Qualia biography, Qualia discography
Feelings and experiences vary widely.For example, I run my fingers
over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to
see bright purple, become extremely angry.There is something it is like for me to undergo
each state, some phenomenology that it has.In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that
there are qualia.Disagreement typically centers on which mental states
have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers,
and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the
head.The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely
because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of
consciousness.The second addresses the question of which mental
states have qualia.The remaining sections focus on functionalism and qualia, the
explanatory gap, qualia and introspection, representational theories of
qualia, and finally the issue of qualia and simple minds.Which Mental States Possess Qualia?Qualia and the Explanatory Gap
6.Representational Theories of Qualia
8.Which Creatures Undergo States with Qualia?There is something it is like for you
subjectively to undergo that experience.This difference is a difference
in what is often called "phenomenal character."The phenomenal
character of an experience is what it is like subjectively to undergo
the experience.Viewers of
the painting can apprehend not only its content (i.In the case of visual experiences, for example, it is frequently
supposed that there is a range of visual qualia, where these are taken
to be intrinsic features of visual experiences that (a) are accessible
to introspection, (b) can vary without any variation in the
representational contents of the experiences, (c) are mental
counterparts to some directly visible properties of objects (e.Philosophers who deny that there
are qualia sometimes have in mind qualia, as the term is used in this
more restricted sense (or a similar one).Thus, announcements by
philosophers who declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be
treated with some caution.One can agree that there are no qualia in
the last three senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia
in the standard first sense.So, I
shall take it for granted that there are qualia.Which Mental States Possess Qualia?The following would certainly be included on my own list.Perceptual experiences, for example, experiences of the sort involved
in seeing green, hearing loud trumpets, tasting liquorice, smelling
the sea air, handling a piece of fur.Felt moods, for example, feeling elated, depressed, calm,
bored, tense, miserable.For more here, see Haugeland 1985,
pp.Should we include any other mental states on the list?Galen
Strawson has claimed (1994) that there are such things as the
experience of understanding a sentence, the
experience of suddenly thinking of something, of suddenly
remembering something, and so on.On Strawson's view, then, some thoughts have qualia.This is also the position of Horgan and Tienson (2002).One response is to claim that the
phenomenal aspects of understanding derive largely from linguistic (or
verbal) images, which have the phonological and syntactic structure of
items in the subject's native language.These images frequently even
come complete with details of stress and intonation.As we read, it is
sometimes phenomenally as if we are speaking to ourselves.Likewise
when we consciously think about something without reading).We often
"hear" an inner voice.We may feel
tense, bored, excited, uneasy, angry.It is certainly true that in some cases, there is an associated
phenomenal character.Thus, in both cases,
there is a constituent experience that is the real bearer of the
relevant quale or qualia.Mary, so the story goes (Jackson 1982), is
imprisoned in a black and white room.As
time passes, Mary acquires more and more information about the physical
aspects of color and color vision.Indeed she comes to know all the physical facts
pertinent to everyday colors and color vision.Still, she wonders to herself: What do people in the outside world
experience when they see the various colors?She steps outside her room into a garden full of flowers."And that," she adds, looking down at the grass, "is what it is
like to experience green."Mary here seems to make some important discoveries.She seems to
find out things she did not know before.She had no knowledge of the subjective
qualities in themselves.This explanation is not available to the physicalist.If what it is
like for someone to experience red is one and the same as some physical
quality, then Mary already knows that while in her room.What, then, can the physicalist say?Mary acquires certain abilities, specifically in the
case of red, the ability to recognize red things by sight alone, the
ability to imagine a red expanse, the ability to remember the
experience of red.She does not come to know any new
information, any new facts about color, any new qualities.The Ability Hypothesis, as it is often called, is more resilient
than many philosophers suppose (see Tye 2000, Chapter One).But I certainly know what it is like to experience the hue while it is
present.Unfortunately, I lack the abilities Lewis cites and so does
