Referee Report for: On the primacy and irreducible nature of first-person versus third-person information [Open Peer Review]

Abstract

In the present opinion article (Tressoldi et al., 2017), the authors firstly present support for the claim that some first-person accounts (1PAs) cannot be reduced to third-person neural-and psychophysiological correlates accounts (3PAs). Secondly, they state that the 1 PAs contents are the only information to reckon when it is necessary to analyze qualia contents (e.g., emotions, beliefs, reality interpretations, quality of life and health) and their effects on behavior and the brain activity. Thirdly, according to the authors, even a complete description of the brain and psychophysiological correlates of these 1PAs does not add any further information about their contents and characteristics. Tressoldi et al. (2017) make several challenging and highly interesting claims; moreover, they give a state of the art overview of the 1PAs and 3PAs results and research limitations so far. Last but not least, their article stimulates further discussion on how to best invest research money in order to make progress in this research field, all in all, we recommend publication, but we have several major and minor points that the authors should further address.