According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , q ualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences. What it feels li...
Many philosophers have argued that qualia cannot be identified with or reduced to anything physical and that any attempted explanation of the world in solely physicalist terms would leave qualia out.
An example of qualia is a thought experiment involving Mary, who has spent her entire life in a black-and-white room. Although she has normal color vision, her confinement has prevented her from ever having any color sensations. While in the room, Mary has studied color science through black and white textbooks, television, etc. And in that way, she has learned the complete physical story about the color experience, including all the physical facts about the brain and its visual system. She knows all the physical facts about color. But she has never seen anything in color. Now suppose that Mary is one day released from her black and white room to the colored world.
When she is released from the room, Mary learns something about the color, namely, what seeing color is like. What Mary learns consists of new, factual information. So there are facts about color in addition to all the physical facts about color (since Mary already knew all the physical facts about color). Thus, the argument goes, physicalism is false.
The argument may be put like this:
(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before her release.
(2) But there is some information about the human color vision that she does not have before her release.
Therefore
(3) Not all information is physical information.
Our basic scientific assumption about nature is that the world and everything in it consist of things that physically exist. Mary knows all the physical knowledge about colors, yet she can gain new knowledge. Consequently, this new knowledge cannot be physical. So our world is not just made up of things that physically exist. Mary’s case seeks to prove that the subjectivity of feeling cannot be tied to a physical state.
The conclusion drawn from the thought experiment contains a strict condition: Mary has all the physical information related to colors before seeing colors. However, we may deduct a different conclusion if we could see that this condition is not valid. The original conclusion of the thought experiment with Mary raises the question of whether it is possible to obtain all information, all knowledge indirectly without the sensory activity that directly triggers the experience?
Mary’s case is a thought experiment, but we can find examples that exist in reality through which we can approach the essence of qualia related to information in practice. For example, are we able to learn to ride a bike without actually riding a bike? Can we master the ability to ride a bike by knowing all the information that can be learned indirectly about riding a bike? We know how the bike works, we know the rules of gravity, we see others cycling, we’ve even pushed a bike, but we’ve never sat on a two-wheeled vehicle before. Can we ride a bike then?
The answer to this question is obviously no. The feeling of balance while cycling is a condition that we could only obtain by cycling, we can only acquire this ability directly. The feeling of cycling falls just as much in the category of qualia as the feeling of color.
So it would follow that the feeling of cycling cannot be linked to a physical condition either. I can learn to ride a bike directly only, just by trying, practicing, and experiencing it. It’s also obvious that when I learned to ride a bike I gained a new ability, I gained a new state of my brain that I didn’t have before, no matter how much knowledge I had about cycling. And this new ability has physical representation. Connections have developed in my brain that didn’t exist before.
Let’s also try to approach Mary’s case from a physiological direction, from the direction of brain functions. In Mary's case, therefore, the question can also be asked: did Mary's brain's state change after she saw the colors? If so, this change means a new, physical representation of knowledge. In this case, this new physically existing knowledge is related to qualia, this physical change creates the experience of qualia, i.e., qualia is a state that has a physical form that appears in the brain.
In Mary’s case then, the question can also be asked whether there is any physical representation of the information that Mary gains when, and only when she sees something colorful.
The physiological process of color vision is well known. We know how the light of a certain wavelength activates the sensory nerves of the eye, how and which parts of the brain are stimulated. This process of seeing must be related to the experience of seeing color since, in the physically healthy brain, the perception of color is linked to the experience of seeing color.
Suppose that the experience of color, the qualia, does not arise somewhere else, but (either physically or not physically) in the brain. In this case, the problem of qualia can also be defined this way: without the sight of color, merely by learning, indirectly obtaining information about colors, can brain areas that are related to color vision be activated?
The question is of an experimental nature and can be decided by examination. Observations can prove that color vision has nerves that do not activate without seeing color. Mary, who is able to see colors but does not see any colored objects, is unable to activate the same neural pathways that are active when she sees colors only by learning and indirectly gaining information about it. There is a physical difference between the state when Mary indirectly knows everything about colors and when she sees colors. Just as we have seen in the case of qualia of cycling.
Suppose Mary is still in a black-and-white environment, but she has the technical opportunity to artificially stimulate the neural pathways associated with color vision by electrical impulses. Does she gain the experience of seeing color? If the right nerves in the eye are stimulated, then yes. Mary is able to get her experience of color vision without directly perceiving color.
Obviously, in order for the sky seen in the black-and-white image to be blue, it is necessary to stimulate exactly the blue receptors that cover the view of the black-and-white sky. The point though is that Mary knows everything about colors, she has all the indirect (without seeing the colors) information about colors, still, she does not have all the information that can be associated with colors. Yet, she can obtain the missing information without the physical appearance of the colors, by the appropriate artificial stimulation of the sensory pathways.
Mary’s example is therefore not capable of proving that Mary does not gain new information that physically exists as a result of seeing colors. Mary gains new information by looking at the colors. The conclusion that there is information that is not physical, the qualia cannot be linked to a physical structure, does not ensue from Mary’s example.
However, a new question arises. Can it be inferred from this that qualia are the same as the information, the knowledge, the state of the brain that arises when Mary sees the color directly only or arises stimulating the corresponding neural pathways of color receptors by artificial stimulation?
Neither can it be said that the physical equivalent of qualia is the activity of groups of nerves that become stimulated when and only when we see colors or when we artificially stimulate color receptors, although it is certainly related to it.
Those who have already seen colors can imagine the colors, the blue sky, the red tomato without seeing it directly with their eyes. Obviously, the black-and-white Mary would be unable to do so without a previous sense of color.
Is the acquired knowledge the same while learning to ride a bike directly with the feeling of riding a bike? We can create a cycling robot. Does a cycling robot have the qualia of balance? Does a cycling robot feel? A cycling robot zombie or sentient being?
Obviously, we don’t know what it feels like to ride a bike for a robot. Nor can we know if it has this feeling, nor can we simply rule it out. A robot won’t even tell us, understand to us what it’s like to ride a bike.
Neither this reasoning explains what qualia are. It merely seeks to prove that the philosophical argument which precludes the qualia from being a representation of physically existing information is inaccurate. There is a physical difference between Mary who sees colors and Mary who does not see colors but knows indirectly everything about colors.
So, what physical condition is qualia? What is the physical representation of qualia?
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