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Philosophy vocabulary · Philosophy of Mind

Qualia

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

/ˈkwɑːliə/nounAdvanced term

In philosophy, qualia means: The subjective qualities of conscious experience, such as how the redness of red looks or how a headache feels to the person who has it.

In Turkish: qualia, nitel deneyim özellikleri, duyusal nitelikler

How it is used

A plural noun; the singular quale is rare. Qualia are central to arguments against physicalism, such as Mary's room and the inverted spectrum. Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, deny that qualia exist in the sense their defenders claim.

Example sentences

  1. Could a robot that reacts to colors have qualia, or only the behavior?

  2. Mary's room is meant to show that qualia are something physics leaves out.

Common collocations

  • visual qualia
  • inverted qualia
  • the problem of qualia
  • deny qualia
  • consciousnessThe state of having experiences, of there being something it is like to see, feel or think; also the state of being awake and aware.
  • hard problem of consciousnessThe problem of explaining why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience at all, instead of running without any inner feeling.
  • physicalismThe view that everything that exists is physical or depends entirely on the physical, so that the mind is ultimately part of the physical world.
  • dualismThe view that the mind and the body are fundamentally different kinds of thing, so that mental states are not simply physical states.

More terms: Philosophy of Mind

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