Quite aptly, problems posed along the first path were recently nicknamed hard by D. Chalmers to distinguish them from problems posed along the latter two paths, considered to be easy . Perhaps one day we will learn, and maybe even simulate, what really occurs in our brain when we feel happy or sad. I doubt, however, that it would make any difference to anybody who himself never laughs or cries. There is a certain paradox behind the first-person perspective, namely, the impossibility of observing and reporting actual inner experiences. A soon as I turn my attention to myself, I take the third-person view as if I jumped outside of myself to be able to look inside .
Introspection is more like that.
On the other hand, the first-person view proper should have the orientation, so to say, from inside to outside. It can be experienced, lived through , but not inspected. There are new specialised journals, numerous conferences and symposia. In the following I shall mention one or two directions that are not too alien to scientific approaches and yet not widely recognised as throwing some light on the issue of consciousness, including its first-person perspective. Some of them appeared during the discussions in Kalamazoo.