Elgat’s Metaphysical Subjectivism: Being a Brain

Philosopher Guy Elgat’s metaphysical subjectivism holds that phenomenal consciousness is neither identical to the physical, nor caused by it, nor a property of it, but is what it is to be certain physical entities: for humans, to be a brain is to undergo conscious states (Elgat, 2027). The view rests on the claim that “to be” in Nagel’s question about what it is like to be a bat expresses a sui generis concept, “subjective being,” distinct from predication, existence, and numerical identity (Elgat, 2025a, 2025b). Because an entity differs from being that entity, a “metaphysical difference,” Elgat combines a wholly physical ontology with the irreducibility of phenomenal consciousness, and argues that this renders the hard problem insoluble in principle while raising a new, metaphysical hard problem.

In other words, conscious experience is neither identical with a physical entity nor an additional substance or ordinary property belonging to it; rather, experiencing is what being that entity involves. The theory combines a physical ontology of things and their properties with an irreducible subjective dimension of reality, preserving physical dependence while arguing that objective explanation cannot exhaust phenomenal consciousness (Elgat, 2025b, 2026, 2007, n.d.-a).

The Concept of Subjective Being

Elgat begins with Nagel’s characterization of consciousness through what it is like for an organism to be that organism (Nagel, 1974). Nagel held that “fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism” (Nagel, 1974). Elgat observes that while “what it is like” has been scrutinized, the infinitive “to be” has been left unexamined (Elgat, 2025c). Thus, Elgat focuses on the expression “to be.” Asking what it is like to be a bat concerns a particular entity and its subjective life: the issue is how being that entity involves experience, rather than merely which objective characteristics it possesses.

Subjective being therefore names a proposed relation between an entity and its phenomenality, when phenomenality is present. It does not name another entity or an independently existing subject concealed within the organism. Nor does recognizing the concept establish which entities are conscious. Elgat’s claim concerns how an entity’s experience is metaphysically related to it, conditional on there being experience to explain.

The same conceptual structure permits questions about unfamiliar animals whose consciousness remains uncertain and judgments that some objects have no subjective experience (Elgat, 2025b, 2026); for example, the judgment that there is nothing it is like to be a rock. In both cases, “to be” relates a physical entity to phenomenal experience when present and to nothing when absent. Metaphysical subjectivism holds that the consciousness-body relation is precisely this relation: in some cases, to be a physical entity, to be it oneself, is to undergo conscious experience.

Not Predication, Existence, or Identity

Elgat’s argument distinguishes subjective being from three familiar uses of “being.” Predication attributes a property to something, as when a bat is described as small. Existence concerns whether something exists. Numerical identity concerns whether apparently different designations refer to one and the same item. Elgat argues that asking what it is like to be a bat employs none of these concepts: it neither predicates an ordinary characteristic, asserts the bat’s existence, nor identifies the animal with its experiences (Elgat, 2025b, 2026).

In “the object is five feet tall,” the linking verb ascribes a property; in “there is something it is like to be a bat,” nothing is ascribed. Rather, an object is posited, and being that object is judged to involve experience. Nor is existence asserted: “there is something it is like to be a human” presupposes humans. Nor is it numerical identity: to wonder what it is like to be you is not to wonder which experiences you are identical with, and “there is nothing it is like to be a rock” does not identify a rock with an absence of experience. Elgat adds that “having experiences” cannot replace “to be” without circularity, since having experiences already entails that there is something it is like (Elgat, 2025c).

This distinction, he says, is metaphysically consequential. A physical thing and being that thing differ in a way that cannot be captured by adding further properties to the thing. His proposed “metaphysical difference” separates an objectively describable entity from its subjective being. The inference is substantive: linguistic and conceptual analysis is intended to disclose a real relation, rather than simply another way of describing a familiar phenomenon.

Formal Features of the Relation

Contrasting subjective being with identity, Elgat specifies its logic (Elgat, 2025c). They are not co-referential: the base is an object described objectively, the other a conscious state or nothing. Every bona fide object stands in the relation, though only for some is the second a conscious state, and which ones cannot be derived a priori from an object’s objective concept. Unlike identity, the relation is asymmetric, irreflexive, and intransitive; like identity, it is not causal, and neither relatum exists independently. Elgat holds the relation to be real, not merely conceptual.

