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- Drakon Nikolinakos (2000). Dennett on Qualia: The Case of Pain, Smell and Taste. Philosophical Psychology 13 (4):505 – 522.Dennett has maintained that a careful examination of our intuitive notion of qualia reveals that it is a confused notion, that it is advisable to accept that experience does not have the properties designated by it and that it is best to eliminate it. Because most scientists share this notion of qualia, the major line of attack of his project becomes that of raising objections against the ability of science to answer some basic questions about qualia. I try to show that science appeals to qualia and that it in fact adheres to a notion of qualia different from the one that Dennett has attributed to it. It is argued that qualia are amenable to scientific investigation and that this is the reason why science contributes toward the clarification of the notion of qualia. I also try to show that Dennett's skepticism about the abilities of science in answering questions posited by one of his thought experiments is unwarranted. I conclude that we need not accept Dennett's eliminativism about qualia.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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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.org | Scholar | More options ... In his recent (2005) book "Sweet Dreams: philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness," Dennett renews his attack on a philosophical notion of qualia, the success of which attack is required if his brand of Functionalism is to survive. He also articulates once again what he takes to be essential to his notion of consciousness. I shall argue that his new, central argument against the philosophical concept of qualia fails. In passing I point out a difficulty that David Rosenthal's "higher-order thought" theory of consciousness also faces in accounting for qualia. I then contrast Dennett's newest account of consciousness with interestingly different conceptions by contemporary neuro-scientists, and I suggest that philosophers should take the recent suggestions by neuro-scientists more seriously as a subject for philosophical investigation.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Owen Flanagan's arguments concerning qualia constitute an intermediate position between Dennett's “disqualification” of qualia and the thesis that qualia represent an insurmountable obstacle to constructive naturalism. This middle ground is potentially attractive, but it is shown to have serious problems. This is brought out via consideration of several classic areas of dispute connected with qualia, including the inverted spectrum, Frank Jackson's thought experiment, Hindsight, and epiphenomenalism. An attempt is made to formulate the basis for a less vulnerable variant on the “middle ground”.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper investigates the status of the purported explanatory gap between pain phenomena and natural science, when the “gap” is thought to exist due to the special properties of experience designated by “qualia” or “the pain quale” in the case of pain experiences. The paper questions the existence of such a property in the case of pain by: (1) looking at the history of the conception of pain; (2) raising questions from empirical research and theory in the psychology of pain; (3) considering evidence from the neurophysiological systems of pain; (4) investigating the possible biological role or roles of pain; and (5) considering methodological questions of the comparable status of the results of the sciences of pain in contrast to certain intuitions underpinning “the explanatory gap” in the case of pain. Skepticism concerning the crucial underlying intuitions seems justified by these considerations.
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| | Other links: informaworld.com tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Dennett (1988) provides a much discussed argument for the nonexistence of qualia, as conceived by philosophers like Block, Chalmers, Loar and Searle. My goal in this paper is to vindicate Dennett's argument, construed in a certain way. The argument supports the claim that qualia are constitutively representational. Against Block and Chalmers, the argument rejects the detachment of phenomenal from information-processing consciousness; and against Loar and Searle, it defends the claim that qualia are constitutively representational in an externalist understanding of this. The core of the argument is contained in section 3. In the first part, I contrast a minimal conception of qualia, relative to which their existence is not under dispute, with the sort of view to which I will object. In the second part I set the stage by presenting the facts about (minimal) qualia on which a Dennett-like argument can be based.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... If we are to preserve qualia, one possibility is to take the current academic, philosophical, and theoretical notion less seriously and current natural science and some pre-theoretical intuitions about qualia more seriously. Dennett (1997) is instrumental in showing how ideas of the intrinsicalness and privacy of qualia are misguided and those of ineffability and immediacy misinterpreted. However, by combining ideas of non-mechanicalness used in contemporary natural science with the pre-theoretical idea that qualia are special because they are unique, we get a notion of qualia that is acceptable to naturalistic philosophy. The notion of unique qualia is not opposed to the idea that some of the characterizations of qualia have to be qualified. It is the folk-philosophical, academic, notions of theoreticity and conceptuality that have to be modified.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... 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.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: cogprints.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: cogprints.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Drakon Nikolinakos, Dennett on qualia: The case of pain, smell and taste
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