## 1. Uses of the Term 'Qualia'



(1) Qualia as phenomenal character. Consider your visual experience as
you stare at a bright turquoise color patch in a paint store. There is
something it is like for you subjectively to undergo that experience.
What it is like to undergo the experience is very different from what
it is like for you to experience a dull brown color patch. This
difference is a difference in what is often called 'phenomenal
character'. The phenomenal character of an experience is what it
is like subjectively to undergo the experience. If you are told to
focus your attention upon the phenomenal character of your experience,
you will find that in doing so you are aware of certain qualities.
These qualities -- ones that are accessible to you when you
introspect and that together make up the phenomenal character of the
experience are sometimes called 'qualia'. C.S. Peirce
seems to have had something like this in mind when he introduced the
term 'quale' into philosophy in 1866 (1866/1982, para
223).



There are more restricted uses of the term 'qualia',
however.



(2) Qualia as properties of sense data. Consider a painting of a
dalmatian. Viewers of the painting can apprehend not only its content
(i.e., its representing a dalmatian) but also the colors, shapes, and
spatial relations obtaining among the blobs of paint on the canvas. It
has sometimes been supposed that being aware or conscious of a visual
experience is like viewing an inner, non-physical picture or
sense-datum. So, for example, on this conception, if I see a
dalmatian, I am subject to a mental picture-like representation of a
dalmatian (a sense-datum), introspection of which reveals to me both
its content and its intrinsic, non-representational features
(counterparts to the visual features of the blobs of paint on the
canvas). These intrinsic, non-representational features have been
taken by advocates of the sense-datum theory to be the sole
determinants of what it is like for me to have the experience. In a
second, more restricted sense of the term 'qualia', then,
qualia are intrinsic, consciously accessible, non-representational
features of sense-data and other non-physical phenomenal objects that
are responsible for their phenomenal character. Historically, the term
'qualia' was first used in connection with the sense-datum
theory by C.I. Lewis in 1929. As Lewis used the term, qualia were
properties of sense-data themselves.



(3) Qualia as intrinsic non-representational properties. There is
another established sense of the term 'qualia', which is
similar to the one just given but which does not demand of qualia
advocates that they endorse the sense-datum theory. However sensory
experiences are ultimately analyzed -- whether, for example, they
are taken to involve relations to sensory objects or they are
identified with neural events or they are held to be physically
irreducible events -- many philosophers suppose that they have
intrinsic, consciously accessible features that are
non-representational and that are solely responsible for their
phenomenal character. These features, whatever their ultimate nature,
physical or non-physical, are often dubbed 'qualia'.



In the case of visual experiences, for example, it is frequently
supposed that there is a range of visual qualia, where these are taken
to be intrinsic features of visual experiences that (a) are accessible
to introspection, (b) can vary without any variation in the
representational contents of the experiences, (c) are mental
counterparts to some directly visible properties of objects (e.g.,
color), and (d) are the sole determinants of the phenomenal character
of the experiences. This usage of 'qualia' has become
perhaps the most common one in recent years. Philosophers who hold or
have held that there are qualia, in this sense of the term, include,
for example, Nagel (1974), Peacocke (1983) and Block (1990).



(4) Qualia as intrinsic, nonphysical, ineffable properties. Some
philosophers (e.g, Dennett 1987, 1991) use the term
'qualia' in a still more restricted way so that qualia are
intrinsic properties of experiences that are also ineffable,
nonphysical, and 'given' to their subjects incorrigibly
(without the possibility of error). Philosophers who deny that there
are qualia sometimes have in mind qualia as the term is used in this
more restricted sense (or a similar one). It is also worth mentioning
that sometimes the term 'qualia' is restricted to sensory
experiences by definition, while on other occasions it is allowed that
if thoughts and other such cognitive states have phenomenal character,
then they also have qualia. Thus, announcements by philosophers who
declare themselves opposed to qualia need to be treated with some
caution. One can agree that there are no qualia in the last three
senses I have explained, while still endorsing qualia in the standard
first sense.



In the rest of this entry, we use the term 'qualia' in the
very broad way I did at the beginning of the entry. So, we take it for
granted that there are qualia. Later on, in section 8, we discuss
specifically the view of qualia as intrinsic, nonrepresentational
properties.


## 2. Which Mental States Possess Qualia?



The following would certainly be included on my own list. (1)
Perceptual experiences, for example, experiences of the sort involved
in seeing green, hearing loud trumpets, tasting liquorice, smelling
the sea air, handling a piece of fur. (2) Bodily sensations, for
example, feeling a twinge of pain, feeling an itch, feeling hungry,
having a stomach ache, feeling hot, feeling dizzy. Think here also of
experiences such as those present during orgasm or while running
flat-out. (3) Felt reactions or passions or emotions, for example,
feeling delight, lust, fear, love, feeling grief, jealousy, regret.
(4) Felt moods, for example, feeling elated, depressed, calm, bored,
tense, miserable. (For more here, see Haugeland 1985, pp.
230-235).



Should we include any other mental states on the list? Galen Strawson
has claimed (1994) that there are such things as the
*experience* of understanding a sentence, the
*experience* of suddenly thinking of something, of suddenly
remembering something, and so on. Moreover, in his view, experiences
of these sorts are not reducible to associated sensory experiences
and/or images. Strawson's position here seems to be that
thought-experience is a distinctive experience in its own right. He
says, for example: "Each sensory modality is an experiential
modality, and thought experience (in which understanding-experience
may be included) is an experiential modality to be reckoned alongside
the other experiential modalities" (p. 196). On Strawson's
view, then, some thoughts have qualia. (This is also the position of
Horgan and Tienson (2002).) 



This view is controversial. One response is to claim that the
phenomenal aspects of understanding derive largely from linguistic (or
verbal) images, which have the phonological and syntactic structure of
items in the subject's native language. These images frequently
even come complete with details of stress and intonation. As we read,
it is sometimes phenomenally as if we are speaking to ourselves.
(Likewise when we consciously think about something without reading).
We often "hear" an inner voice. Depending upon the content
of the passage, we may also undergo a variety of emotions and
feelings. We may feel tense, bored, excited, uneasy, angry. Once
*all* these reactions are removed, together with the images of
an inner voice and the visual sensations produced by reading, some
would say (myself included) that no phenomenology remains.



In any event, images and sensations of the above sorts are not always
present in thought. They are not *essential* to thought.
Consider, for example, the thoughts involved in everyday visual
recognition (or the thoughts of creatures without a natural
language).