The Metaphysical Difference

The difference between an entity and being that entity makes consciousness “meta-physical” in a literal sense: not part of the world of objects and properties, but what it is to be certain worldly entities (Elgat, 2027). Reality thus has objective and subjective dimensions; in Elgat’s formulation, being the objective is the subjective. Even so, because to be the physical is to undergo conscious states, the physical fixes consciousness, which does not come apart from it. Physical makeup, not functional organization alone, matters, so functionally identical systems of different materials might differ in experience; yet non-biological systems, including artificial ones, could be conscious (Elgat, 2025c).

Relation to Physicalism, Dualism, and Panpsychism

The ontology is physicalistic: all things in the world, and all their properties, are physical (Elgat, 2027). Yet the view departs from every identity theory, and reading Nagel’s biconditional as an identity claim would, for Elgat, be a misreading. It is not substance dualism: Descartes took the mind to be a kind of thing (Descartes, 1641), whereas consciousness here is what it is to be a thing. It is not property dualism, since consciousness is not related to the body by property attribution. Nor is it panpsychism, since consciousness is not intrinsic to matter and accompanies only certain complex systems; panpsychism, like other extant approaches, is said to overlook the metaphysical difference (Elgat, 2027). Elgat also rejects eliminativism and functionalism (Elgat, 2025c), presenting the view as a middle path that gives the physicalist a thoroughly physical world and the dualist the non-identity of consciousness with the physical.

The Hard Problem and a New Hard Problem

Because consciousness is not part of the world the sciences investigate, it cannot in principle be detected or fully explained by them, which, Elgat argues, is why the hard problem is insoluble. Chalmers’s asks why physical processing is accompanied by experience (Chalmers, 1995). Elgat argues that a purely physical explanation cannot bridge the metaphysical difference: even complete objective knowledge of an entity would not amount to undergoing, or fully capturing, its subjective being. This is his proposed explanation of the limits of reduction, rather than a demonstrated limitation of every possible science of consciousness (Elgat, 2025c, 2027).

The knowledge argument receives a parallel diagnosis: complete physical knowledge does not yield knowledge of experience, because being the physical differs from knowing it (Jackson, 1982; Elgat, 2025c).

What remains is a metaphysical rather than explanatory question: why being some physical things involves experience and being like something whereas being others apparently does not. Calling this a new hard problem identifies the outstanding explanatory demand; it does not answer it. Neuroscience can still investigate physical organization and its correlations with reported experience. What Elgat disputes is the sufficiency of those objective findings to capture phenomenality itself. He leaves this open as a mystery (Elgat, 2027).

Scope and Open Questions

Elgat allows that artificial entities could be conscious, while emphasizing that the framework alone cannot decide whether they are. Functional equivalence need not guarantee phenomenal equivalence, since physical constitution may matter to subjective being (Elgat, 2025c).

The central philosophical challenge is whether a distinct concept licenses a distinct metaphysical relation. Elgat also argues that subjective being is asymmetric, whereas identity is symmetric (Elgat, 2026). Whether this rules out identities between particular experiences and neural processes, rather than an identity between an organism and its experiences, requires further argument. Likewise, excluding both substances and ordinary properties requires a clearer account of what makes subjective being real and explanatory. The proposal supplies a distinctive account of consciousness’s relation to physical entities, but leaves unresolved the conditions for experience, its specific qualitative character, and the unity of an experiencing subject.

Assessment

Metaphysical subjectivism relocates the mind-body question from properties to a relation of being. Its central inference runs from the semantics of “to be” to a sui generis relation in reality; Elgat anticipates the charge of reading metaphysics off language, replying that parsimony would require an equally adequate thinner account (Elgat, 2025c). Holding consciousness fixed by the physical yet not physical, the view sits near non-reductive physicalism and dual-aspect theories while declining the property framework both typically employ.

References

Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200–219.

Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on first philosophy. In E. Anscombe & P. T. Geach (Eds. & Trans.), Descartes: Philosophical Writings (rev. ed.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.

Elgat, G. (2025a). On being some thing and the mind–body relation. Erkenntnis. Advance online publication, 23 September 2025.

Elgat, G. (2025b). Being something as a distinct concept of being. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy. Online first, 25 September 2025.

Elgat, G. (2025c). Being and consciousness: On a new way to conceive of the mind–body relation. Shortlisted essay, Berggruen Prize Essay Competition 2025. Landscape of Consciousness, https://loc.closertotruth.com/essay/being-and-consciousness-on-a-new-way-to-conceive-of-the-mind-body-relation.

Elgat, G. (2027). Metaphysics of the Conscious Mind: On Being a Brain. Studies in Brain and Mind. Cham: Springer. Forthcoming.

Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal qualia. The Philosophical Quarterly, 32(127), 127–136.

Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450. Reprinted in Mortal Questions (pp. 165–180). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.