2.6 Are there any non-representational properties of experience?Those who think that the existence of phenomenal consciousness raises
insuperable problems for functionalist accounts of the mental, and/or
those who think that phenomenal consciousness is, and must remain,
ineradicably mysterious, are almost certain to believe inqualia. Now,
almost everyone accepts that conscious experiences have distinctive phe-
nomenal feels, and that there is something which it isliketo be the subject
of such an experience. And some people use the term ‘qualia’ to refer just
to the distinctive subjectivity of experience – which then makes it indisput-
able that qualia exist. But believers in qualia in any stronger sense maintain
that the distinctive feel of an experience is due, at least in part, to its
possession of subjectively availablenon-representational,non-relationally
deWned, properties. On this view, then, in addition to the distinctive ways
our experiences represent the world as being, our experiencesalsohave
properties which are intrinsic, and which do not represent anything be-
yond themselves. It is also often claimed that qualia areprivate(unknow-
able to anyone but their subject),ineVable(indescribable and incommuni-
cable to others), as well as knowable with completecertaintyby the person
who has them.
Plainly, if our experiences do possess qualia (in this strong sense), then
naturalistic accounts of the mind are in trouble. For there will then exist
aspects of our mental lives which cannot be characterised in functional or
representational terms. Equally, if there are qualia, then the task of ex-
plaining how a physical system can possess phenomenal consciousness
looks hard indeed. For it is certainly diYcult to understand how any
physical property or event in our brains could be, or could realise, a
phenomenal state which is intrinsic, private, ineVable, and known with
certainty.
The most direct response to this argument is toQuinequalia (‘to Quine
= to deny the existence of’; see Dennett, 1988b; Harman, 1990; Tye, 1995).
This is to maintain thatthere are nonon-representational properties of
experience (or not ones which are available to consciousness, anyway – of
course there will be intrinsic physical properties of the realising brain-
states). The best way to do this is to claim that perceptual states are
diaphanousortransparent. Look at a green tree or a red tomato. Now try to
concentrate as hard as you can,noton the colours of theobjects, but on the
quality of yourexperienceof those colours. What happens? Can you do it?
Plausibly, all that youWnd yourself doing is paying closer and closer
attention to the colours in the outside world, after all. A perception of red
is a state which represents a surface as having a certain distinctive quality –
redness, of some or other particular shade – and paying close attention to
246 Consciousness: theWnal frontier?