What about desires, for example, my desire for a week's holiday
in Venice? It is certainly true that in some cases, there is an
associated phenomenal character. Often when we strongly desire
something, we experience a feeling of being "pulled" or
"tugged". There may also be accompanying images in various
modalities.



Should we include such propositional attitudes as feeling angry
*that the house has been burgled* or seeing *that the
computer is missing* on the list? These seem best treated as
hybrid or complex states, one component of which is essentially a
phenomenal state and the other (a judgment or belief) is not. Thus, in
both cases, there is a constituent experience that is the real bearer
of the relevant quale or qualia.


## 3. Are Qualia Irreducible, Non-Physical Entities?



The literature on qualia is filled with thought-experiments of one
sort or another. Perhaps the most famous of these is the case of Mary,
the brilliant color scientist. Mary, so the story goes (Jackson 1982),
is imprisoned in a black and white room. Never having been permitted
to leave it, she acquires information about the world outside from the
black and white books her captors have made available to her, from the
black and white television sets attached to external cameras, and from
the black and white monitor screens hooked up to banks of computers.
As time passes, Mary acquires more and more information about the
physical aspects of color and color vision. (For a real life case of a
visual scientist (Knut Nordby) who is an achromotope, see Sacks 1996,
Chapter 1.) Eventually, Mary becomes the world's leading
authority on these matters. Indeed she comes to know *all* the
physical facts pertinent to everyday colors and color vision. 



Still, she wonders to herself: What do people in the outside world
*experience* when they see the various colors? What is it
*like* for them to see red or green? One day her captors
release her. She is free at last to see things with their real colors
(and free too to scrub off the awful black and white paint that covers
her body). She steps outside her room into a garden full of flowers.
"So, that is what it is like to experience red," she
exclaims, as she sees a red rose. "And that," she adds,
looking down at the grass, "is what it is like to experience
green."



Mary here seems to make some important discoveries. She seems to find
out things she did not know before. How can that be, if, as seems
possible, at least in principle, she has all the physical information
there is to have about color and color vision -- if she knows all
the pertinent physical facts?



One possible explanation is that that there is a realm of subjective,
phenomenal qualities associated with color, qualities the intrinsic
nature of which Mary comes to discover upon her release, as she
herself undergoes the various new color experiences. Before she left
her room, she only knew the objective, physical basis of those
subjective qualities, their causes and effects, and various relations
of similarity and difference. She had no knowledge of the subjective
qualities in themselves.



This explanation is not available to the physicalist. If what it is
like for someone to experience red is one and the same as some
physical quality, then Mary already knows *that* while in her
room. Likewise, for experiences of the other colors. For Mary knows
all the pertinent physical facts. What, then, can the physicalist
say?



Some physicalists respond that knowing what it is like is know-how and
nothing more. Mary acquires certain abilities, specifically in the
case of red, the ability to recognize red things by sight alone, the
ability to imagine a red expanse, the ability to remember the
experience of red. She does *not* come to know any new
information, any new facts about color, any new qualities. This is the
view of David Lewis (1990) and Lawrence Nemirow (1990).



The Ability Hypothesis, as it is often called, is more resilient than
many philosophers suppose (see Tye 2000, Chapter One). But it has
difficulty in properly accounting for our knowledge of what it is like
to undergo experiences of determinate hues while we are undergoing
them. For example, I can know what it is like to experience red-17, as
I stare at a rose of that color. Of course, I don't know the hue
as red-17. My conception of it is likely just *that shade of
red*. But I certainly know what it is like to experience the hue
while it is present. Unfortunately, I lack the abilities Lewis cites
and so does Mary even after she leaves her cell. She is not able to
recognize things that are red-17 as red-17 by sight. Given the way
human memory works and the limitations on it, she lacks the concept
red-17. She has no mental template that is sufficiently fine-grained
to permit her to identify the experience of red-17 when it comes
again. Presented with two items, one red-17 and the other red-18, in a
series of tests, she cannot say with any accuracy which experience her
earlier experience of the rose matches. Sometimes she picks one; at
other times she picks the other. Nor is she able afterwards to imagine
things as having hue, red-17, or as having that very shade of red the
rose had; and for precisely the same reason.



The Ability Hypothesis appears to be in trouble. An alternative
physicalist proposal is that Mary in her room lacks certain
*phenomenal concepts*, certain ways of thinking about or
mentally representing color experiences and colors. Once she leaves
the room, she acquires these new modes of thought as she experiences
the various colors. Even so, the qualities the new concepts pick out
are ones she knew in a different way in her room, for they are
physical or functional qualities like all others.



One problem this approach faces is that it seems to imply that Mary
does not really make a new discovery when she says, "So, that is
what it is like to experience red." Upon reflection, however, it
is far from obvious that this is really a consequence. For it is
widely accepted that concepts or modes of presentation are involved in
the individuation of thought-contents, given one sense of the term
'content' -- the sense in which thought-content is
whatever information that-clauses provide that suffices for the
purposes of even the most demanding rationalizing explanation. In this
sense, what I think, when I think that Cicero was an orator, is not
what I think when I think that Tully was an orator. This is precisely
why it is possible to discover that Cicero is Tully. The thought that
Cicero was an orator differs from the thought that Tully was an orator
not at the level of truth-conditions -- the same singular
proposition is partly constitutive of the content of both -- but
at the level of concepts or mode of presentation. The one thought
exercises the concept *Cicero*; the other the concept
*Tully*. The concepts have the same reference, but they present
the referent in different ways and thus the two thoughts can play
different roles in rationalizing explanation.



It appears then that there is no difficulty in holding both that Mary
comes to know some new things upon her release, while already knowing
all the pertinent real-world physical facts, even though the new
experiences she undergoes and their introspectible qualities are
wholly physical. In an ordinary, everyday sense, Mary's
knowledge increases. And that, it may be contended, is all the
physicalist needs to answer the Knowledge Argument. (The term
'fact', it should be mentioned, is itself ambiguous.
Sometimes it is used to pick out real-world states of affairs alone;
sometimes it is used for such states of affairs under certain
conceptualizations. When we speak of the physical facts above, we
should be taken to refer either to physical states of affairs alone or
to those states of affairs under purely physical conceptualizations.
For more on 'fact', see Tye 1995.)



Some philosophers insist that the difference between the old and the
new concepts in this case is such that there must be a difference in
the world between the properties these concepts stand for or denote
(Jackson 1993, Chalmers 1996). Some of these properties Mary knew in
her cell; others she becomes cognizant of only upon her release. This
is necessary for Mary to make a real discovery: she must come to
associate with the experience of red new qualities she did not
associate with it in her room. The physicalist is committed to denying
this claim; for the new qualities would have to be non-physical.



