Me, You, and the Measurement. Founding a Science of Consciousness on the Second Person Perspective

Abstract

Modern science was born when physicists started studying phenomena by recruiting mathematical explanatory frameworks. Since this appears to be the direction followed in recent studies on consciousness, philosophers have to analyze the justification of this third-person methods of explaining a phenomenon that is supposed to be entirely subjective. In this paper I argue that this kind of justification could be found in a certain interpretation of the second-person perspective and I briefly sketch how one of the most promising contemporary theory of consciousness (IIT) could fit with such an interpretation.

Keywords

• second-person perspective
• Integrated Information Theory
• science of consciousness