Qualia

Many definitions of qualia have been proposed. One of the simpler, broader definitions is: "The 'what it is like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc." Leibniz's passage in his Monadology in 1714 described the explanatory gap as follows:It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions. And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine. Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the term quale in philosophy in 1866, and in 1929 C.I. Lewis was the first to use the term "qualia" in its generally agreed upon modern sense. He identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. Another way of defining qualia is as "raw feels". A raw feel is a perception in and of itself, considered entirely in isolation from any effect it might have on behavior and behavioral disposition. In contrast, a cooked feel is that perception seen in terms of its effects. For example, the perception of the taste of wine is an ineffable, raw feel, while the behavioral reaction one has to the warmth or bitterness caused by that taste of wine would be a cooked feel. Cooked feels are not qualia. Arguably, the idea of hedonistic utilitarianism, where the ethical value of things is determined from the amount of subjective pleasure or pain they cause, is dependent on the existence of qualia. == Arguments regarding the existence of qualia ==

Since, by definition, qualia cannot be fully conveyed verbally, they also cannot be demonstrated directly in an argument – a more nuanced approach is needed. Arguments for qualia generally come in the form of thought experiments designed to lead one to the conclusion that qualia exist. Modern philosophy Inverted spectrum argument The inverted spectrum thought experiment, originally developed by John Locke, invites us to imagine two individuals who perceive colors differently: where one person sees red, the other sees green, and vice versa. Despite this difference in their subjective experiences, they behave and communicate as if their perceptions are the same, and no physical or behavioral test can reveal the inversion. Critics of functionalism, and of physicalism more broadly, argue that if we can imagine this happening without contradiction, it follows that we are imagining a change in a property that determines the way things look to us, but that has no physical basis. The idea that an inverted spectrum would be undetectable in practice is also open to criticism on more scientific grounds, by C. L. Hardin, among others. As Alex Byrne puts it: argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking "the bat's point of view", it would still be impossible "to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat." (''Townsend's big-eared bat pictured''). American philosopher Thomas Nagel's paper What Is it Like to Be a Bat? is often cited in debates about qualia, though it does not use the word "qualia". Nagel argues that consciousness has an essentially subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect. He states that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism." While few claim that such an entity, called a philosophical zombie, actually exists, the possibility is raised as a refutation of physicalism, and in defense of the hard problem of consciousness (the problem of accounting for, in physical terms, subjective, intrinsic, first-person experiences). The argument holds that it is conceivable for a person to have a duplicate, identical in every physical way, but lacking consciousness, called a "philosophical zombie." It would appear exactly the same as the original person, in both behavior and speech, just without subjective phenomenology. For these zombies to exist, qualia must not arise from any specific part or parts of the brain, for if it did there would be no difference between "normal humans" and philosophical zombies: The zombie/normal-human distinction can only be valid if subjective consciousness is separate from the physical brain. Former AI researcher Marvin Minsky sees the argument as circular. He says the proposition of something physically identical to a human but without subjective experience assumes that the physical characteristics of humans cannot produce consciousness, which is exactly what the argument claims to prove. In other words, it tries to prove consciousness is nonphysical by assuming consciousness is nonphysical. Explanatory gap argument Joseph Levine's paper Conceivability, Identity, and the Explanatory Gap takes up where the criticisms of conceivability arguments (such as the inverted spectrum argument and the zombie argument) leave off. Levine agrees that conceivability is a flawed means of establishing metaphysical realities, but points out that even if we come to the metaphysical conclusion that qualia are physical, there is still an explanatory problem. However, such an epistemological or explanatory problem might indicate an underlying metaphysical issue, as even if not proven by conceivability arguments, the non-physicality of qualia is far from ruled out. Knowledge argument In 1982, F. C. Jackson offered what he calls the "knowledge argument" for qualia. It goes as follows: Jackson claimed that she does. This thought experiment has two purposes. First, it is intended to show that qualia exist. If we accept the thought experiment, we believe that upon leaving the room Mary gains something: the knowledge of a particular thing that she did not possess before. That knowledge, Jackson argues, is knowledge of the quale that corresponds to the experience of seeing red, and it must thus be conceded that qualia are real properties, since there is a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not. The second purpose of this argument is to refute the physicalist account of the