The issues here are complex. What the physicalist really needs to
settle the issue is a theory of phenomenal concepts (a theory, that
is, of the allegedly special concepts that are deployed from the first
person point of view when we recognize our experiences as being of
such-and-such subjective types) which is itself compatible with
physicalism. There are proposals on offer (see, for example, Hill
1991, Loar 1990, Levine 2000, Sturgeon 2000, Perry 2001, Papineau
2002, Tye, 2003), but there is as yet no agreement as to the form such
a theory should take, and some philosophers contend that a proper
theory of phenomenal concepts shows that no satisfactory answer can be
given by the physicalist to the example of Mary's Room (Chalmers
1999). Another possibility is that the very idea of a phenomenal
concept, conceived of as a concept very different in how it functions
from concepts applied elsewhere, is itself confused. On this view,
physicalists who have appealed to phenomenal concepts to handle the
example of Mary's Room have been barking up the wrong tree (Tye
2009). 



Another famous anti-reductionist thought-experiment concerning qualia
appeals to the possibility of zombies. A philosophical zombie is a
molecule by molecule duplicate of a sentient creature, a normal
human-being, for example, but who differs from that creature in
lacking *any* phenomenal consciousness. For me, as I lie on the
beach, happily drinking some wine and watching the waves, I undergo a
variety of visual, olfactory, and gustatory experiences. But my zombie
twin experiences nothing at all. He has no phenomenal consciousness.
Since my twin is an exact physical duplicate of me, his inner
psychological states will be *functionally* isomorphic with my
own (assuming he is located in an identical environment). Whatever
physical stimulus is applied, he will process the stimulus in the same
way as I do, and produce exactly the same behavioral responses.
Indeed, on the assumption that non-phenomenal psychological states are
functional states (that is, states definable in terms of their role or
function in mediating between stimuli and behavior), my zombie twin
has just the same beliefs, thoughts, and desires as I do. He differs
from me only with respect to experience. For him, there is nothing it
is like to stare at the waves or to sip wine.



The hypothesis that there can be philosophical zombies is not normally
the hypothesis that such zombies are *nomically* possible, that
their existence is consistent with the actual laws of nature. Rather
the suggestion is that zombie replicas of this sort are at least
*imaginable* and hence metaphysically possible.



Philosophical zombies pose a serious threat to physicalist views of
qualia. To begin with, if zombie replicas are metaphysically possible,
then there is a simple argument that seems to show that phenomenal
states are not identical with internal, objective, physical states.
Suppose objective, physical state *P* can occur without
phenomenal state *S* in some appropriate zombie replica (in the
metaphysical sense of 'can' noted above). Intuitively
*S* cannot occur without *S*. Pain, for example, cannot
be felt without pain. So, *P* has a modal property *S*
lacks, namely the property of *possibly* occurring without
*S*. So, by Leibniz' Law (the law that for anything
*x* and for anything *y*, if *x* is identical
with *y* then *x* and *y* share *all* the
same properties), *S* is not identical with *P*.



Secondly, if a person microphysically identical with me, located in an
identical environment (both present and past), can lack *any*
phenomenal experiences, then facts pertaining to experience and
feeling, facts about qualia, are not necessarily fixed or determined
by the objective microphysical facts. And this the physicalist cannot
allow, even if she concedes that phenomenally conscious states are not
strictly identical with internal, objective, physical states. For the
physicalist, whatever her stripe, must at least believe that the
microphysical facts determine all the facts, that any world that was
exactly like ours in *all* microphysical respects (down to the
smallest detail, to the position of every single boson, for example)
would have to be like our world in all respects (having identical
mountains, lakes, glaciers, trees, rocks, sentient creatures, cities,
and so on).



One well-known physicalist reply to the case of zombies (Loar 1990) is
to grant that they are conceptually possible, or at least that there
is no *obvious* contradiction in the idea of a zombie, while
denying that zombies are metaphysically possible. Since the
anti-physicalist argument requires metaphysical possibility --
mere conceptual possibility will not suffice -- it now collapses.
That conceptual possibility is too weak for the
anti-physicalist's purposes (at least without further
qualification and argument) is shown by the fact that it is
conceptually possible that I am not Michael Tye (that I am an impostor
or someone misinformed about his past) even though, given the actual
facts, it is metaphysically impossible.


## 4. Functionalism and Qualia



Functionalism is the view that individual qualia have functional
natures, that the phenomenal character of, e.g., pain is one and the
same as the property of playing such-and-such a causal or
teleofunctional role in mediating between physical inputs (e.g., body
damage) and physical outputs (e.g., withdrawal behavior). On this view
(Lycan 1987), qualia are multiply physically realizable. Inner states
that are physically very different may nonetheless feel the same. What
is crucial to what it is like is functional role, not underlying
hardware. 



There are two famous objections to functionalist theories of qualia:
the Inverted Spectrum and the Absent Qualia Hypothesis. The first move
in the former objection consists in claiming that you might see red
when I see green and vice-versa; likewise for the other colors so that
our color experiences are phenomenally inverted. This does not suffice
to create trouble for the functionalist yet. For you and I are surely
representationally different here: for example, you have a visual
experience that represents red when I have one that represents green.
And that representational difference brings with it a difference in
our patterns of causal interactions with external things (and thereby
a functional difference).



This reply can be handled by the advocate of inverted qualia by
switching to a case in which we both have visual experiences with the
same representational contents on the same occasions while still
differing phenomenally. Whether such cases are really metaphysically
possible is open to dispute, however. Certainly, those philosophers
who are representationalists about qualia (see Section 7) would deny
their possibility. Indeed, it is not even clear that such cases are
conceptually possible (Harrison 1973, Hardin 1993, Tye 1995). But
leaving this to one side, it is far from obvious that there would not
have to be some salient fine-grained functional differences between
us, notwithstanding our gross functional identity.



Consider a computational example. For any two numerical inputs,
*M* and *N*, a given computer always produces as outputs
the product of *M* and *N*. There is a second computer
that does exactly the same thing. In this way, they are functionally
identical. Does it follow that they are running exactly the same
program? Of course, not! There are all sorts of programs that will
multiply together two numbers. These programs can differ dramatically.
At one gross level the machines are functionally identical, but at
lower levels the machines can be functionally different.



