significantly different. Brown comes down on the side of the biomarkers and
concludes that‘there was a cultural difference in what was appropriate to report on
the questionnaire, and therefore that the biological markers were a better repre-
sentation of the lack of a significant ethnic difference in stress levels.’Other
interpretations are surely possible here, but the bias in favor of the biomarkers (plus
the hypothesized cultural difference in propriety of reportage) is understandable.
Brown reports a second puzzle in comparing emic reports and biomarkers in two
groups, a group of Filipino Americans versus a group of European American nurses
and nurse’s aides. This particular case involved the stress reported while doing
household chores. The Filipino Americans reported being more stressed during
those chores, but the European Americans had higher stress-related biomarkers.
Brown conservatively reports this as mere‘ethnic differences.’Interestingly, most
of the Filipino Americans that over-reported their stress as compared to European
Americans were of the ethnic group that underreported their stress as compared to
the other Filipino American ethnicity in the previous study. It is surprising to note
that European Americans appear as the lowest of the three groups in their will-
ingness to report stress.
It is possible to imagine a number of alternative interpretations of (or solutions
to) the subjective–objective puzzles we have seen. For thefirst experiment dis-
cussed from Brown’s chapter, he had resolved the puzzle by hypothesizing that the
higher-stress-reporting ethnic group differed from the lower in what they regarded
asappropriate to report. An alternative might be that they differed in precisely what
personal experiencesconstituted stress. Perhaps the experiences that were stereo-
typically taken to instantiate stress differed from one language community to the
other. Or perhaps the two groups differed in whether the experience of stress was an
indication of a personal shortcoming or many other stories.
In my comments, I have tried to indicate that puzzles spring up likeflowers
when researchersfind linkages between subjective and objective aspects of human
experience. I certain do not intend the message to be hopeless; none of the puzzles I
discussed was insoluble. They simply require more research. Eventually, perhaps,
even philosophy’s hard problem will be resolved.
References
Brown, D. E. (2016). Stress biomarkers as an objective window on experience. In L. L. Sievert &
D. E. Brown (Eds.),Biological measures of human experience across the lifespan: Making
visible the invisible(pp. 117–141). New York: Springer.
Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness.Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 2, 200–219.
Churchland, P. (2013).Touching a nerve: The self as brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Dennett, D. C. (1991).Consciousness explained. New York: Little, Brown & Co.
Fisher, W. I., & Thurston, R. C. (2016). Hotflashes: Phenomenology and measurement. In L.
L. Sievert & D. E. Brown (Eds.),Biological measures of human experience across the
lifespan: Making visible the invisible(pp. 233–254). New York: Springer.
308 R. Amundson