Where it sits
One of the few philosophical disputes where serious people still disagree about whether the thing exists.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Qualia | Phenomenal consciousness |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Specific properties | The general fact |
| Denied by eliminativists | Yes | More rarely |
| Named | 1929 | 1990s |
| Requires the four properties | On the standard view | No |
Nested, not synonymous. Qualia are the specific felt properties; phenomenal consciousness is the general there-is-something-it-is-like-ness. You can accept the second and still deny that anything matches the four-part standard conception of the first.
What it doesn't mean
Peirce brought 'quale' in only in 1866, and the modern plural sense dates to Lewis in 1929 — later than psychoanalysis, later than general relativity. The problem is old; the word is not.
Dennett's 1988 paper 'Quining Qualia' argues there are no properties that meet the standard conception — that conception being intrinsic, ineffable, private, and directly apprehensible in consciousness. His claim is not that experience is unreal but that nothing has all four of those properties at once.
What it really means
The word is a question with a Latin ending.
Quale means of what kind — an interrogative, the same grammatical animal as which. Its plural, qualia, names the properties that answer what is it like? without ever supplying an answer. The term is the question, dressed as a noun.
Which is why the debate does not close.
What qualia are meant to pick out is the residue. Describe a mental state completely in functional terms — what causes it, what it causes, how it is discriminated, reported, remembered — and something appears to be left over: the redness of the red. The particular quality of this ache rather than an ache in general. The thing that would be missing if a system did everything you do and felt nothing.
The word is much younger than the problem. C. S. Peirce introduced the singular quale in 1866; the modern plural sense dates to C. I. Lewis in 1929 — later than psychoanalysis, later than general relativity. The question is ancient. The vocabulary is roughly a century old.
And the most important thing to know about it is that serious philosophers deny it refers to anything.
In 1988, Daniel Dennett published Quining Qualia — quining being his own coinage for denying the existence of something that seems obvious. His argument is precise, and routinely misreported as Dennett says you're not conscious.
What he actually attacks is the standard conception, which holds qualia to be four things at once: intrinsic, ineffable, private, and directly apprehensible in consciousness. His claim is that nothing has all four — that the concept is a bundle of properties which come apart under examination, so that the thing everyone is certain about turns out to have no stable referent.
You can hold that and still hold that there is something it is like to be you.
Which makes qualia one of the rare disputes where the disagreement is not about explaining the phenomenon but about whether it has been coherently described — and where the strongest evidence anyone can offer is the thing they cannot show anybody else.
The thought experiments behind the debate, Mary's room and the philosophical zombie, are set out in qualia explained in the Philosophy world.
Where it comes from
Latin — of what kind, what sort (plural qualia)
The word is a bare INTERROGATIVE. It names the question — what is it like? — rather than answering it, which is exactly why the debate never closes.
- 1866
C. S. Peirce introduces the singular 'quale' into philosophy.
- 1929
C. I. Lewis uses 'qualia' for the properties of sense-data in Mind and the World Order, establishing the modern sense.
In real life
- You could know every wavelength and nerve signal involved in seeing red and still ask: but what is it like?
- Two people taste the same coffee and describe it in identical words; whether the bitterness feels the same to each of them is a question about qualia.
- In Frank Jackson's 1982 thought experiment, Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about colour but has lived in a black-and-white room, sees red for the first time.
Questions
Q01What does 'quining' mean?
Dennett's coinage for denying the existence of something that seems obvious. The title of his 1988 paper announces the thesis — qualia get quined, not explained.
Q02Who actually coined the term?
C. I. Lewis, in 1929, for the modern usage. Peirce used the singular 'quale' in 1866. Neither is a Greek or medieval source, which surprises people who assume the word is ancient.
Q03What four properties are under attack?
Intrinsic, ineffable, private, and directly apprehensible in consciousness. Dennett's argument is that nothing possesses all four — not that your experience is fake.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Qualia.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Qualia.
- quale (etymology) — Wiktionary.