In the case of you and me, then, the opponent of inverted qualia can
claim that, even if we are functionally identical at a coarse level
-- we both call red things 'red', we both believe
that those things are red on the basis of our experiences, we both are
caused to undergo such experiences by viewing red things, etc. --
there are necessarily fine-grained differences in our internal
functional organization. And that is why our experiences are
phenomenally different.



Some philosophers will no doubt respond that it is still imaginable
that you and I are functionally identical in *all* relevant
respects yet phenomenally different. But this claim presents a problem
at least for those philosophers who oppose functionalism but who
accept physicalism. For it is just as easy to imagine that there are
inverted qualia in molecule-by-molecule duplicates (in the same
external, physical settings) as it is to imagine inverted qualia in
functional duplicates. If the former duplicates are really
metaphysically impossible, as the physicalist is committed to
claiming, why not the latter? Some further convincing argument needs
to be given that the two cases are disanalogous. As yet, to my mind,
no such argument has been presented. (Of course, this response does
not apply to those philosophers who take the view that qualia are
irreducible, non-physical entities. However, these philosophers have
other severe problems of their own. In particular, they face the
problem of phenomenal causation. Given the causal closure of the
physical, how can qualia make any difference? For more here, see Tye
1995, Chalmers 1996).



The absent qualia hypothesis is the hypothesis that functional
duplicates of sentient creatures are possible, duplicates that
entirely lack qualia. For example, one writer (Block 1980) asks us to
suppose that a billion Chinese people are each given a two-way radio
with which to communicate with one another and with an artificial
(brainless) body. The movements of the body are controlled by the
radio signals, and the signals themselves are made in accordance with
instructions the Chinese people receive from a vast display in the sky
which is visible to all of them. The instructions are such that the
participating Chinese people function like individual neurons, and the
radio links like synapses, so that together the Chinese people
duplicate the causal organization of a human brain. Whether or not
this system, if it were ever actualized, would *actually*
undergo any feelings and experiences, it seems coherent to suppose
that it might not. But if this is a real metaphysical possibility,
then qualia do not have functional essences.



One standard functionalist reply to cases like the China-body system
is to bite the bullet and to argue that however strange it seems, the
China-body system could not fail to undergo qualia. The oddness of
this view derives, according to some functionalists (Lycan 1987), from
our relative size. We are each so much smaller than the China-body
system that we fail to see the forest for the trees. Just as a
creature the size of a neuron trapped inside a human head might well
be wrongly convinced that there could not be consciousness there, so
we too draw the wrong conclusion as we contemplate the China-body
system. It has also been argued (e.g., by Shoemaker 1975) that any
system that was a full functional duplicate of one of us would have to
be subject to all the same beliefs, including beliefs about its own
internal states. Thus the China-Body system would have to believe that
it experiences pain; and if it had beliefs of this sort, then it could
not fail to be the subject of some experiences (and hence some states
with phenomenal character). If this reply is successful (for an
updated version of this reply and a new related thought experiment,
see Tye 2006), what it shows is that the property of having some
phenomenal character or other has a functional essence. But it does
not show that individual qualia are functional in nature. Thus one
could accept that absent qualia are impossible while also holding that
inverted spectra are possible (see, e.g., Shoemaker 1975).


## 5. Qualia and the Explanatory Gap



Our grasp of what it is like to undergo phenomenal states is supplied
to us by introspection. We also have an admittedly incomplete grasp of
what goes on objectively in the brain and the body. But there is, it
seems, a vast chasm between the two. It is very hard to see how this
chasm in our understanding could ever be bridged. For no matter how
deeply we probe into the physical structure of neurons and the
chemical transactions which occur when they fire, no matter how much
objective information we come to acquire, we still seem to be left
with something that we cannot explain, namely, why and how
such-and-such objective, physical changes, whatever they might be,
generate so-and-so subjective feeling, or any subjective feeling at
all. 



This is the famous "explanatory gap" for qualia (Levine
1983, 2000). Some say that the explanatory gap is unbridgeable and
that the proper conclusion to draw from it is that there is a
corresponding gap in the world. Experiences and feelings have
irreducibly subjective, non-physical qualities (Jackson 1993; Chalmers
1996, 2005). Others take essentially the same position on the gap
while insisting that this does not detract from a purely physicalist
view of experiences and feelings. What it shows rather is that some
physical qualities or states are irreducibly subjective entities
(Searle 1992). Others hold that the explanatory gap may one day be
bridged but we currently lack the concepts to bring the subjective and
objective perspectives together. On this view, it may turn out that
qualia are physical, but we currently have no clear conception as to
how they could be (Nagel 1974). Still others adamantly insist that the
explanatory gap is, in principle, bridgeable but not by us or by any
creatures like us. Experiences and feelings are as much a part of the
physical, natural world as life, digestion, DNA, or lightning. It is
just that with the concepts we have and the concepts we are capable of
forming, we are cognitively closed to a full, bridging explanation by
the very structure of our minds (McGinn 1991).



Another view that has been gaining adherents of late is that there is
a real, unbridgeable gap, but it has no consequences for the nature of
consciousness and physicalist or functionalist theories thereof. On
this view, there is nothing in the gap that should lead us to any
bifurcation *in the world* between experiences and feelings on
the one hand and physical or functional phenomena on the other. There
aren't two sorts of natural phenomena: the irreducibly
subjective and the objective. The explanatory gap derives from the
special character of phenomenal *concepts*. These concepts
mislead us into thinking that the gap is deeper and more troublesome
than it really is.



On one version of this view, phenomenal concepts are just indexical
concepts applied to phenomenal states via introspection (see Lycan
1996). On an alternative version of the view, phenomenal concepts are
very special, first-person concepts different in kind from all others
(see Tye 2003). This response to the explanatory gap obviously bears
affinities to the second physicalist response sketched in Section 3 to
the Knowledge Argument. Unfortunately, if the appeal to phenomenal
concepts by the physicalist is misguided, then it cannot be used to
handle the gap.



There is no general agreement on how the gap is generated and what it
shows.


