ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the claim of Dennett and others that because it is private, subjective experience is ‘uninvestigatable’. It does so by citing evidence of productive research on various aspects of the structure of experience as well as systematic investigation of the relation between subjective experience and variations in external stimuli. Examples of such research include psychophysics and the work of Gestalt psychologists on the relationship between subjective experience and external stimulus patterns. I also note other aspects of the structure of experience, including the phenomenon of binding in which neural encoding of discrete stimulus features are bound, generating the experience of a unified object; the level of adaptation phenomenon, which suggests that one's experience of desire and affect are influenced by the level to which one has adapted. Finally, I cite research indicating that the profoundly subjective experiences of how one construes events and one's sense of meaning of life are associated with health outcomes.
