Qualia and Phenomenal Character
Qualia are the introspectively accessible qualitative features of experience: the redness of red or the painfulness of pain.
Definition
Qualia are the intrinsic, introspectible qualitative properties of conscious experiences, often glossed as the what-it-is-like aspects of mental states; phenomenal character is the overall experiential feel constituted by such properties.
Scope
This topic covers the nature of qualia and phenomenal character, the knowledge argument and the explanatory challenge they pose for physicalism, representationalist accounts that reduce qualia to represented properties, and skeptical positions that deny qualia exist as traditionally conceived.
Core questions
- Are qualia intrinsic and non-representational, or fully captured by what experiences represent?
- Does the knowledge argument show that qualia are non-physical?
- Could two people have systematically inverted qualia?
- Do qualia, traditionally conceived, exist at all?
Key concepts
- qualia
- phenomenal character
- knowledge argument
- inverted spectrum
- representationalism
- ineffability
Key theories
- The knowledge argument
- A scientist who knows all the physical facts about color vision but has never seen color learns something new on first seeing red, suggesting there are non-physical facts about qualia.
- Quining qualia
- The traditional notion of intrinsic, ineffable, private qualia is incoherent, and there are no properties answering to it.
History
Nagel (1974) and Jackson (1982) made qualia central to anti-physicalist argument through the bat and Mary thought experiments. Representationalists such as Tye and Dretske subsequently sought to naturalize qualia as represented properties, while Dennett (1988) challenged the coherence of the concept itself.
Debates
- Physicalism and the knowledge argument
- Whether Mary gains new factual knowledge or only a new ability or mode of presentation, and what this implies for physicalism.
- Existence of qualia
- Whether intrinsic phenomenal qualities are real or whether the notion should be eliminated in favor of representational content.
Key figures
- Frank Jackson
- Thomas Nagel
- Daniel Dennett
- Michael Tye
Related topics
Seminal works
- nagel1974
- jackson1982
- dennett1988
Frequently asked questions
- What is an example of a quale?
- The particular reddish way a ripe tomato looks to you, or the specific hurtful feel of a headache, are standard examples of qualia.