## 6. Qualia and Introspection



In the past, philosophers have often appealed directly to
introspection on behalf of the view that qualia are intrinsic,
non-intentional features of experiences. Recently, a number of
philosophers have claimed that introspection reveals no such qualities
(Harman 1990, Dretske 1995, Tye 1995, 2000). Suppose you are facing a
white wall, on which you see a bright red, round patch of paint.
Suppose you are attending closely to the color and shape of the patch
as well as the background. Now turn your attention from what you see
out there in the world before you to your visual experience. Focus
upon *your awareness of* the patch as opposed to *the
patch* of which you are aware. Do you find yourself suddenly
acquainted with new qualities, qualities that are intrinsic to your
visual experience in the way that redness and roundness are qualities
intrinsic to the patch of paint? According to some philosophers, the
answer to this question is a resounding 'No'. As you look
at the patch, you are aware of certain features out there in the
world. When you turn your attention inwards to your experience of
those features, you are aware *that* you are having an
experience of a certain sort but you aware *of* the very same
features; no new features of your experience are revealed. In this
way, your visual experience is transparent or diaphanous. When you try
to examine it, you see right through it, as it were, to the qualities
you were experiencing all along in being a subject of the experience,
qualities your experience is *of*. 



This point holds good, according to the philosophers above, even if
you are hallucinating and there is no real patch of paint on the wall
before you. Still you have an experience *of* there being a
patch of paint out there with a certain color and shape. It's
just that this time your experience is a misrepresentation. And if you
turn your attention inwards to your experience, you will
'see' right through it again to those very same
qualities.



These observations suggest that qualia, conceived of as the
immediately 'felt' qualities *of experiences* of
which we are cognizant when we attend to them introspectively, do not
really exist. The qualities of which we are aware are not qualities of
experiences at all, but rather qualities that, if they are qualities
of anything, are qualities of things in the world (as in the case of
perceptual experiences) or of regions of our bodies (as in the case of
bodily sensations). This is not to say that experiences do not have
qualia. The point is that qualia are not qualities of experiences.
This claim, which will be developed further in the next section, is
controversial and some philosophers deny outright the thesis of
transparency with respect to qualia (see Block 1991, 2000; Stoljar
2004; Nida-Rumelin 2007). According to Block, for example, qualia
are not presented to us in introspection as intrinsic, non-intentional
properties of our experiences. Still it does not follow from this that
we are not introspectively acquainted with such properties. For we do
know on the basis of introspection what it is like to undergo a visual
experience of blue, say. So, if what a state is like is a matter of
which intrinsic, non-intentional properties it tokens, then obviously
we are introspectively aware of properties of this sort (in the de re
sense of 'of'). On this view, whether qualia are
properties of experiences (in particular, intrinsic, non-intentional
properties) is a theoretical matter. Introspection does not settle the
matter one way or the other.


## 7. Representational Theories of Qualia



Talk of the ways things look and feel is intensional. If I have a red
after-image as a result of a flashbulb going off, the spot I
'see' in front of the photographer's face looks red,
even though there is no such spot. If I live in a world in which all
and only things that are purple are poisonous, it is still the case
that an object that looks purple to me does not thereby look poisonous
(in the phenomenal sense of 'looks'). If I feel a pain in
a leg, I need not even have a leg. My pain might be a pain in a
phantom limb. Facts such as these have been taken to provide further
support for the contention that some sort of representational account
is appropriate for qualia. 



If qualia are not qualities of experiences, as some philosophers
maintain on the basis of an appeal to introspection, and the only
qualities revealed in introspection are qualities represented by
experiences (qualities that, in the perceptual case, if they belong to
anything, belong to external things), a natural representational
proposal is that qualia are really representational contents of
experiences into which the represented qualities enter. This would
also explain why we talk of experiences \*having\* qualia or \*having\* a
phenomenal character. For the representational content of an
experience is something the experience has; just as meaning is
something a word has. Moreover, just as the meaning of a word is not a
quality the word possesses, so the phenomenal character of an
experience is not a quality the experience possesses.



If qualia are representational contents, just which contents are
these? Obviously there can be differences in the representational
contents of experiences without any phenomenal difference. If you and
I see a telescope from the same viewing angle, for example, then even
if I do not recognize it as a telescope and you do (so that our
experiences differ representationally at this level), the way the
telescope looks to both of us is likely pretty much the same (in the
phenomenal sense of 'looks'). Likewise, if a child is
viewing the same item from the same vantage point, her experience will
likely be pretty similar to yours and mine too. Phenomenally, our
experiences are all very much alike, notwithstanding certain
higher-level representational differences. This, according to some
representationalists, is because we all have experiences that
represent to us the same 3-D surfaces, edges, colors, and
surface-shapes plus a myriad of other surface details.



The representation we share here has a content much like that of the 2
1/2-D sketch posited by David Marr in his famous theory of vision
(1982) to which further shape and color information has been appended
(for details, see Tye 1995). This content is plausibly viewed as
nonconceptual. It forms the output of the early, largely modular
sensory processing and the input to one or another system of
higher-level cognitive processing. Representationalists sometimes
claim that it is here at this level of content that qualia are to be
found (see Dretske 1995, Tye 1995, 2000; for an opposing
representational view, see McDowell 1994).



One worry for this view is that if qualia are to be handled in terms
of representational content, then there had better be a content that
is shared by veridical visual experiences and their hallucinatory
counterparts. Disjunctivists have disputed the supposition that there
is a common content (see, e.g., Hinton 1973, Martin 1997, Snowdon
1990). Perhaps veridical experiences have only singular contents and
hallucinatory experiences have gappy contents or no content at all
(for an extended discussion of visual experience and content, see
Pautz 2010, Siegel 2011).



An alternative possibility is that qualia are properties represented
by experiences. On this view, there need be no common content shared
by veridical experiences and their hallucinatory counterparts. It
suffices that the same properties be represented. Of course, such a
view requires that a further account be provided of what it is that
makes a property represented by an experience a quale.



Some philosophers try to ground qualia in modes of representation
deployed by experiences within their representational contents. On one
version of this view, visual experiences not only represent the
external world but also represent themselves (for a recent collection
of essays elaboarating this view, see Kriegel and Williford 2006). For
example, my current visual experience of a red object not only
represents the object as red (this is my focal awareness) but also
represents itself as red (this is normally a kind of peripheral
awareness I have of my experience). When I introspect, the experience
alone provides me with awareness of itself -- no higher order
thought is necessary. What the experience is like for me is supposedly
its redness, where this is a mode of representation my experience uses
to represent real world redness.



This view is incompatible with the phenomenon of transparency (see
section 6) and it is very close to the classic qualiaphile view,
according to which when the subject introspects, she is aware of the
token experience and its phenomenal properties. The new twist is that
this awareness uses the token experience itself and one of its
contents.



