"Armchair Metaphysics" on Consciousness

Abstract

There are said to be two distinguishable features in our conscious mental states. One is the phenomenal character, and the other the subjective character. These features are often couched by somewhat imaginative phrases due to Thomas Nagel(1974): There is what it is like to be in a conscious mental state, and the "what it is like" is always for someone, or "essentially connected with a single point of view."(Nagel 1974,160)