Neurophenomenological constraints and pushing back the subjectivity barrier

Abstract

In the first part of this commentary I argue that a neurophenomenological analysis of color reveals additional asymmetries that preclude undetectable color transformations, without appealing to weak arguments based on Basic Color Categories (BCCs); that is, I suggest additional factors that must be included in “an empirically accurate model of color experience,” and which break the remaining asymmetries. In the second part I discuss the “isomorphism constraint” and the extent to which we may predict the subjective quality of experience from its neurological correlates. Protophenomena are discussed as a way of capturing in a relational structure all of qualitative experience except for the bare fact of subjectivity.