Problem Of Qualia Research Articles

A new variant of the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness: approaches to empirical confirmation.

There are various electromagnetic (EM) field theories of consciousness. They postulate an epineural EM field which, due to its binding properties, unifies the different neuronal information differences originating from various sensory and cognitive processes. Only through a real physical integration in space within this field could phenomenal consciousness arise. This would solve the binding problem mentioned in the philosophy of mind. On closer inspection, the electromagnetic interaction not only provides an explanation for the integrative property of the EM field, but also for the necessary differentiating contrasts of information. This article will take a closer look at the physical properties of a postulated EM field. It will also show how the problem of qualia in connection with emergentism could be solved by a new variant of EM field theory. If it can be clearly demonstrated that the postulated epineural EM field plays a decisive role in the origin of consciousness in addition to neuronal "wired" information processing, this also leaves less room for metaphysical assumptions that attempt to solve the binding problem. In experiments to prove the postulated epineural EM field by means of external electromagnetic manipulations, it can never be ruled out that these also have a direct effect on the "wired" neuronal signal processing. Therefore, on the way to proving the EM field theory of consciousness, an experimental method is needed that must ensure that external manipulations only affect the extensions of the EM field without directly influencing the neuronal network. A method will be discussed here that works with the shielding of EM fields instead of external electromagnetic stimuli.

Peirce and the problem of qualia

In this paper I will address the specifics of Peirce?s concept of qualia. Peirce is the first philosopher to ever use the term qualia as philosophical, but his understanding of it differs considerably from the contemporary philosophy of mind. There are certain tendencies to present Peirce in this regard as a forerunner of contemporary debates. Although such an interpretation is not unfounded, I believe that it does not do full justice to the significance of the concept for Peirce?s thought. I will try to elucidate its importance with an adequate web of synonyms, that is, the other important concepts in Peirce?s philosophy. The main idea of the paper is that Peirce?s concept of qualia is not a technical term meant to tackle a finite group of problems within an already accepted ontology, but one of the concepts that Peirce uses to build his ontology.

Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia by Jon Day

Reviewed by: Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia by Jon Day Josh Powell Novel Sensations: Modernist Fiction and the Problem of Qualia. By Jon Day. (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2020. ix+197 pp. £75. ISBN 978–1–4744–5839–9. In 2013, taking a break from my Masters dissertation on sensory modernism, I proof-read another student's philosophy dissertation on the problems posed to physicalist views of the world by 'qualia' (individual instances of subjective conscious experience). In 2021, I married the author of that qualia dissertation and it is pleasing to review a work which weds (sorry) the topic of my dissertation with hers. Noting that 'as a philosophical entity the quale is broadly contemporaneous with the artefacts of high modernism' (p. 5), Jon Day's study does striking historicist work in reading philosophical discussions of qualia in relation to the literary movement most known for foregrounding individual instances of conscious experience. It is surprising that this kind of work has not been done before. I am certainly surprised, and a little disappointed, that it did not occur to me back in 2013. The problem to which Day's title refers is not the one that qualia potentially pose to physicalism. Instead, while trying to evade philosophical disputes about the existence of qualia, Day is primarily concerned with the problem that the notion of the quale poses to modernist fiction and its study. In particular, Day stresses the degree to which the discourse around qualia problematizes the 'cognitive realist' understanding of modernism—the understanding that, through literary innovation, modernist writers were able to describe 'not just the functions of consciousness but also its phenomenological properties' (p. 12). The crux here is that qualia, as conceptualized in philosophy, cannot be captured in language, whether [End Page 493] that language is scientific, mathematical, or literary. Thus, as Day memorably puts it: 'if qualia do exist, then Flaubert's "mouldy colour of a wood-louse's existence" simply cannot be conveyed within language, however refined or experimental or accomplished that language may be' (p. 6). Perhaps, then, defenders of cognitive realism would want to deny qualia. This creates its own problems: by denying qualia one risks 'denying some of the very properties of consciousness that the novel, as a form, has often been celebrated for accommodating' (p. 6). To accept qualia, then, is to accept that literary writing cannot capture the phenomenological properties of consciousness; to deny qualia is to bring into question the existence of the very thing that modernist writing is supposed to be singularly deft at getting across: individual instances of conscious experience. In advancing his thesis, Day offers a range of incisive readings of prominent modernist writers. The standout chapter is undoubtedly the one on Joyce (Chapter 3). From this, Ulysses emerges not as an attempt to portray 'what it is like to be another mind', but a 'radical interrogation' of cognitive realist thought (p. 76). Elsewhere the chapter on Wyndham Lewis (Chapter 6) does excellent work in detailing Lewis's concern with a qualia-denying, behaviourist view of human subjectivity. Not everything works. There is something of a double introduction, which means the book is slow to get to its primary literary texts. Chapter 4, which covers 'Neuromodernism and the Explanatory Gap', contains a lot of historical detail that probably would have been better put into notes. Chapter 5, frustratingly for this Beckettian reader, takes a long time to get to its titular author, and suffers from lack of engagement with recent work on Beckett and perceptual experience by writers such as Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, and Ulrika Maude. These, though, are minor points. The study should ultimately prove a fascinating read for anyone interested in finding new ways of thinking about literary modernism's engagement with the senses. Josh Powell Cardiff University Copyright © 2022 Modern Humanities Research Association

