Abstract: Introduction Qualia and causation Do qualia exist? Qualia and cognitive science Qualia and other mental phenomena Knowledge of qualia Are qualia irreducible?

Abstract: Qualia include the ways things look, sound and smell, the way it feels to have a pain; more generally, what it's like to have mental states. Qualia are experiential properties of sensations, feelings, perceptions and, in my view, thoughts and desires as well. But, so defined, who could deny that qualia exist? Yet, the existence of qualia is controversial. Here is what is controversial: whether qualia, so defined, can be characterized in intentional, functional or purely cognitive terms. Opponents of qualia think that the content of experience is intentional content (like the content of thought), or that experiences are functionally definable, or that to have a qualitative state is to have a state that is monitored in a certain way or accompanied by a thought to the effect that I have that state. If we include the idea that experiential properties are not intentional or functional or purely cognitive in the definition of `qualia', then it is controversial whether there are qualia

Abstract: forthcoming in a volume of Philosophical Perspectives edited by John Hawthorne. In the “Notes for Lectures on “Private Experience” and “Sense Data”" (published in 1968), Wittgenstein endorsed one kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis and rejected another. This paper argues that the kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis that Wittgenstein endorsed (the “innocuous” inverted spectrum hypothesis) is the thin end of the wedge that precludes a Wittgensteinian critique of the kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis he rejected (the “dangerous” kind). I will attempt to explicate the difference between the innocuous and dangerous scenarios, to give arguments in favor of the coherence of the dangerous scenario, and to show that the standard arguments to the effect that the dangerous scenario is impossible are flawed or ineffective against the version of the dangerous scenario whose coherence I will be advocating. I will also agree with what I think is Wittgenstein’s position that the kind of inverted spectrum hypothesis he rejected lets qualia in the door, where qualia are (for the purposes of this paper) qualities of experiential states whose phenomenal character cannot be expressed in natural language. Further, I will argue that acknowledging the coherence of the innocuous inverted spectrum commits Wittgenstein to the coherence of the dangerous inverted spectrum, thereby undermining Wittgenstein’s deepest views about the mind. In other work, I have used the inverted spectrum hypothesis as an argument against functionalism and representationism, but here the focus is on its role in arguing for the possibility of qualia

Abstract:   Can psychology explain the qualitative content of experience? A persistent philosophical objection to that discipline is that it cannot. Qualitative states or qualia are argued to have characteristics which cannot be explained in terms of their relationships to other psychological states, stimuli, and behavior. Since psychology is confined to descriptions of such relationships, it seems that psychology cannot explain qualia.A paradigm case of qualia is provided by simultaneous color contrast effects, in which (for example) a neutral grey patch is made to look reddish by being enclosed in a green surround. If the qualia based objections are sound, psychology ought not to be able to explain simultaneous color contrast; but psychology at least seems to be able quite successfully to explain those effects. This paper analyzes the logic of psychological explanations of simultaneous color contrast effects, and the import of various qualia based objections to those explanations. I argue that the qualia objections do not demonstrate any explanatory inadequacy in existing psychological explanations of looks. Psychology succeeds in explaining at least some qualia. In a more positive vein, I argue that once the structure of such explanations is sufficiently understood, a place can be found for qualia within the emerging scientific account of color perception. The resulting account can deal with many of the traditional perplexities over qualia

Abstract: The mind-body problem in contemporary philosophy has two parts: the problem of mental causation and the problem of consciousness. These two parts are not unrelated; in fact, it can be helpful to see them as two horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, the causal interaction between mental and physical phenomena seems to require that all causally efficacious mental phenomena are physical; but on the other hand, the phenomenon of consciousness seems to entail that not all mental phenomena are physical.2 One may avoid this dilemma by adopting an epiphenomenalist view of consciousness, of course; but there is little independent reason for believing such a view. Rejecting epiphenomenalism, then, leaves contemporary philosophers with their problem: mental causation inclines them towards physicalism, while consciousness inclines them towards dualism

Abstract: Antireductionist philosophers have argued for higher-order classifications of qualia that locate consciousness outside the scope of conventional scientific explanations, viz., by classifying qualia as intrinsic, basic, or subjective properties, antireductionists distinguish qualia from extrinsic, complex, and objective properties, and thereby distinguish conscious mental states from the possible explananda of functionalist or physicalist explanations. I argue that, in important respects, qualia are intrinsic, basic, and subjective properties of conscious mental states, and that, contrary to antireductionists' suggestions, these higher-order classifications are compatible with qualia reduction. I demonstrate this compatibility by examining the putative higher-order properties of qualia and comparing them to the higher-order properties characteristic of connectionist models of cognitive processes. I contend that the higher-order properties characteristic of connectionist networks approximate (in intertheoretic terms) the putative higher-order properties of qualia sufficiently well to conclude that qualia reductionism can (1) accommodate claims that qualia are intrinsic, basic, and subjective properties, and (2) explain the motivating intuitions for those claims generated by inverted, absent, and alien qualia thought experiments. In this way I argue that (approximate versions of) the putative higher-order classifications of qualia not only fail to defeat qualia reduction but, ironically, turn out to support it

