a proper understanding of consciousness, meaning and intentionality.
In this chapter it has been shown that consciousness has a transcendental dimensional which needs to be probed in order to explain how consciousness can transcend itself and can go beyond its embodied situation.
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Pradhan, R.C. (2019). Subjectivity, Consciousness and Transcendence. In: Mind, Meaning and World. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7228-5_6
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