Representationalists about qualia are often also externalists about
representational content (but not always -- see, for example,
Chalmers 2004). On this view, what a given experience represents is
metaphysically determined at least, in part, by factors in the
external environment. Thus, it is usually held, microphysical twins
can differ with respect to the representational contents of their
experiences. If these differences in content are of the right sort
then, according to the wide representationalist, microphysical twins
cannot *fail* to differ with respect to the phenomenal
character of their experiences. What makes for a difference in
representational content in microphysical duplicates is some external
difference, some connection between the subjects and items in their
respective environments. The generic connection is sometimes called
'tracking', though there is no general agreement as to in
what exactly tracking consists.



On wide representationalism, qualia (like meanings) ain't in the
head. The classic, Cartesian-based picture of experience and its
relation to the world is thus turned upside down. Qualia are not
intrinsic qualities of inner ideas of which their subjects are
directly aware, qualities that are necessarily shared by internal
duplicates however different their environments may be. Rather, they
are representational contents certain inner states possess, contents
whose nature is fixed at least in part by certain external relations
between individuals and their environments (Byrne and Tye 2006; for an
opposing but still representationalist view, see Pautz 2006).



Representationalism, as presented so far, is an identity thesis with
respect to qualia: qualia are supposedly one and the same as certain
representational *contents*. Sometimes it is held instead that
qualia are one and the same as certain representational
*properties* of experiences (or properties represented in
experiences); and sometimes it is is argued that these
representational properties are themselves irreducible (Siewert 1998).
There is also a weaker version of representationalism, according to
which it is metaphysically necessary that experiences exactly alike
with respect to their representational contents are exactly alike with
respect to their qualia. Obviously, this supervenience thesis leaves
open the further question as to the essential nature of qualia.



For further discussion, see Section 3 of the entry on
 representational theory of consciousness.
 Objections to representationalism are covered in the next
section.


## 8. Qualia as Intrinsic, Nonrepresentational Properties of Experiences



As noted in section 1, the term 'qualia' is sometimes used
for intrinsic nonrepresentational, consciously accessible properties
of experience. Representationalists deny that there are qualia in this
sense, while identifying qualia in the broad sense (that is, qualia as
phenomenal character) with representational properties. However, some
philosophers hold that there are qualia in the sense of intrinsic
nonrepresentational properties of experience. These philosophers deny
representationalism, and identify qualia in the broad sense with
intrinsic nonrepresentational properties of experience. This view is
the subject of the present section.



As noted earlier, some philosophers deny that experience is
transparent. They claim that introspection does not show that
experiences lack introspectible, intrinsic, nonrepresentational
properties. Further, they insist that representationalism encounters
decisive objections. These objections may be seen as making up one
pillar in the main foundation for the view that experiences have
qualia, conceived of now as intrinsic, nonrepresentational properties.
The second pillar consists in what is sometimes called "the
common kind assumption", namely that veridical and hallucinatory
experiences sometimes share the same phenomenal character (have the
same qualia). This assumption is accepted by all the advocates of the
views discussed so far but it is denied by advocates of relational
theories of qualia (see section 9).



Objections to representational views of qualia often take the form of
putative counter-examples. One class of these consists of cases in
which, it is claimed, experiences have the same representational
content but different phenomenal character. Christopher Peacocke
adduces examples of this sort in his 1983. According to some (e.g.,
Block 1990, Shoemaker forthcoming), the Inverted Spectrum also
supplies an example that falls into this category. Another class is
made up of problem cases in which allegedly experiences have different
representational contents (of the relevant sort) but the same
phenomenal character. Ned Block's Inverted Earth example (1990)
is of this type. The latter cases only threaten strong
representationalism, the former are intended to refute
representationalism in both its strong and weaker forms.
Counter-examples are also sometimes given in which supposedly
experience of one sort or another is present but in which there is no
state with representational content. Swampman (Davidson 1986) --
the molecule by molecule replica of one of us, formed accidentally by
the chemical reaction that occurs in a swamp when a partially
submerged log is hit by lightning -- is one such counter-example,
according to some philosophers. But there are more mundane cases.
Consider the exogenous feeling of depression. That, it may seem, has
no representational content. Likewise, the exogenous feeling of
elation. Yet these experiences certainly differ phenomenally.



There isn't space to go through all these objections. We briefly
discuss just one: Inverted Earth. Inverted Earth is an imaginary
planet, on which things have complementary colors to the colors of
their counterparts on Earth. The sky is yellow, grass is red, ripe
tomatoes are green, and so on. The inhabitants of Inverted Earth
undergo psychological attitudes and experiences with inverted
intentional contents relative to those of people on Earth. They think
that the sky is yellow, see that grass is red, etc. However, they call
the sky 'blue', grass 'green', ripe tomatoes
'red', etc. just as we do. Indeed, in all respects
consistent with the alterations just described, Inverted Earth is as
much like Earth as possible.



In Block's original version of the tale, mad scientists insert
color-inverting lenses in your eyes and take you to Inverted Earth,
where you are substituted for your Inverted Earth twin or
doppelganger. Upon awakening, you are aware of no difference, since
the inverting lenses neutralize the inverted colors. You think that
you are still where you were before. What it is like for you when you
see the sky or anything else is just what it was like on earth. But
after enough time has passed, after you have become sufficiently
embedded in the language and physical environment of Inverted Earth,
your intentional contents will come to match those of the other
inhabitants. You will come to believe that the sky is yellow, for
example, just as they do. Similarly, you will come to have a visual
experience that represents the sky as yellow. For the experiential
state you now undergo, as you view the sky, is the one that, in you,
now normally tracks yellow things. So, the later you will come to be
subject to inner states that are intentionally inverted relative to
the inner states of the earlier you, while the phenomenal aspects of
your experiences will remain unchanged. 



Perhaps the simplest reply that can be made with respect to this
objection is to deny that there really is any change in normal
tracking with respect to color, at least as far as your experiences
go. "Normal", after all, has both teleological and
nonteleological senses. If what an experience normally tracks is what
nature designed it to track, what it has as its biological purpose to
track, then shifting environments from Earth to Inverted Earth will
make no difference to normal tracking and hence no difference to the
representational contents of your experiences. The sensory state that
nature designed in your species to track blue in the setting in which
your species evolved will continue to do just that even if through
time, on Inverted Earth, in that alien environment, it is usually
caused in you by looking at yellow things.



The suggestion that tracking is teleological in character, at least
for the case of basic experiences, goes naturally with the plausible
view that states like feeling pain or having a visual sensation of red
are phylogenetically fixed (Dretske 1995). However, it encounters
serious difficulties with respect to the Swampman case mentioned
above. On a cladistic conception of species, Swampman is not human.
Indeed, lacking any evolutionary history, he belongs to no species at
all. His inner states play no teleological role. Nature did not design
any of them to do anything. So, if phenomenal character is a certain
sort of teleo-representational content, as some representationalists
hold, then Swampman has no experiences and no qualia. This, for many
philosophers, is *very* difficult to believe.