mind. Specifically, the knowledge argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical truths. The challenge posed to physicalism by the knowledge argument runs as follows: • While in the room, Mary has acquired all the physical facts there are about color sensations, including the sensation of seeing red. • When Mary exits the room and sees a ripe red tomato, she learns a new fact about the sensation of seeing red, namely its subjective character. • Therefore, there are non-physical facts about color sensations. [From 1, 2] • If there are non-physical facts about color sensations, then color sensations are non-physical events. • Therefore, color sensations are non-physical events. [From 3, 4] • If color sensations are non-physical events, then physicalism is false. • Therefore, physicalism is false. [From 5, 6] Some critics argue that Mary's confinement to a monochromatic environment wouldn't prevent her from forming color experiences or that she might deduce what colors look like from her complete physical knowledge. Others suggest that the thought experiment's conceivability might conflict with current or future scientific understanding of vision, but defenders maintain that its purpose is to challenge materialism conceptually, not scientifically. Early in his career Jackson argued that qualia are epiphenomenal, meaning they have no causal influence on the physical world. == Proponents of qualia ==

Analytic philosophy David Chalmers David Chalmers formulated the hard problem of consciousness, which raised the issue of qualia to a new level of importance and acceptance in the field of the philosophy of mind. In 1995, Chalmers argued for what he called "the principle of organizational invariance": if a system such as one of appropriately configured computer hardware reproduces the functional organization of the brain, it will also reproduce the qualia associated with the brain. Christian List Philosopher Christian List argues that mental phenomena are non-reducible to physical phenomena on the basis of first-person perspectives and the unanswerability of the vertiginous question. List also argues that the problem of other minds creates a "quadrilemma" for theories of consciousness, and that the four metaphysical claims of first-person realism, non-solipsism, non-fragmentation, and one-world cannot all be simultaneously true and at least one must be rejected, but any combination of three is internally consistent. List proposed a model called the "many-worlds theory of consciousness" as a possible alternative to solipsism. E. J. Lowe E. J. Lowe denies that indirect realism, wherein which we have access only to sensory features internal to the brain, necessarily implies a Cartesian dualism. He agrees with Bertrand Russell that the way images are received by our retinas, our "retinal images", are connected to "patterns of neural activity in the cortex". He defends a version of the causal theory of perception in which a causal path can be traced between the external object and the perception of it. He is careful to deny that we do any inferring from the sensory field; he believes this allows us to build an access to knowledge on that causal connection. In a later work he moves closer to the non-epistemic argument in that he postulates "a wholly non-conceptual component of perceptual experience". Maund extended his argument with reference to color. Moreland Perkins argues that qualia need not be identified as their objective sources: a smell, for instance, bears no direct resemblance to the molecular shape that gives rise to it, nor is a toothache actually in the tooth. Like Hobbes he views the process of sensing as complete in itself; as he puts it, it is not like "kicking a football" where an external object is required – it is more like "kicking a kick". This explanation evades the Homunculus Objection, as adhered to by Gilbert Ryle, among others. Ryle was unable to entertain this possibility, protesting that "in effect it explained the having of sensations as the not having of sensations". However, A. J. Ayer called this objection "very weak" as it betrayed an inability to detach the notion of eyes, or indeed any sensory organ, from the neural sensory experience. Howard Robinson and William Robinson Philosopher Howard Robinson argues against reducing sensory experiences to physical explanations. He defends the theory of sense data, maintaining that sensory experiences involve qualia. As a dualist, Robinson holds that mind and matter have distinct metaphysical natures. He maintains that the knowledge argument shows that physicalism fails to account for the qualitative nature of qualia. Similarly, William Robinson, in Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness, advocates for dualism and rejects the idea of reducing phenomenal experience to neural processes. His theory of Qualitative Event Realism proposes that phenomenal consciousness consists of immaterial events caused by brain activity but not reducible to it. He seeks to conciliate dualism with scientific methodology, aiming for a future unified theory that respects both phenomenal qualities and scientific explanations. Neuroscience Gerald Edelman In his book Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, neuroscientist and Nobel laureate in Physiology / Medicine Gerald Edelman says "that [it] definitely does not seem feasible [...] to ignore completely the reality of qualia". As he sees it, it is impossible to explain color, sensations, and similar experiences "to a 'qualia-free' observer" by description alone. Edelman argues that proposing such a theory of consciousness is proposing "a theory based on a kind of God's-eye view of consciousness" and that any scientific theory requires the assumption "that observers have sensation as