Essay
Importance of Qualia in Philosophy
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- Metaphysics of mind
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- AQA
An essay on the importance of qualia within the framework of metaphysics of mind
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Emily Kitchen 13QDo qualia exist? (25 marks)
Qualia are intrinsic and non-intentional phenomenal (what it is likeness) properties that are intro-
spectively accessible. I believe that qualia do exist through the zombie argument, the knowledge ar-
gument and our explanatory gap.
Chalmers used his philosophical zombie argument to support property dualism, which explains that
there are is only one substance: the physical but that it can have two sets of properties, which are ei-
ther physical or mental. It also argues that there are at least some mental properties that are neither
reducible to nor supervenient upon physical properties. In the zombie argument, Chalmers tries to
refute physicalism by arguing that philosophical zombies which are hypothetical beings which is
physically and functionally identical to a regular human being but without consciousness are meta-
physically possible, whereas a physical copy of the world would have to have consciousness, imply-
ing that philosophical zombies aren’t metaphysically possible. His argument is as follows:
P1. Physicalism claims consciousness is physical
C1. So if physicalism is true then zombie world is impossible
P2. But we can conceive of a physically identical world with no consciousness (a zombie world)
P3. What is conceivable is metaphysically possible
C2. Therefore a zombie world must be metaphysically possible
C3. Therefore physicalism is false
This argument is robust as it is deductive and a priori and so is therefore strong in arguing for the
existence of qualia.
However, there are some responses to the zombie argument such as the argument that a zombie
world is not conceivable. Although Chalmers claims there is no logical contradiction to a zombie
world, other philosophers point out that the argument is given plausibility due to our lack of under-
standing, if we were to have a full neuroscientific account of how phenomenal consciousness then
we would be able to see the incoherence of a philosophical zombie.
Putnam also argues that what is conceivable may not be metaphysically possible, for example be-
fore molecular structure was discovered, people thought water was different to H2O and this wasn’t
contradictory. He concludes that we cannot determine a priori what the metaphysical properties are
(as Chalmers tried to do) but must gain empirical evidence, a posteriori.
Another response is what is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the real world, like in
Descartes’ conceivability argument we may agree things are metaphysically possible but are they
any help to the real world?
However, Chalmers responds to these criticisms by saying that consciousness cannot be completely
analysed in physical and functional terms such an analysis cannot capture the intrinsic quality of
what conscious experience is like. This is successful and seems to be simple and easily compre-
hendible.
The Knowledge/Mary argument was introduced by Jackson and is used as a thought experiment to
investigate the existence of qualia. The thought experiment asks us to imagine Mary, a neuroscien-
tist who has spent her whole life in a monochrome room. She has learnt all the neuroscientific pro-
cesses so that she knows all the physical processes that happen in someone’s brain when they see
colour for the first time. Then Jackson asks, if Mary were to leave the room, would she learn any-
thing new upon seeing/experiencing colour for herself, for the first time. This explains that we can
know all the physical facts about colour, but we will always miss the qualia, and what it is likeness
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