Abstract
The philosophers’ concept of qualia is an artifact of bad theorizing, and in particular, of failing to appreciate the distinction between the intentional object of a belief (for instance) and the cause(s) of that belief. Qualia, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, have a history but that does not make them real. The cause of a hallucination, for instance, may not resemble the intentional object hallucinated at all, and the representation in the brain is not rendered in special subjective properties (qualia).
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Notes
See Dan Barker’s (2016) detailed and scholarly book inspired by it, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, which gleefully cites the biblical verses supporting Dawkins’ verdict that this character is “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
See my “How and why does consciousness seem the way it seems?” (2015) for further development of related points.
I am always amused by cognitive scientists working on consciousness who modestly aver that they are not trying to solve the Hard Problem, something they are content to postpone indefinitely. If they think qualia are real, they should be ashamed of such abdication of scientific duty, or at least chagrinned to admit they are not tackling the important issues. But maybe this is just a convenient temporizing move, waiting for philosophers to get their act together.
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Dennett, D.C. A History of Qualia. Topoi 39, 5–12 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9508-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-017-9508-2