Mary even after she leaves her cell.The Ability Hypothesis appears to be in trouble.An alternative
physicalist proposal is that Mary in her room lacks certain
phenomenal concepts, certain ways of thinking about or
mentally representing color experiences and colors.Even so, the qualities the new concepts pick out are
ones she knew in a different way in her room, for they are physical or
functional qualities like all others.In this sense, what I
think, when I think that Cicero was an orator, is not what I think when
I think that Tully was an orator.The one thought exercises the concept
Cicero; the other the concept Tully.In an ordinary, everyday sense, Mary's knowledge
increases.Some philosophers insist that the difference between the old and the
new concepts in this case is such that there must be a difference in
the world between the properties these concepts stand for or denote
(Jackson 1993, Chalmers 1996).Some of these properties Mary knew in
her cell; others she becomes cognizant of only upon her release.This
is necessary for Mary to make a real discovery: she must come to
associate with the experience of red new qualities she did not
associate with it in her room.There are proposals on offer (see, for example, Hill
1991, Loar 1990, Levine 2000, Sturgeon 2000, Perry 2001, Papineau
2002, Tye, 2003), but there is as yet no agreement as to the form such
a theory should take, and some philosophers contend that a proper
theory of phenomenal concepts shows that no satisfactory answer can be
given by the physicalist to the example of Mary's Room (Chalmers
1999).On this view,
physicalists who have appealed to phenomenal concepts to handle the
example of Mary's Room have been barking up the wrong tree (Tye
forthcoming).He has no phenomenal consciousness.Whatever physical stimulus
is applied, he will process the stimulus in the same way as I do, and
produce exactly the same behavioral responses.He differs from me only
with respect to experience.For him, there is nothing it is like to
stare at the waves or to sip wine.Rather the suggestion is that zombie replicas of this sort are
at least imaginable and hence metaphysically possible.Philosophical zombies pose a serious threat to any sort of
physicalist view of qualia.Pain, for
example, cannot be felt without pain.So, P has a modal
property S lacks, namely the property of possibly
occurring without S.Secondly, if a person microphysically identical with me, located in
an identical environment (both present and past), can lack any
phenomenal experiences, then facts pertaining to experience and
feeling, facts about qualia, are not necessarily fixed or determined by
the objective microphysical facts.For the
physicalist, whatever her stripe, must at least believe that the
microphysical facts determine all the facts, that any world that was
exactly like ours in all microphysical respects (down to the
smallest detail, to the position of every single boson, for example)
would have to be like our world in all respects (having identical
mountains, lakes, glaciers, trees, rocks, sentient creatures, cities,
and so on).Michael Tye (that I
am an impostor or someone misinformed about his past) even though,
given the actual facts, it is metaphysically impossible.Functionalism is the view that individual qualia have functional
natures, that the phenomenal character of, e.On this view
(Lycan 1987), qualia are multiply physically realizable.What
is crucial to what it is like is functional role, not underlying
hardware.There are two famous objections to functionalist theories of qualia:
the Inverted Spectrum and the Absent Qualia Hypothesis.For you and I are surely
representationally different here: for example, you have a visual
experience that represents red when I have one that represents green.And that representational difference brings with it a difference in our
patterns of causal interactions with external things (and thereby a
functional difference).This reply can be handled by the advocate of inverted qualia by
switching to a case in which we both have visual experiences with the
same representational contents on the same occasions while still
differing phenomenally.Whether such cases are really metaphysically
possible is open to dispute, however.Certainly, those philosophers who
are representationalists about qualia (see Section 7) would deny their
possibility.Indeed, it is not even clear that such cases are
conceptually possible (Harrison 1973, Hardin 1993, Tye 1995).There is a second computer
that does exactly the same thing.In this way, they are functionally
identical.There are all sorts of programs that will
multiply together two numbers.At one gross level the machines are functionally identical, but at
lower levels the machines can be functionally different.And that is why our experiences are phenomenally
different.Some philosophers will no doubt respond that it is still imaginable
that you and I are functionally identical in all relevant
respects yet phenomenally different.However, these philosophers have other severe
problems of their own.Given the causal closure of the physical, how can
qualia make any difference?The absent qualia hypothesis is the hypothesis that functional
