In this paper I used the thesis that perspective shifting can fundamentally alter how we conceive and evaluate evidence as the backdrop for exploring one of the most perennial and challenging of all perspectives shifts: namely, between the subjective first-person perspective that provides each of us with a unique window onto reality, and the objective third-person perspective that serves as the consensual foundation for science. My arguments were divided into three sections, which though admittedly distinct in their focus, all converge in attempting to elucidate a rapprochement between the subjective and objective perspectives on human experience.
In the first section I introduced the notion of perspective shifting in the context of classic reversible images. Here I argued that reversible images provide a context for conceptualizing how the very same situation can be understood from two very different perspectives that appear to produce seemingly irreconcilable accounts of their contents. However, once this juxtaposition is recognized, a meta-perspective emerges that enables the appreciation of both perspectives even if they cannot be apprehended simultaneously. The perspective shifting and meta-perspective that arise from reversible images provide a metaphor for conceptualizing the tension between the first- and third-person perspective for understanding human experience. Both researcher and the field of science itself have been divided on whether to take perspectives on human nature that emphasize inner experience or external behaviors. While historically this has been a debate on which researchers have been forced to take sides, I argue that we should strive towards a meta-perspective in which the two vantages can inform one another.
In the second section I sought to show how the third-person perspective of objective science can elucidate our understanding of first-person experience. Towards this end, I introduced the distinction between having an experience (experiential consciousness) and one’s explicit understanding of that experience (meta-awareness). Historically when researchers have sought to understand people’s actual experience they have relied on people’s self-reports about what they believe they were experiencing. This has led some to argue that it is impossible to gain insight into underlying experience. However, I argue that through triangulation between self-reports and behavioral and physiological measures, it is possible to make reasoned inferences about people’s actual experience; identifying both situations in which meta-awareness overlooks experience (temporal dissociations of meta-awareness) and cases in which it distorts them (translations dissociations of meta-awareness). This framework was fleshed out within an extensive review of research on mind-wandering that, because of its inherently private nature, provides an ideal testing ground for developing a third-person science of first-person experience. By assessing the relationship between people’s behavioral and physiological measures and self-report this review concludes that while people’s self-reports of mind-wandering routinely correspond to genuinely experienced instances of this mental state, they nevertheless often fail to notice mind-wandering while it is occurring.
In the final and most speculative section of this paper, I turned the tables around. Instead of asking how third-person science clarifies first-person experience, I asked how first-person experience may inform third-person science. Here I argued that there are certain aspects of first-person experience that are so fundamental that they may reasonably serve as axioms of existence that any construal of physical reality must be able to accommodate. As detailed in the prior section it is clear that many aspects of experience may be illusory but several can reasonably be construed as unassailable, including: the occurrence of experience, the flow of time and the privileged present. Notably, current accounts of physical reality offer no way of accommodating these inherent aspects of first-person experience. This conflict between seemingly self-evident aspects of personal experience and current accounts of physical reality leads me to posit that, like the reversible images that can only be accommodated by recognizing a larger meta-perspective in which they both reside, so too there must exist some meta-perspective that can accommodate both objective scientific facts and personally experienced ones. Towards this end I introduced a highly speculative conjecture about the larger framework in which both objective and subjective perspectives might reside. Namely that consciousness involves a fundamental aspect of the universe that arises via the changing informational states associated with an observer’s movement through objective time relative to a currently unacknowledged dimension or dimensions of subjective time. Although highly speculative, I offer this account as an example of the kind of meta-perspective that may simultaneously accommodate extant objective observations and certain aspects of subjective experience that I find as compelling as the existence of physical reality itself.
In my view, bridging the objective/subjective divide will require adopting a meta-perspective in which the two points of view are viewed as alternative vantages on an underpinning reality that corresponds to both but can be fully accommodated by neither alone. As I attempted to illustrate at the outset, it is quite possible to hold inaccurate or incomplete beliefs about one’s experience, and third-person science can help to illuminate such errors. However, from my vantage there are certain elements of subjective experience that are as axiomatic as any aspect of the physical realm. Nevertheless, I recognize that not all will see it this way. Some will remain exclusively fixed to the third-person perspective of objective science, while others will conceive of reality exclusively from their own personal first-person point of view. In conceptualizing this breadth of perspectives, it is important to remain mindful of an essential insight of Bayes’ theorem of probability. Bayes’ theorem states that in calculating the probability of something one must integrate new evidence with one’s a priori probabilities. From a Baysian perspective, for those who believe that something is impossible (i.e., infinitely unlikely) there is no amount of evidence or argument that should sway them. The ontological reality of first-person experience seems very much to fit in this category. My arguments on this point will likely remain wholly unpersuasive to those who cannot conceive of subjective experience as offering an epistemological authority that rivals science. However, for those open to the possibility that science will need to find a way to accommodate the reality of both the subjective and objective perspectives, I hope my discussion offers some glimmers as to what such a meta-perspective might be like.
Acknowledgements
The writing of this paper was possible with the support of grants from the Templeton Foundation, the Institute of Educational Studies, and the Fetzer Frankin Fund. I am grateful to numerous individuals who commented on earlier versions of this manuscript, including Ben Baird, Robert Bernstein, James Broadway, Ashley Brumett, Michael Franklin, Tam Hunt, Jack Loomis, Ben Mooneyham, Michael Mrazek, Brett Ouimette, John Protzko, Claire Zedelius, and two anonymous reviewers. This work has also benefited from conversations with David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Daniel Gilbert, Mark Laufer, Wolfgang Lukas, Merrill McSpadden, Brianna Morseth, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Daniel Povinelli, Carmi Schooler, Lael Schooler, Nina Schooler, Rachel Schooler, Edward Slingerland, Jan Wallecezk, Dan Wegner, Timothy Wilson, Sid Zagri, and many others too numerous to mention. Though they aided in the project and/or influenced my thinking, none of these individuals or organizations should be viewed as endorsing the sentiments presented here.