well as perception." He concludes by stating that assuming a theory that requires neither could exist "is to indulge the errors of theories that attempt syntactical formulations mapped onto objectivist interpretations – theories that ignore embodiment as a source of meaning. There is no qualia-free scientific observer." Antonio Damasio Neurologist Antonio Damasio, in his book The Feeling Of What Happens, defines qualia as "the simple sensory qualities to be found in the blueness of the sky or the tone of sound produced by a cello, and the fundamental components of the images in the movie metaphor are thus made of qualia." Damasio points out that "in all likelihood, I will never know your thoughts unless you tell me, and you will never know mine until I tell you." The reason he gives for this is that "the mind and its consciousness are first and foremost private phenomena" that are personal, private experiences that should be investigated as such. While he believes that trying to study these experiences "by the study of their behavioral correlates is wrong," he does think they can be studied as "the idea that subjective experiences are not scientifically accessible is nonsense." In his view, the way to do this is for "enough observers [to] undertake rigorous observations according to the same experimental design; and [...] that those observations be checked for consistency across observers and that they yield some form of measurement." He also thinks that "subjective observations [...] can inspire objective experiments" and "be explained in terms of the available scientific knowledge". In his mind: Rodolfo Llinás Neurologist Rodolfo Llinás states in his book I of the Vortex that qualia, from a neurological perspective, are essential for an organism's survival and played a key role in the evolution of nervous systems, including in simple creatures like ants or cockroaches. Llinás contends that qualia are a product of neuronal oscillation and cites anesthesia experiments, showing that qualia can be "turned off" by altering brain oscillations while other connections remain intact. Vilayanur Ramachandran Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein proposed three laws of qualia (with a fourth later added), which are "functional criteria that need to be fulfilled in order for certain neural events to be associated with qualia" by philosophers of the mind: These authors approach qualia from an empirical perspective and not as a logical or philosophical problem. They wonder how qualia evolved, and in doing so consider a skeptical point of view in which, since the objective scientific description of the world is complete without qualia, it is nonsense to ask why they evolved or what they are for. However, they decide against this skeptical view. Based on the parsimony principle of Occam's razor, one could accept epiphenomenalism and deny qualia, since they are not necessary for a description of the functioning of the brain. However, they argue that Occam's razor is not useful for scientific discovery. For example, the discovery of relativity in physics was not the product of accepting Occam's razor but rather of rejecting it and asking the question of whether a deeper generalization, not required by the currently available data, was true and would allow for unexpected predictions. Most scientific discoveries arise, these authors argue, from ontologically promiscuous conjectures that do not come from current data. The authors then point out that skepticism might be justified in the philosophical field, but that science is the wrong place for skepticism, such as asking if "your red is not my green" or if we can be logically certain that we are not dreaming. Science, these authors assert, deals with what is probably true, beyond reasonable doubt, not with what can be known with complete and absolute certainty. The authors say that most neuroscientists and even most psychologists dispute the very existence of the problem of qualia. == Critics of qualia ==

Daniel Dennett In Consciousness Explained and Quining Qualia, Daniel Dennett argues against qualia by claiming that the "knowledge argument" breaks down if one tries to apply it practically. In a series of thought experiments, which he calls intuition pumps, he brings qualia into the world of neurosurgery, clinical psychology, and psychological experimentation. He argues that, once the concept of qualia is so imported, we can either make no use of it, or the questions introduced by it are unanswerable precisely because of the special properties defining qualia. This may mean that there would be asymmetric outcomes between altering the mechanism of perception of qualia and altering the memory of that qualia. If the diabolical neurosurgery altered the immediate perception of qualia, the inversion might not be noticed directly, since the brain zones which re-process the memories would invert the remembered qualia. On the other hand, alteration of the qualia memories themselves would be processed without inversion, and thus you would perceive them as an inversion. Thus, you might know immediately if memory of your qualia had been altered, but might not know if immediate qualia were inverted or whether the diabolical neurosurgeons had done a sham procedure. Dennett argues that the misleading aspect of the story is that Mary is supposed to not merely be knowledgeable about color but to actually know all the physical facts about it, which would be a knowledge so deep that it exceeds what can be imagined, and twists our intuitions. If Mary really does know everything physical there is to know about the experience of color, then this effectively grants her almost omniscient powers of knowledge. Using this, she will be able to deduce her own reaction, and figure out