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- James John (2010). Against Qualia Theory. Philosophical Studies 147 (3).Representational theorists identify experiences’ phenomenal properties with their representational properties. Qualia theorists reject this identity, insisting that experiences’ phenomenal properties can come apart from and completely outrun their representational properties. Qualia theorists account for phenomenal properties in terms of “qualia,” intrinsic mental properties they allege experiences to instantiate. The debate between representational theorists and qualia theorists has focused on whether phenomenal properties really can come apart from and completely outrun representational properties. As a result, qualia theorists have failed (1) to explain how experiences owe their phenomenal properties to their instantiation of qualia and (2) to clarify the nature of subjects’ epistemic access to qualia. I survey qualia theorists’ options for dealing with each issue and find them all wanting.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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Phenomenal knowledge usually comes from experience. But it need not. For example, one could know what it’s like to see red without seeing red—indeed, without having any color experiences. Daniel Dennett (2007) and Pete Mandik (forthcoming) argue that this and related considerations undermine the knowledge argument against physicalism. If they are right, then this is not only a problem for anti‐physicalists. Their argument threatens to undermine any version of phenomenal realism— the view that there are phenomenal properties, or qualia, that (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: consc.net cogprints.org cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk u.arizona.edu cogprints.soton.ac.uk citebase.eprints.org | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: consc.net cogprints.org cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk u.arizona.edu cogprints.soton.ac.uk citebase.eprints.org | Scholar | More.. Sydney Shoemaker offers an account of color perception that attempts to do justice, within a functionalist framework, to the commonsense view that colors are properties of ordinary objects, to the existence of qualia, and to the possibility of spectrum inversions. Shoemaker posits phenomenal properties as dispositional properties of colored objects that explain how there can be intersubjective variation in the experience of a particular color. I argue that his account does not in fact allow for the description of a spectrum (...)
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| | Other links: springerlink.com | Scholar | More.. 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 (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: taylorandfrancis.metapress.com informaworld.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: taylorandfrancis.metapress.com informaworld.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. 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 (...)
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: links.jstor.org jstor.org | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: links.jstor.org jstor.org | Scholar | More.. 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.
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| Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: claremontmckenna.edu phil-rlst.academic.claremontmckenna.edu springerlink.com kluweronline.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More..
| | Other links: claremontmckenna.edu phil-rlst.academic.claremontmckenna.edu springerlink.com kluweronline.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. This essay is a defence of the traditional notion of qualia - as properties of consciousness that are ineffable, intrinsic, private and immediately apprehensible - against the eliminative attempts of Daniel Dennett in the influential article "Quining Qualia." It is suggested that a thorough exploration of the concept is an appropriate starting point for future explanations of qualia, and the essay ends with some possible explanations of the four traditional properties.
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| | Other links: cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk citebase.eprints.org lu-research.lub.lu.se cogprints.org | Scholar | More.. 