Neurological Impairment and Literary Empowerment in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room

In Man Walks into a Room, a neuronovel staging an amnesiac, Nicole Krauss challenges the memory-identity equation. While she draws on neuroscience, she also writes against it, as she emphasizes the explanatory gap and the problem of qualia. To resist the growing authority of neuroscience and its often reductionist discourse, Krauss features a neurosurgeon as a mad scientist coming straight out of a science-fiction novel, who uses discursive strategies borrowed from the humanities. She also displays the power and plasticity of literary narrative. Hence, her generic experimentations—borrowing from traditional genres, revising and combining them—are far more successful than her scientist’s brain experiments. In numerous passages focused on ordinary moments of life, Krauss draws her reader’s attention to the singularity of experience and the power of storytelling, through figuration in particular, to account for it.

Pragmatic/Pragmatist Mind

The paper deals with the problem of qualia in the context of Umberto Eco‘s semiotics. I propose that Eco started to focus specifically on the problem of qualia mostly in his later period when he turned from the idea of almost universal theory of semiotics (e.g., in Theory of Semiotics) to cognitive realism (in Kant and the Platypus) with the help of more precise reinterpretation of Peirce’s concepts. Eco’s view of the problem of qualia is closely connected to his understanding of cognitive processes of understanding leading from cognitive type to molar content – understanding qualia as “semiosis primes,” which are the fundamental base of the possibility of all signification, therefore as a base of cognitive types. On the other hand, qualia are considered to be a base of cognitive types; thus we should regard them as having every-day communicative character. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore this specific two-fold understanding of qualia in the context of Eco’s and Peirce’s semiotic.

