Evolving Across the Explanatory Gap

I attempt to narrow and reshape Levine's "explanatory gap" between mental and physical, by means of a dual use of the concept of subjectivity. First, subjectivity and the associated notion of "point of view" are helpful in defusing arguments against materialism. Second, subjectivity is an explicable evolutionary product; I discuss a series of events in the history of life that bear on the origins of subjective experience.