Abstract: The standard view of Cartesian sensations (SV) is that they present themselves as purely qualitative features of experience (or qualia). Accordingly, Descartes’ view would be that in perceiving the color red, for example, we are merely experiencing the subjective feel of redness rather than seeming to perceive a property of bodies. In this paper, I establish that the argument and textual evidence offered in support of SV fail to prove that Descartes held this view. Indeed, I will argue that there are textual and theoretical reasons for believing that Descartes held the negation of SV. Qualia aren't Descartes’ legacy

Abstract: Whether or not qualia are ways things seem, the view that qualia have the properties typically attributed to them is unjustified. Ways things seem do not have many of the properties commonly attributed to them. For example, inverted ways things seem are impossible. If ways things seem do not have the features commonly attributed to them, and qualia do have those same features, this looks like good reason to distinguish the two. But if your reasons for believing that qualia have the features are epistemically on a par with reasons for believing that ways things seem have the features, and you know that ways things seem do not have the features, then those reasons cannot justify your belief that qualia have the features. I argue that the reasons are epistemically on a par in this way

Abstract: This paper argues for the reality of qualia as aspects of phenomenal experience. The argument focuses on color vision and develops a dispositionalist, subjectivist account of what it is for an object to be colored. I consider objections to dispositionalism on epistemological, metaphysical, and ‚ordinary’ grounds. I␣distinguish my representative realism from sense-data theories and from recent ‚representational’ or ‚intentional’ theories, and I argue that there is no good reason to adopt a physicalist stance that denies the reality of qualia as phenomenally available intentional contents in Brentano’s original sense of ‚intentionality’

Abstract: In this paper I offer an explanation of the ineffability (linguistic inexpressibility) of sensory experiences. My explanation is put in terms of computational functionalism and standard externalist theories of representational content. As I will argue, many or most sensory experiences are representational states without constituent structure. This property determines both the representational function these states can serve and the information that can be extracted from them when they are processed. Sensory experiences can indicate the presence of certain external states of affairs but they cannot convey any more information about them than that. So, format- or code-conversion mechanisms that link different systems of representation (linguistic and perceptual) to each other will fail to extract any relevant information from sensory experiences that could be coded in language. They only way to establish specific roles for sensory experiences in communication and the organization of behavior is to attach to them, by associative links, words, or other behavioral responses. If a sensory experience has no linguistic label associated to it in a particular subject, then no linguistic description can token, or activate, that state in the subject. In other words, no linguistic description can cause a subject to undergo an unlabeled perceptual state. On the contrary, complex, or syntactically structured perceptual states can be built up, on the basis of descriptions, by mechanisms of constructive imagination (conceived here as one sort of format conversion). It is this difference between complex and unstructured representational states that gives us an understanding of the phenomenon we call the ineffability of qualia

Abstract: Recent characterizations of the qualia debate construe the point at issue in terms of the existence of intrinsic properties of experience. I argue that such characterizations mistakenly ignore the epistemic dimension of the notion of qualia. Using Ned Block’s distinction between representationism and phenomenism as my point of departure (Block 1996), I attempt to bring the epistemic constraint to the forefront and thereby clarify what is involved in a commitment to qualia

Abstract: Despite such widespread acclaim, there are some influential theater critics who have panned Qualia!–most recently and vehemently, Dan Dennett. In his review, "Quining Qualia," he laments several characters of Qualia! as unrealistic and even kitschy. This literary criticism begets social criticism in Dennett’s Consciousness Explained , where he puts the blame for Qualia! and similar productions on any "cartoonsian" theater that promotes them, and ultimately on the rather imperceptive "audience" itself. My aim here is to respond to these charges. I first summarize the issues at stake, with brief excerpts from Qualia!’s playbill

Abstract: Zoltan Jakab has presented an interesting conceptual analysis of the ineffability of qualia in a functionalist and classical cognitivist framework. But he does not want to commit himself to a certain metaphysical thesis on the ontology of consciousness or qualia. We believe that his strategy has yielded a number of highly relevant and interesting insights, but still suffers from some minor inconsistencies and a certain lack of phenomenological and empirical plausibility. This may be due to some background assumptions relating to the theory of mental representation employed. Jakab’s starting assumption is that there is no linguistic description of a given experience such that understanding the description would result in someone who has never had the experience being described undergoing an experience of that type. (In terms of the well-known Mary case: No description could reveal what colors are like to Mary.) This is what Jakab means by the ineffability of qualia. And this is Jakab's explanation: Understanding in the standard sense involves our linguistic- conceptual abilities; but our linguistic-conceptual abilities are not involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; so they cannot deliver knowledge by acquaintance, which means linguistic descriptions of sensory experiences cannot result in someone who understands the description undergoing the experience being described. (We do not agree with the assumption that our linguistic- conceptual abilities are not at all involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; such processes can be involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences, but they need not be the only thing involved in undergoing simple sensory experiences; in undergoing simple sensory experiences something else is involved which cannot be captured by descriptions. The crucial point is that descriptions do not give us knowledge by acquaintance.) Jakab argues that the ineffability of qualia results from representational and computational

Abstract: In this paper I explore the logical relationship between the question of the reality of qualia and the problem of universals. I argue that nominalism is inconsistent with the existence of qualia, and that realism either implies or makes plausible the existence of qualia. Thus, one's position on the existence of qualia is strongly constrained by one's answer to the problem of universals