The Phenomenology of Temporal Experience

In this paper, I will explore the dissonance between “physical explanation” and “human experience,” while focusing on the experience of temporal passage. As a starting point, I will introduce J.E. McTaggart’s A-Series theory of time and BSeries theory of time. The A-Series illustrates how humans intuitively experience time; the past is fixed and expired, while the present moment seamlessly unfolds forward into an open future. On the other hand, the B-Series is very unlike the intuitive experience of time; “time” is merely the culmination of “static snapshots,” where each snapshot possesses different properties than the preceding snapshot and succeeding snapshot. Furthermore, there is no present moment or direction of time. For the purposes of this paper, and in agreement with McTaggart’s thesis, I will assume that the B-Series theory of time is true. Second, I will consider two problematic implications of the B-Series, i.e. the knowledge asymmetry and the experience asymmetry. If the past and future are equally real and fixed, why do we only possess knowledge about the past, and know nothing of the future? Moreover, why do we exclusively experience time as unfolding in the direction of the future, and never toward the past? Third, I will consider four possible explanations, which are grounded in physical mechanics or neural architecture, that aim to reconcile physical explanation with human experience, i.e. the static snapshot world of the B-Series with the dynamic present as we experience it. These four theories are the Specious Present Theory, Retention Theory, Neuron Theory, and Blind Spot Theory. I will argue that no physical explanation can provide the reconciliation that I am looking for. Fourth, I will consider cases that highlight the inconsistent and subjective nature of temporal flow to further motivate the peculiarity of and explanatory gap between physical explanation and human experience. Finally, in section V, I will argue that the puzzle of temporal experience, i.e. the explanatory gap between physical explanation and human experience, boils down to a problem of qualia, and thus, is a result of the “hard problem of consciousness.” 1. Defining the B-Series In his “Unreality of Time,” J.E. McTaggart outlines two theories of time, called the “A-Series” and “B-Series” (McTaggart 1908). In the A-Series, i.e. the Growing Block Universe, events in time are categorized as past, present, or future. The past is the expired trace of the present, and the present is the “moving now” that unfolds forward in the direction of an unknown and open future. Res Cogitans (2016) 7 Loury | 55 2155-4838 | commons.pacificu.edu/rescogitans Events in the A-Series are relational, rather than intrinsic, because the same event will be future, present, and past depending on the frame of reference. For example, the event in which Van Gogh painted The Starry Night was present in 1889, future in 1888, and past in 1890. Moreover, in the A-Series, the present moment is experienced as dynamic and evolving, i.e. movement and change are fluid. For example, a bird flies seamlessly across the sky, and the horizon fades from blue to orange. The bird moves through each coordinate it passes, and the sky touches each point in the gradient of color between. This is the intuitive experience of time, change, and motion (See Figure 1).

Temporal naturalism

Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in physics. These disagreements do not much affect the ordinary practice of science which is about small subsystems of the universe, described or explained against a background, idealized to be fixed. But these issues become crucial when we consider including the whole universe within our system, for then there is no fixed background to reference observables to. I argue here that the key issue responsible for divergent versions of naturalism and divergent approaches to cosmology is the conception of time. One version, which I call temporal naturalism, holds that time, in the sense of the succession of present moments, is real, and that laws of nature evolve in that time. This is contrasted with timeless naturalism, which holds that laws are immutable and the present moment and its passage are illusions. I argue that temporal naturalism is empirically more adequate than the alternatives, because it offers testable explanations for puzzles its rivals cannot address, and is likely a better basis for solving major puzzles that presently face cosmology and physics.This essay also addresses the problem of qualia and experience within naturalism and argues that only temporal naturalism can make a place for qualia as intrinsic qualities of matter.

What Subjectivity Is Not

An influential thesis in contemporary philosophy of mind is that subjectivity is inexplicable because it is paradoxical. Joseph Levine’s Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness (2001) made this thesis explicit and connected it with the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996). The peculiar claim that there is a paradox about subjectivity arises within a certain tradition and a particular set of texts, and the ways they encourage philosophers to think about the topic. In this literature, subjectivity is conceived as inner awareness of qualia. Drawing on this conception, Levine (2007, 2001) has argued that this unique form of awareness generates a paradox resisting empirical explanation. Levine concludes that the hardest part of the hard problem of consciousness is to explain how anything like a subjective point of view could arise in the world (2001, p. 174). Against this, I argue that the nature of subjective thought is not correctly characterized in terms of inner awareness, and that the problem about the subjective (first-person) point of view should be distinguished from the perennial metaphysical problem of qualia or phenomenal properties.

Cognitive Investigations: The Problems of Qualia and Style in the Contemporary Neuronovel

Recent developments in cognitive science have overturned the restrictions of behaviorism and have once again made consciousness a legitimate object of scientific investigation. New brain scanning technologies have introduced the possibility of mapping the neural correlates of consciousness, thereby offering a full, materialist account of the mind. This article argues that an emergent subgenre of contemporary fiction has both formally integrated and critically assessed these discourses of the mind. The “neuronovels” of Ian McEwan, David Lodge, and others have specifically addressed “the explanatory gap” between the third-person accounts of neuroscience and the first-person perspective of conscious experience—a gap that some philosophers of mind regard as an irreducible obstacle to any complete, scientific explanation of consciousness. Novels such as McEwan's Enduring Love (1998) and Lodge's Thinks … (2002) transform this problem of qualia into a formal problem of narrative style. Finally, this article shows that such conceptual transactions between cognitive science and contemporary literature move in both directions. While recent fiction has integrated the discourses and problems posed by brain science, neuroscientists have drawn upon the narrative techniques of experimental literature in order to present their evolving theories of consciousness.

