Qualia and representations

Elisabeth Pacherie

pp. 119-144

in: Denis Fisette (ed), Consciousness and intentionality, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

Philosophical attitudes towards qualia divide into three main types. First, there are qualia enthusiasts who claim that qualia exist and do not reduce to anything else. These philosophers also typically consider that the existence of qualia is sufficient to doom physicalist or functionalist approaches to the mind. Supporters of qualia elimination are to be found at the opposite end of the spectrum. They deny that mental states and events actually possess the qualitative properties attributed to them by qualia friends and, as a consequence, they advocate quining qualia. In between these two extreme positions stand the advocates of demystification. They admit the existence of qualia but they try to dissipate the air of mystery that surrounds them by showing that they can be accounted for in functional or representational terms.