This question explores the complex issue of subjective consciousness and its relation to objective psychological reality. Each individual experiences consciousness in a unique, personal way, which raises challenges in understanding whether two people’s conscious experiences are truly comparable or share the same qualitative nature.
The inquiry touches on fields such as philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology. It also raises questions about the limits of scientific measurement tools, like neuroimaging and behavioral assessments, in capturing and comparing subjective experiences across individuals.
I am interested in insights regarding both theoretical perspectives and any emerging scientific methods that might enable a more objective assessment or comparison of these subjective states
We can’t directly access another person’s subjective experience, but science compares them through self-reports, behavior, and brain activity. When people describe similar feelings under the same conditions and show consistent neural patterns (e.g., in pain or color perception), we infer a shared psychological reality. While the exact “what it feels like” (qualia) remains private and is the philosophical hard problem of consciousness, psychology and neuroscience make it scientifically testable by correlating subjective reports with objective measures.
This is a deep question that sits at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. And although it sounds abstract, it connects directly to leadership, empathy, and communication — because every human interaction is, in essence, an attempt to bridge two subjective realities.
From a scientific standpoint, subjective experience can’t yet be fully measured, only correlated. Modern neuroscience uses tools like fMRI, EEG, and machine learning to map patterns of brain activity that coincide with reported mental states, but it doesn’t tell us how those states feel internally. We can compare activation patterns, reaction times, or emotions expressed behaviorally — yet we can’t confirm that “my red” looks or feels exactly like “your red.”
Psychologically, we rely on intersubjectivity — shared language, emotion, and context — as our best approximation of a common reality. In therapy, leadership, or coaching, this is what empathy really is: learning to understand another’s internal state well enough that communication feels aligned, even if the underlying experience can never be identical.
So yes, it’s scientific in the sense that we can observe, model, and correlate conscious states — but not yet objectively equate them. For now, our bridge between subjective worlds remains partly empirical and partly relational.
In my work combining psychology and leadership coaching, I often see how powerful it is when people realise this: you don’t need identical experiences to connect deeply — you just need awareness that your perspectives differ, and the curiosity to meet halfway.
If you’d like to explore how these principles apply to communication, leadership, or emotional intelligence in practice, I’d be happy to discuss further.
