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1 " To claim that there, in addition, exists a behind-the-scenes world, a hidden world that transcends every type of givenness, every type of evidence, and that this is the really real reality, is rejected as an empty speculative claim by the phenomenologists. In fact, they would insist that the very proposal involves a category-mistake, a misapplication and abuse of the very concept of reality. Rather than defining objective reality in terms of an inaccessible and ungraspable beyond, phenomenologists would argue that the right place to locate objectivity is in, rather than beyond, the appearing world. "
― Dan Zahavi , Phenomenology: The Basics
2 " a lack of clarity in the concepts used will lead to a lack of clarity in the questions posed, and thus also to a lack of clarity in the design of the experiments supposed to provide an answer to the questions. "
― Dan Zahavi , Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame
3 " It is widely shared not only by phenomenologists such as Sartre and Husserl and self-representationalists like Kriegel, but also by higher-order representationalists. For the latter, the difference between conscious and non-conscious mental states rests upon the presence or absence of a relevant meta-mental state. One way to illustrate the guiding idea of this approach is to compare consciousness to a spotlight. Some mental states are illuminated; others do their work in the dark. What makes a mental state conscious (illuminated) is the fact that it is taken as an object by a relevant higher-order state. "
4 " It is only when the child comes to realize that her experiences take place from a first-person perspective that is unique to the child and inaccessible to others, it is only when she realizes that she enjoys unique access to her own experiences, and others to theirs, that her experiences are given to her as subjective, and hence in a first-person mode of givenness. "
5 " subjectivity of experience presupposes an apprehension of the distinction between one’s own experiences and the experience of others, "
6 " Against the background of such considerations, which incidentally entail that we ought to be very cautious in ascribing subjectivity to individuals with severe forms of autism, the very notions of pre-reflective self-consciousness and mineness have been taken to be not only theoretical aberrations but also redundant and explanatorily vacuous "
7 " In short, there is a difference between asking about the property the object is experienced as having (how does the surface of a table feel differently from the surface of an ice cube?) and asking about the property of the experience of the object (what is the experiential difference between perceiving and imagining an ice cube?). "
8 " If we wish to do justice to the phenomenal character of our experiential life, it is not sufficient to consider the intentional object and the intentional attitude, since what-it-is-likeness is properly speaking what-it-is-like-for-me-ness. Phenomenally conscious states are not states that just happen to take place in me, whether or not I am aware of their taking place; they are also for me, precisely in the sense that there is something it is like for me to have those states. This is why strong phenomenal externalism necessarily fails in its attempt to provide an exhaustive account of the phenomenal character of experience. "
