qualia
In plain wordsThe individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.
The felt qualities of conscious experience as they present themselves to introspection — what it is like to see a particular shade, hear a tone or feel an ache — considered as properties distinct from the physical and functional processes that cause them. In philosophy of mind qualia are the standard challenge to functionalismfunctionalism, n.: The view that minds are defined by how they work, not what they are made of: pain, for example, is whatever inner state plays pain's part, linking injury, other thoughts and behavior. and physicalism, pressed through thought experiments about inverted spectra, absent qualia (the philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind.) and the knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?. Some philosophers use the word neutrally for the phenomenal character of experience; others reserve it for properties that are intrinsic, ineffable and private, and deny that anything has such properties. Questions about AI consciousness are often put as whether a system's internal states have qualia rather than merely carrying information about color or damage.
Origin
From Latin qualis, 'of what kind'. Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the singular 'quale' into philosophy in 1866; C. I. Lewis gave the word its modern philosophical sense in Mind and the World Order (1929). Daniel Dennett's 'Quining Qualia' (1988) is the best-known attack on the concept.
Usage note
A plural noun; the singular is quale. In AI writing it should refer only to felt experience, not to a network's internal featuresfeature, n.: One piece of information about each example that a model uses, like a house's size or a pixel's color, or a pattern a model has learned to detect inside itself. or representations, which can encode color without implying any experience of it.
Related
- phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
- hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience.
- knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?
- philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind.
- illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems.
- consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question.
Sources
- Lewis, C. I. (1929). Mind and the World Order. Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Dennett, D. C. (1988). Quining Qualia. In A. Marcel & E. Bisiach (eds.), Consciousness in Contemporary Science. Oxford University Press.
Mentioned in
sentiencesentience, n.: The ability to have feelings that are good or bad for you, such as pleasure, pain, comfort or distress. It is the most common test for whether a being's welfare matters morally., Daniel DennettDaniel Dennett, prop. n.: An American philosopher who argued that minds are what brains do, that consciousness can in principle be explained scientifically, and that we understand machines by treating them as if they had beliefs and goals., functionalismfunctionalism, n.: The view that minds are defined by how they work, not what they are made of: pain, for example, is whatever inner state plays pain's part, linking injury, other thoughts and behavior., hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience., phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information., philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind., illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems., knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?, Thomas NagelThomas Nagel, prop. n.: An American philosopher whose 1974 essay 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' defined consciousness as there being something it is like to be a creature, a test now applied to machines.