exactly what the experience of seeing red will feel like. Paul Churchland According to Paul Churchland, Mary might be considered akin to a feral child who suffered extreme isolation during childhood. Technically when Mary leaves the room, she would not have the ability to see or know what the color red is, as a brain has to learn and develop how to see colors. Patterns need to form in the V4 section of the visual cortex, which occurs via exposure to wavelengths of light. This exposure needs to occur during the early stages of brain development. In Mary's case, the identifications and categorizations of color will only be in respect to representations of black and white. Gary Drescher In his book Good and Real, Under this interpretation of qualia, Drescher responds to the Mary thought experiment by noting that "knowing about red-related cognitive structures and the dispositions they engender – even if that knowledge were implausibly detailed and exhaustive – would not necessarily give someone who lacks prior color-experience the slightest clue whether the card now being shown is of the color called red." However, this does not imply that our experience of red is non-mechanical, as "gensyms are a routine feature of computer-programming languages". Marvin Minsky Artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky thinks the problems posed by qualia are essentially issues of complexity, or rather of mistaking complexity for simplicity. David Papineau David Papineau is a defender of the a posteriori physicalist solution to the mind–body problem. He is one of the originators of the teleosemantic theory of mental representation, a solution to the problem of intentionality which derives the intentional content of our beliefs from their biological purpose. In the book Thinking about Consciousness, he offers the causal argument as what he considers the best argument for physicalism: • Conscious mental occurrences have physical effects • All physical effects are fully caused by purely physical prior histories • The physical effects of conscious states are not always overdetermined by distinct causes. Physicalism follows. Although Papineau recognises that it is possible to reject these premisses, he claims that to do so leads to empirically implausible conclusions. Papineau's book The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience has been critiqued by philosopher Benj Hellie. Hellie instead argues in favor of a theory with the existence of qualia, and that all alternatives to qualia fail. Richard Rorty In Chapter 1 of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty suggests that the concept of a quale is the result of a reification fallacy. In attempting to answer the question "why is the phenomenal immaterial?", he notes that there is nothing to suggest that the phenomenal and the physical are anything more than two different ways of talking about the states or properties of people. Even if the appearance/reality distinction does not exist for phenomenal properties, the fact that self-attributions of such properties are typically considered incorrigible could simply reflect an epistemic distinction or a linguistic convention. Scruton poses a potential line of criticism to this, which is that while Wittgenstein's private language argument does disprove the concept of reference to qualia, or the idea that we can talk, even to ourselves, of their nature; it does not disprove their existence altogether. Scruton believes that this is a valid criticism, and this is why he stops short of actually saying that qualia do not exist, and instead merely suggests that we should abandon the concept. However, he quotes Wittgenstein in response: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." From this he concludes "that there are no such qualities of experiences. They are qualities of external surfaces (and volumes and films), if they are qualities of anything." Thus he believes we can take our experiences at face value since there is no fear of losing contact with the realness of physical objects. In Tye's thought there is no question of qualia without information being contained within them; it is always "an awareness that" and always "representational". He characterizes the perception of children as a misperception of referents that are undoubtedly as present for them as they are for grown-ups. As he puts it, they may not know that "the house is dilapidated", but there is no doubt about their seeing the house. After-images are dismissed as presenting no problem for the transparency theory because, as he puts it, after-images being illusory, there is nothing that one sees. Tye proposes that phenomenal experience has five basic elements, for which he has coined the acronym PANIC – Poised, Abstract, Nonconceptual, Intentional Content. • "Poised" - the phenomenal experience is always present to the understanding, whether or not the agent is able to apply a concept to it. • "Abstract" - it is unclear whether you are in touch with a concrete object (for example, someone may feel a pain in an amputated limb). • "Nonconceptual" - phenomenon can exist although one does not have the concept by which to recognize it. • "Intentional (Content)" - it represents something, whether or not the observer is taking advantage of that fact. Tye adds that the experience is like a map in that, in most cases, it goes beyond the shapes, edges, volumes, etc. in the world – you may not be reading the a map but, as with an actual map there is a reliable match with what it is mapping. This is why Tye calls his theory representationalism, makes it plain that Tye believes that he has retained a direct contact with what produces the phenomena and is therefore not hampered by any trace of a "veil of perception".{{multiref2 == See also ==