The problem of qualia

The paper intends to research into the mind-body problem and examine an aspect of the current issue in the debate. An attempt to solve the mind/body problem has moved to the examination of the nature and property of consciousness. It is hoped that sufficient study and understanding of the nature and characteristics of consciousness could suffice for the solution to the age-old problem. This has generated series of arguments between the physicalists such as Paul and Patricia Churchland and the anti-physicalists such as Frank Jackson, about the possibility of the complete empirical explanation and reduction of the nature and property of the subjective aspect of consciousness. The former argue for the possibilities of the project while the latter dissent. That which would be left unexplained and unreduced is termed ‘qualia’ or the phenomenal experience. The paper intends to examine some of the arguments on both sides and conclude that though much objective nature of consciousness could be explained, the phenomenal aspect of consciousness is going to be left unexplained and so unreduced by the physicalists. I will, in this respect, argue that the understanding of the nature of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness may assist some experts dealing with mental illnesses to tackle the problem of mental disorderliness in our society. Key words: Qualia, phenomenal experience, what it is to see red, raw feels, physicalists, anti-physicalists.

クウィディティスティックなクオリア(<特集>性質の形而上学と因果性(1))

It is often thought a difficult task to find a place for qualia in the physical world. The reason for this may be that qualia seem to be essentially intrinsic qualities so they cannot be captured entirely in terms of their causal-functional roles. This is the typical way in which qualia are thought to be physicalistically problematic. In this paper I rethink that very problem of qualia by means of metaphysical considerations concerning properties in general. The relevant question in the metaphysics of properties is whether properties have essences which determine their identities independently of their dispositional aspects. (Such essences are called 'quiddities'.) Indeed, the problem of qualia would take a different shape depending on the answer to that metaphysical question. I show this with reference to three main views on that question, namely, quidditism, the causal theory, and the identity theory. In closing, I make a brief remark about what these considerations imply for the relationship between physicalism and qualia.

The Role of Consciousness in Human Cognitive Activity

Setting up the problemConsciousness is the most important heritage of human beings. Would anybody want to live forever, if this long life had been elapsed in the unconscious state? Nevertheless we know neither what is, nor how it has appeared and what does. Philosophers admit that nowadays members of the sciences, traditionally related to research, consider it to be one of the most complex problems, far from being solved (Mamchur, 2008, p.31). No one knows how to approach the problem of qualia, the problem of subjective experience. It always tormented psychologists. At the close of the past century D. Chalmers (1996) declared it to be the most complicated problem in psychology. Many repeat this Chalmers' statement nowadays. Not having any other ideas some consider to be the quality essential to any matter. Nonetheless they realize that nobody knows, how to discover this quality, because it's impossible to define what exactly this quality is (Velmans, 2007). M.K. Mamardashvili fairly said (Mamardashvili, 1996, p. 215), consciousness is something, that as human beings we know everything about, but we know nothing about it as scientists.During the last decades the power of cognitive unconscious is demonstrated in a huge amount of beautiful experiments. Everybody agrees: unconscious processes have considerably larger resources and the more powerful computing ability, than (Bargh, and Morsella, 2008) The unconscious decision about realization of some action often appears earlier than the conscious intention to act (Libet, 2003; 2006). A person unconsciously perceives, stores and processes much more information, than consciously; s/he unconsciously finds the regularities in the environment far quicker; s/he can regulate the power and accuracy of his/hers actions much better without the conscious control. We are not aware of the causes of our own thoughts. (In Balzac's words, thoughts come to our head without asking us about it). These nonconscious processes govern the majority of our social behavior - from perception and interpretation of the social world to interpersonal interactions and goal pursuits (Bargh, and Williams, 2006).Why are we aware of our cognitions, if they appear and develop unconsciously? We can single out several types of answers. The first one: awareness is useful (contributes to survival, to adequate reflection of reality and so on). It is the way they often write in handbooks: they say saves us from the informational overload by means of reducing the information flows and cutting off the unnecessary information; it stores the information selectively; it plans the behavior, giving the great resources for flexible reactions to the changing demands of life. All such descriptions just give us an illusion of understanding. To cut off the unnecessary information you firstly need to receive it, process it, and only then cut it off. How does it reduce the information load? The suggestion that a human is able to make a conscious decision about the information to be realized, contradicts any logic: how can we consciously be unaware of something? Thus, gaining information should take place at the unconscious level at first. Conscious planning on the basis of the limited information cannot be better than the planning on the basis of the whole received one. The suggestion that with its rather limited informational capacity lets us react in a more flexible way than unconscious looks strange as well. On the whole this answer leads to the deadlock, because all activity ascribed to is accomplished unconsciously at first. And what's more, this answer doesn't explain why the result of all this unconscious work should be realized.The attempts to ascribe some intelligible sense to the work of occur, but do not seem persuasive. Here is one of the most interesting hypotheses. …

