Chapter
Two
What is it like to be.. .?
has changed. But can you? And if you admit that opinions
can have an effect on actual tastes, those actual tastes lose
the quality of indivisible self-sufficiency that qualia are tradi-
tionally thought to have. We normally think in a confused and
incoherent way about how things seem to us, claims Dennett,
and the concept of qualia just confuses the issue further. It
may be, as many philosophers claim, that it is difficult to deny
the existence of qualia, but we should try, because ‘contrary to
what seems obvious at first blush, there simply are no qualia
at all’ (1988, p. 74).
One of the most common responses to Dennett’s argument is
that he has constructed a straw-man version of qualia which
no one believed in anyway. This is a constant problem when
it comes to qualia: what is the version that people believe in?
There is little consensus about what the term means or why it
is needed at all, so its use may confuse more than it clarifies.
Perhaps the qualities we so struggle to put into words are
qualities of the things we have experiences of (the wind, the
sky, the minor chord) rather than of our experiences themselves (Harman, 1990).
Perhaps what qualia really offer is a way of making it philosophically acceptable
to talk about ‘how it feels’. The trouble is that this may also tempt us into thinking
that the impressive-sounding qualia are more special, more mysterious, and more
totally separate from physical stuff than is necessarily the case.
So, when you next come across the term qualia in an argument about conscious-
ness, look closely at how it is used. Is a definition given, or is its meaning taken for
granted? If the word is defined, is it a helpful definition, or more of a paraphrase
in terms that would have been perfectly good on their own? And how does the
definition help to support, or undermine, the argument that is being made?
Even if we could agree on a precise and workable definition of qualia to make it
preferable to plainer alternatives (the subjective experience, the what-it’s-like),
how could we decide whether qualia really exist or not? We cannot do experi-
ments on qualia, at least not in the simple sense of first catching a quale and then
manipulating it in the lab. That is the whole point of qualia, of raw feels and the
qualities of experience: they do not have physical properties that can be mea-
sured. We can, however, do thought experiments.
Thought experiments are, as the name implies, experiments done with the mind.
It is important to be clear about their purpose. In an ordinary experiment you
manipulate something in order to get an answer about the world. If you do the
experiment properly, you may get a reliable answer that is widely applicable and
that helps decide between two rival theories. Thought experiments are designed
not to manipulate the world or provide definitive answers, but rather to manipu-
late minds and clarify thinking.
Einstein famously imagined riding on the back of a light wave, and from this idea
came some of his theories about relativity and the speed of light. Most thought
experiments are, like that one, impossible to carry out, although some end up
turning into real experiments as technology changes. Most philosophical thought
FIGURE 2.2 • Is this an ineffable quale?