duplicates of sentient creatures are possible, duplicates that entirely
lack qualia.Whether or not this system, if it were
ever actualized, would actually undergo any feelings and
experiences, it seems coherent to suppose that it might not.But if
this is a real metaphysical possibility, then qualia do not have
functional essences.The oddness of
this view derives, according to some functionalists (Lycan 1987), from
our relative size.But it does
not show that individual qualia are functional in nature.Thus one
could accept that absent qualia are impossible while also holding that
inverted spectra are possible (see, e.We also have an admittedly incomplete grasp of
what goes on objectively in the brain and the body.It is very hard to see how this
chasm in our understanding could ever be bridged.This is the famous "explanatory gap" for qualia (Levine 1983, 2000).What it shows rather is that some physical qualities or states are
irreducibly subjective entities (Searle 1992).On this view, it may turn out that qualia are physical, but we
currently have no clear conception as to how they could be (Nagel
1974).It is just that with the
concepts we have and the concepts we are capable of forming, we are
cognitively closed to a full, bridging explanation by the very
structure of our minds (McGinn 1991).Another view that has been gaining adherents of late is that there
is a real, unbridgeable gap, but it has no consequences for the nature
of consciousness and physicalist or functionalist theories thereof.On
this view, there is nothing in the gap that should lead us to any
bifurcation in the world between experiences and feelings on
the one hand and physical or functional phenomena on the other.There
aren't two sorts of natural phenomena: the irreducibly subjective and
the objective.These concepts mislead us into
thinking that the gap is deeper and more troublesome than it really
is.This response to the explanatory gap obviously bears
affinities to the second physicalist response I sketched in Section 3
to the Knowledge Argument.Unfortunately, if the appeal to phenomenal
concepts by the physicalist is misguided (as I now think), then it
cannot be used to handle the gap.There is no general agreement on how the gap is generated and what
it shows.Suppose you are facing a white wall, on
which you see a bright red, round patch of paint.Suppose you are
attending closely to the color and shape of the patch as well as the
background.Now turn your attention from what you see out there in the
world before you to your visual experience.Focus upon your
awareness of the patch as opposed to the patch of which
you are aware.Do you find yourself suddenly acquainted with new
qualities, qualities that are intrinsic to your visual experience in
the way that redness and roundness are qualities intrinsic to the patch
of paint?As you look at the patch, you are
aware of certain features out there in the world.When you try to examine it, you see right
though it, as it were, to the qualities you were experiencing all along
in being a subject of the experience, qualities your experience is
of.This point holds good even if you are hallucinating and there is no
real patch of paint on the wall before you.Still you have an
experience of there being a patch of paint out there with a
certain color and shape.The qualities of which we are aware are not qualities
of experiences at all, but rather qualities that, if they are
qualities of anything, are qualities of things in the world (as in the
case of perceptual experiences) or of regions of our bodies (as in the
case of bodily sensations).This is not to say that experiences do not
have qualia.The point is that qualia are not qualities of
experiences.This claim, which will be developed further in the next
section, is controversial and some philosophers deny outright the
thesis of transparency with respect to qualia (see Block
1991).Still it does not follow from this that we are not
introspectively acquainted with such properties.For we do know on the
basis of introspection what it is like to undergo a visual experience
of blue, say.Talk of the ways things look and feel is intensional.If I feel a pain in a leg, I
need not even have a leg.My pain might be a pain in a phantom limb.Facts such as these have been taken to provide further support for the
contention that some sort of representational account is appropriate
for qualia.If qualia are not qualities of experiences, as some philosophers
maintain on the basis of an appeal to introspection, and the only
qualities revealed in introspection are qualities represented by
experiences (qualities that, in the perceptual case, if they belong to
anything, belong to external things), the obvious representational
proposal is that qualia are really representational contents of
experiences into which the represented qualities enter.This would also
explain why we talk of experiences *having* qualia or *having* a
phenomenal character.Moreover, just as the meaning of a word is not a quality the word
possesses, so the phenomenal character of an experience is not a
quality the experience possesses.If qualia are representational contents, just which contents are