There are alternative replies available (see Lycan 1996, Tye 2000) in
connection with the Inverted Earth problem. These involve either
denying that qualia do remain constant with the switch to Inverted
Earth or arguing that a non-teleological account of sensory content
may be elaborated, under which qualia stay the same.



As noted above, the second pillar in the foundation of the view that
qualia are intrinsic, nonrepresentational properties of experiences is
the common kind assumption. Those philosophers who accept this
assumption see it (in the perceptual case) as providing the simplest,
best explanation of the fact that hallucinations and veridical
perceptions sometimes seem exactly alike to their subjects. It is
granted, of course, that it does not follow that there is something
common between hallucinations and perceptions in such cases from the
fact that they seem alike. Nonetheless, it is a challenge to those who
reject this assumption (see section 9) to provide a better
explanation.


## 9. Relational Theories of Qualia



Relational theories of qualia typically begin with the naive realist
thesis that in normal circumstances perceivers are directly aware of
the objects around them and various properties that they have. It is
then proposed that since perceivers are also directly aware of what
their experiences are like, the phenomenal character of their
experiences in such cases is to be understood in terms of the relevant
objects and their properties along with the viewpoint from which they
are being observed. More precisely, it is urged that the phenomenal
character is constituted by the objects that the perceiver sees, some
of their properties and how they are arranged relative to the
viewer.(Campbell 2002) 



In later work, Campbell (2009) allows that the viewer's
'standpoint' needs to be factored into phenomenal
character too. The standpoint a perceiver occupies includes much more
than just the egocentric frame of the perceiver. It includes the sense
modality used to perceive, the time and place of the perceiving as
well as the distance from the perceived object, the orientation of the
perceiver relative to the object, and the temporal dynamics of the
experience. Consciousness of an object, for Campbell, now consists in
a three-place relation between a perceiver, an object, and a
standpoint. With what exactly phenomenal character itself is to be
identified, on this proposal, is unclear. 



Bill Brewer (2011) agrees with Campbell that a third relatum is needed
in naive realist accounts of perceptual experience, where the
third relatum includes the sense modality of the experience, the
spatio-temporal point of view, and other relevant circumstances of
perception but he does not specify what exactly these circumstances
are. William Fish (2009) takes a similar position, arguing that the
third element should include idiosyncracies of the perceiver's
visual system as well as attentional facts about the perceiver since
two ordinary perceivers viewing the same object from the same position
may nonetheless differ in the character of their visual experiences,
depending upon how good their eyesight is (for example) and how they
distribute their attention.



Of course, when one is (completely) hallucinating, there are no
objects that one sees. So, relationism cannot allow that the
phenomenal character in this case is the same as in the veridical
case. Accordingly, relationists reject what was called in the last
section "the common kind assumption". One possible view
consistent with relationism is that in hallucinatory cases the
phenomenal character is a matter of the representational content of
the experience, as is claimed on some versions of representationalism.
Another view, held by some relationists, is that there is nothing more
to the phenomenal character of a hallucinatory experience -- for
example, an experience of a red triangle -- than its being
indiscriminable or indistinguishable from a veridical experience of a
red triangle (Martin 2004, Fish 2009). On this view, in giving a
mental characterization of a hallucinatory experience, there is
nothing more to be said than that it has a certain relational and
epistemological property, namely that of being indiscriminable from
the relevant perceptual experience.



Sometimes relationists try to motivate their view by arguing that
since the seen objects are constituents of veridical visual
experiences and they are not in the case of hallucinatory experiences,
the experiences in the two cases must themselves be different.
However, even if this is correct, it does not follow that they cannot
share the same phenomenal character. What follows is rather that if
they do share a common phenomenal character, then the conscious
experiences are not to be individuated (solely) by that phenomenal
character.



One problem facing Martin's relational account of hallucinatory
phenomenal character is that of cognitively unsophisticated
perceivers. Dogs can hallucinate but they lack the cognitive
wherewithal to judge that their hallucinatory experiences of bones are
the same or different from their veridical experiences of squirrels.
In at least one clear sense of 'indiscriminable', then,
their hallucinatory experiences of bones are indiscriminable to them
from their veridical experiences of squirrels. But the phenomenal
character of these experiences is certainly different. (For a
discussion of this problem and a response to it, see Martin 2004. For
criticisms, see Siegel 2009.)



Another problem for the relational view is that it cannot easily
handle cases of normal misperception, for example, the Muller-Lyer
illusion. Campbell tells us that idiosyncrasies of the perceiver may
affect phenomenal character, but he has no account to offer of cases
in which something looks other than it is even to normal observers in
normal circumstances. Here the scene before the eyes fails to capture
the phenomenology. Brewer says that illusions are to be accounted for
in terms of visually relevant similarities to paradigms of a kind of
which the perceived object is not an instance. In the case of the
Muller-Lyer, the paradigm is a pair of lines one longer and more
distant than its plane, the other shorter and less distant. This
proposal encounters various potential difficulties (Pautz 2010). For
example, in the waterfall illusion, the water appears to be moving and
not moving at the same time. Here there are no suitable paradigms in
the real world. (See the entry on
 the disjunctive theory of perception.)
 


## 10. Illusionism about Qualia



According to illusionists (Dennett 2019, 2020; Frankish 2016; Kammerer
2021), conscious experience is an illusion. It certainly seems to us
that conscious experiences, and thus qualia (at least in sense (1) of
the four senses distinguished at the beginning of this entry) exist,
but in reality there are no such things. Qualia are like Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny (Dennett 2020). It is not being denied here that
through the use of our senses, we genuinely encounter a wide range of
qualities, for example, in perception, colors, auditory qualities such
as pitch and loudness, various textures and aromas. But the qualities
so encountered are not properties of experiences; for we do not
genuinely undergo any experiences. To be sure, when we introspect, it
certainly seems to us that we are the subjects of experiences with
widely varying phenomenal character. But we are wrong. 



There is a possible weaker version of this view under which it is only
qualia in senses (2)-(4) that are being repudiated. And in some
passages, some adherents of illusionism seem inclined to endorse this
alternative. Frankish, for example, holds that we are under an
illusion in thinking that when we introspect, we come across special,
private qualities. But he also says that consciousness is a matter of
being related to the world in various informational and reactive ways.
This suggests that he holds that consciousness really does exist and
thus also qualia in sense (1). Still, there are other passages in
Frankish that endorse the unqualified line, and overall he seems to
accept the strong illusionist view. 