Synapses, Quantum Theory and Panpsychism

The introduction situates the ‘hard problem’ in its historical context and argues that the problem has two sides: the output side (the Kant-Eccles problem of the freedom of the Will) and the input side (the problem of qualia). The output side ultimately reduces to whether quantum mechanics can affect the operation of synapses. A discussion of the detailed molecular biology of synaptic transmission as presently understood suggests that such affects are unlikely. Instead an evolutionary argument is presented which suggests that our conviction of free agency is an evolutionarily induced illusion and hence that the Kant-Eccles problem is itself illusory. This conclusion is supported by well-known neurophysiology. The input side, the problem of qualia, of subjectivity, is not so easily outflanked. After a brief review of the neurophysiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) and of the Penrose-Hameroff microtubular neuroquantology it is again concluded that the molecular neurobiology makes quantum wave-mechanics an unlikely explanation. Instead recourse is made to an evolutionarily- and neurobiologically-informed panpsychism. The notion of an ‘emergent’ property is carefully distinguished from that of the more usual ‘system’ property used by most dual-aspect theorists (and the majority of neuroscientists) and used to support Llinas’ concept of an ‘oneiric’ consciousness continuously modified by sensory input. I conclude that a panpsychist theory, such as this, coupled with the non-classical understanding of matter flowing from quantum physics (both epistemological and scientific) may be the default and only solution to the problem posed by the presence of mind in a world of things.

The Elimination of Experience

Like a leaky roof, the phenomena of consciousness continue to drip cold water on otherwise virtually watertight physicalist pretensions. There are no current prospects for any sort of scientific theory of consciousness and the various speculative attempts to point in the direction of such a theory of consciousness all appear to suffer from the rather basic problem of being, in the words of Thomas Nagel, compatible with its absence (Nagel (1974), p. 166). It seems to many that the main worry about consciousness is what philosophers have come to call the problem of qualia. Roughly speaking, qualia are the immediately apprehensible ways in which the world, including ourselves, is presented to us. The central feature of qualitative consciousness is that our awareness of the world appears to have graspable properties of its own by which information about the world is delivered. The fact that a clear sky looks blue seems like only one of many possible ways that information about the characteristics of atmospheric light could be presented to, or in, consciousness. Moving inward, this apparently contingent relation between information and the way it is conveyed appears to hold no less for the precise physical nature of the presumed neural underpinnings of consciousness itself. It seems that achieving an awareness of these second order properties of information channels is necessary to be fully conscious and perhaps a being who could not attain this level of awareness should not be said to be truly conscious at all. Part of the problem of qualia is that we don't have a very good idea of exactly what we are talking about when we talk about them. In a sense, of course, we could not know anything better, but the nature of qualia and their relation to our physical being are deeply problematic. One possible explanation for this difficulty has already been alluded to: we simply don't understand consciousness, and our ideas and models of it, the primary one being based on perception, reflect our ignorance. But another potential explanation for our difficulty is that we are the victims of an intellectual illusion. Perhaps our ways of speaking about consciousness, some of them almost exclusively philosophical but others common parlance, have mistakenly led us to the