these?Obviously there can be differences in the representational
contents of experiences without any phenomenal difference.Likewise, if a child is
viewing the same item from the same vantage point, her experience will
likely be pretty similar to yours and mine too.One worry for this view is that if qualia are to be handled in terms
of representational content, then there had better be a content that
is shared by veridical visual experiences and their hallucinatory
counterparts.Hinton 1973, Martin 1997, Snowdon
1990).Perhaps veridical experiences have only singular contents and
hallucinatory experiences have gappy contents or no content at
all.An alternative possibility is that qualia are properties represented
by experiences.Some philosophers try to ground qualia in modes of representation
deployed by experiences within their representational contents.On one
version of this view, visual experiences not only represent the
external world but also represent themselves (for a recent collection
of essays elaboarating this view, see Kriegel and Williford 2006).For
example, my current visual experience of a red object not only
represents the object as red (this is my focal awareness) but also
represents itself as red (this is normally a kind of peripheral
awareness I have of my experience).This view is incompatible with the phenomenon of transparency (see
section 6) and it is very close to the classic qualiaphile view,
according to which when the subject introspects, she is aware of the
token experience and its phenomenal properties.The new twist is that
this awareness uses the token experience itself and one of its
contents.On this view, what a given experience represents is
metaphysically determined at least, in part, by factors in the
external environment.Thus, it is usually held, microphysical twins
can differ with respect to the representational contents of their
experiences.On wide representationalism, qualia (like meanings) ain't in the
head.Qualia are not
intrinsic qualities of inner ideas of which their subjects are
directly aware, qualities that are necessarily shared by internal
duplicates however different their environments may be.Representationalism, as I have presented it so far, is an identity
thesis with respect to qualia: qualia are supposedly one and the same
as certain representational contents.There is also a weaker version of representationalism, according
to which it is metaphysically necessary that experiences exactly alike
with respect to their representational contents are exactly alike with
respect to their qualia.Obviously, this supervenience thesis leaves
open the further question as to the essential nature of qualia.Christopher Peacocke adduces examples
of this sort in his 1983.Block 1990,
Shoemaker forthcoming), the Inverted Spectrum also supplies an example
that falls into this category.Another class is made up of problem
cases in which allegedly experiences have different representational
contents (of the relevant sort) but the same phenomenal character.Ned
Block's Inverted Earth example (1990) is of this type.But there are more mundane cases.Cases of the third sort, depending upon how they are
elucidated further, can pose a challenge to either strong or weaker
versions of representationalism.Inverted Earth is an imaginary
planet, on which things have complementary colors to the colors of
their counterparts on Earth.They think
that the sky is yellow, see that grass is red, etc.Indeed, in all respects
consistent with the alterations just described, Inverted Earth is as
much like Earth as possible.Inverted Earth,
where you are substituted for your Inverted Earth twin or doppelganger.What it is like for you when you see the sky or
anything else is just what it was like on earth.You will come to
believe that the sky is yellow, for example, just as they do.Similarly, you will come to have a visual experience that represents
the sky as yellow."Normal", after all, has both teleological and
nonteleological senses.The suggestion that tracking is teleological in character, at least
for the case of basic experiences, goes naturally with the plausible
view that states like feeling pain or having a visual sensation of red
are phylogenetically fixed (Dretske 1995).However, it encounters
serious difficulties with respect to the Swampman case mentioned above.On a cladistic conception of species, Swampman is not human.Indeed,
lacking any evolutionary history, he belongs to no species at all.Swampman has no experiences and no
qualia.This, for many philosophers, is very difficult to
believe.There are alternative replies available to the strong
representationalist (see Lycan 1996, Tye 2000) in connection with the
Inverted Earth problem.Which Creatures Undergo States with Qualia?Somewhere down
the phylogenetic scale phenomenal consciousness ceases.There is really no way of our knowing if spiders are subject
to states with qualia, as they spin their webs, or if fish undergo any
phenomenal experiences, as they swim about in the sea.Tropistic organisms, on this view, feel and experience
nothing.Consider, for example, the case of plants.There are many different
sorts of plant behavior.Some plants climb, others eat flies, still