This position is not easy to take seriously; for what could be more
obvious than the existence of conscious experience? Adherents of the
view may respond that introspection simply leads us astray. On the
basis of introspection, we believe that we undergo experiences (states
with qualia in sense (1)), but the beliefs so formed are false. What
would help strong illusionism here is a theory of introspection which
can explain the apparent absurdity of the view. Such a theory is
proposed in Kammerer 2021. 


## 11. Russellian Monism about Qualia



Russellian Monism (RM) gets its name from a view Bertrand Russell held
in 1927 and that he himself called 'neutral monism'. The key idea
of this view is that the fundamental entities in micro-reality have
intrinsic natures not specified in microphysics, natures made up of
properties (known as quiddities), some of which are crucial to
consciousness and conscious states. The standard reductive version
holds that the relevant properties are themselves genuinely conscious
properties (that is, qualia) of various sorts. Advocates include for
example, Grover Maxwell (1978), David Chalmers (1995 and 1997), Dan
Stoljar (2001 and 2006), Galen Strawson (2006), and Barbara Montero
(2010). An alternative version of Russellian Monism has it that the
relevant properties are only proto-phenomenal. On one interesting
version of this view (panqualityism), these properties are not
genuinely phenomenal since they are unexperienced but they are
nonetheless of the same kind as the phenomenal qualities present in
our experiences of pain or color (Coleman 2006, 2015). It is a
consequence of this view that the latter qualities themselves are
qualities of a sort that are only contingently experienced. What makes
these qualities qualia just is the fact that they are experienced.




There is debate about whether RM is really a physicalist view. One
thing at least is clear: RM differs from the usual forms of
physicalism in its reliance on quiddities and its assertion that
specific quiddities are crucial to macro-conscious states. Of course,
if the Russellian monist holds that some quiddities are genuinely
phenomenal properties, then some physical things will have subjective
properties as well as objective ones. And this might lead some to deny
that RM is really a form of physicalism. Still, this seems to me a
verbal dispute about how to use the term 'physicalism'.



Russellian monists can say that they agree with dualists about the
conceivability (and indeed metaphysical possibility) of zombies.
Zombies are conceivable, they can claim, since it is conceivable that
there are beings the same as us except for the phenomenally relevant
quiddities. These beings are structurally, functionally, and
behaviorally just like us but they lack any conscious states.



The quiddities generally that are phenomenally relevant are very
different from macro-phenomenal properties; for it would be absurd to
hold that quarks feel pains and itches and experience colors. So how
are our qualia related to micro-qualia? This question poses the
combination problem for the Russellian monist about macro-qualia (see
here Goff 2006, Coleman 2014, Lewtas 2013, Roelofs 2019, Tye 2021). If
our qualia are simple, then there is real emergence and reductive
Russellian Monism is false. On the other hand, if our qualia are
generated from combinations of micro-qualia, then why is it that our
qualia seem (in some cases at any rate) so simple, so utterly lacking
in components? To date, there is no agreed upon solution to the
combination problem.


## 12. Which Creatures Undergo States with Qualia?



Do frogs have qualia? Or fish? What about honey bees? Somewhere down
the phylogenetic scale phenomenal consciousness ceases. But where? It
is sometimes supposed that once we begin to reflect upon much simpler
beings than ourselves -- snails, for example -- we are left
with nothing physical or structural that we could plausibly take to
help us determine whether they are phenomenally conscious (Papineau
1994). There is really *no* way of our knowing if spiders are
subject to states with qualia, as they spin their webs, or if fish
undergo any phenomenal experiences, as they swim about in the sea.




Representationalism has the beginnings of an answer to the above
questions. If what it is for a state to have phenomenal character is
(very roughly) that it be a state that (i) carries information about
certain features, internal or external, and (ii) is such that this
information stands ready and available to make a direct difference to
beliefs and desires (or belief- and desire-like states), then
creatures that are incapable of reasoning, of changing their behavior
in light of assessments they make, based upon information provided to
them by sensory stimulation of one sort or another, are not
phenomenally conscious. Tropistic organisms, on this view, feel and
experience nothing. They have no qualia. They are full-fledged
unconscious automata or zombies, rather as blindsight subjects are
restricted unconscious automata or partial zombies with respect to a
range of visual stimuli.



Consider, for example, the case of plants. There are many different
sorts of plant behavior. Some plants climb, others eat flies, still
others catapult out seeds. Many plants close their leaves at night.
The immediate cause of these activities is something internal to the
plants. Seeds are ejected because of the hydration or dehydration of
the cell walls in seed pods. Leaves are closed because of water
movement in the stems and petioles of the leaves, itself induced by
changes in the temperature and light. These inner events or states are
surely not phenomenal. There is nothing it is like to be a Venus Fly
Trap or a Morning-Glory.



The behavior of plants is inflexible. It is genetically determined
and, therefore, not modifiable by learning. Natural selection has
favored the behavior, since historically it has been beneficial to the
plant species. But it need not be now. If, for example, flies start to
carry on their wings some substance that sickens Venus Fly Traps for
several days afterwards, this will not have any effect on the plant
behavior with respect to flies. Each Venus Fly Trap will continue to
snap at flies as long as it has the strength to do so.



Plants do not learn from experience. They do not acquire beliefs and
change them in light of things that happen to them. Nor do they have
any desires. To be sure, we sometimes speak as if they do. We say that
the wilting daffodils are just begging to be watered. But we recognize
full well that this is a harmless facon de parler. What we mean
is that the daffodils *need* water. There is here no
goal-directed behavior, no purpose, nothing that is the result of any
learning, no desire *for* water.



Plants, on the representational view, are not subject to any qualia.
Nothing that goes on inside them is poised to make a direct difference
to what they believe or desire, since they have no beliefs or
desires.



Reasoning of the above sort can be used to make a case that even
though qualia do not extend to plants and paramecia, qualia are very
widely distributed in nature (see Tye 1997, 2000). Of course, such a
case requires decisions to be made about the attribution of beliefs
and desires (or belief- and desire-like states) to much simpler
creatures. And such decisions are likely to be controversial in some
cases. Moreover, representationalism itself is a very controversial
position. The general topic of the origins of qualia is not one on
which philosophers have said a great deal. (For a general,
wide-ranging discussion of this issue that is neutral on the nature of
qualia, see Tye 2016.)