others catapult out seeds.Many plants close their leaves at night.Seeds are ejected because of the hydration or dehydration of
the cell walls in seed pods.Leaves are closed because of water
movement in the stems and petioles of the leaves, itself induced by
changes in the temperature and light.If, for example, flies start to
carry on their wings some substance that sickens Venus Fly Traps for
several days afterwards, this will not have any effect on the plant
behavior with respect to flies.Plants do not learn from experience.Nor do they have
any desires.To be sure, we sometimes speak as if they do.We say that
the wilting daffodils are just begging to be watered.What we mean is that
the daffodils need water.Plants, on the representational view, are not subject to any qualia.Reasoning of the above sort can be used to make a case that even
though qualia do not extend to plants and paramecia, qualia are very
widely distributed in nature (see Tye 1997, 2000).Moreover, representationalism itself is a very controversial position.The general topic of the origins of qualia is not one on which
philosophers have said a great deal."Troubles with Functionalism," in Readings in
the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1, Ned Block, ed."Mental Paint and Mental Latex," Philosophical
Issues, 7, E."Qualia ain't in the Head," Nous.The Conscious Mind, Oxford: Oxford
University Press."Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap," in Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Alter, T."Quining Qualia," in Mind and Cognition,
W.Naturalizing the Mind, Cambridge, Mass:
The MIT Press, Bradford Books.Color for Philosophers, Cambridge :
Hackett.Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea,
Cambridge, Mass : The MIT Press, Bradford Books.Tienson, 2002 "The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality," in Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, D."Armchair Metaphysics," in Philosophy of
Mind, ed.Representational Approaches to Consciousness Cambridge, Mass: the MIT Press, Bradford Books.Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Conscious
Experience, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.Northridge : Ridgeview
Publishing Company."Phenomenal States (Revised Version)" in The
Nature of Consciousness, ed.Block, Flanagan, and Guzeldere,
Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press."Transparent experience and the availability of
qualia," in Consciousness: New Philosophical
Perspectives, Q.Consciousness, Cambridge, Mass : The MIT
Press."What is it like to be a Bat?""Sensory Awareness is not a Wide Physical Relation," Nous.Sense and Content, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness,
Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press."On the Persistence of Phenomenology," in
Conscious Experience, ed.The Island of the Colorblind (Alfred A.The Rediscovery of Mind Cambridge, Mass :
The MIT Press, Bradford Books.Mental Reality, Cambridge, Mass: the MIT
Press, Bradford Books.Ten Problems of Consciousness, Cambridge,
Mass: The MIT Press, Bradford Books.Theory of Phenomenal Concepts," in
Philosophy.Materialism without Phenomenal Concepts: A
New Perspective on the Major Puzzles of Consciousness, Cambridge,
Mass: The MIT Press, Bradford Books."Color and the Narrow Contents of Experience,"
Philosophical Topics.Bibliography on Consciousness and Qualia
(David
Chalmers, U.Arizona)
"Introduction to Part II: Color",
by David Chalmers,
from Towards a Science of Consciousness III: The Third Tucson
Discussions and Debates, edited by Stuart R.Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank Pat Hayes for bringing a corruption of
the text to our attention.Sony to showcase their best technology.Some Qualia products are brand new while others are upgraded and rebranded versions of regular Sony products."Heartless Sony puts down Aibo".You may give each page an identifying name, server, and channel on
the next lines.Qualia are the subjective sensory qualities
like "the redness of red" that accompany our perception.Qualia
symbolize the explanatory gap that exists between the subjective
qualities of our perception and the physical system that we call the
brain.Elucidating the neural basis of qualia is central in
understanding the principles of the "integrated parallelism" in
cortical information processing.The
study of qualia is important not only in understanding the neural
basis of our conscious mental experience but also in bridging the gap
between the "two cultures" (C.The Qualia Manifesto is a
mission statement that puts qualia at the center of scientific and
cultural movement in years to come.Sony Computer
Science Laboratory, Tokyo.The
Alternative Qualia Diary is an old
version of qualia journal.The
Central Dogma in cognitive neuroscience:
Neurons
make qualia make consciousness.Papers related to
Qualia
1.Response Selectivity, Neuron
Doctrine, and Mach's Principle.Towards a systematic turn in
Cognitive Neuroscience.Talk at the Keio University
Consciousness Symposium (2003.MP3
file
(after a brief introduction by Prof.Sony Computer Science
Laboratories
Takanawa Muse Bldg.
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