Qualia

Representational Content and Phenomenal Character

Perception informs us about the nature of things in the world around us. I smell the lilacs in my backyard and see the orange flowers of the marigolds. I feel the wind on my face and hear the blaring horn of a fire truck passing through a nearby intersection. In all of these cases, the things I am smelling, seeing, feeling, or hearing are ordinary objects such as bushes, flowers, air, and large motor vehicles. These things may or may not have the properties I perceive them to have, but it is the flowers that may or may not be orange and a large motor vehicle that may or may not be emitting loud noises. In the common jargon of philosophy, we can say that my perceptual experience represents the marigolds to be orange and the fire truck to be loud. Correspondingly, we can characterize the (representational) content of my experience as including the orangeness of the flowers and the loudness of the truck. One aspect of the content of my experience of looking at a marigold is similar to an aspect of the content of my experience of an orange. Both experiences have as a part of their content that something is orange.

When I look at a marigold, I will, in many circumstances, visually represent it to be orange. In addition, there is something it is like to see (or appear to see) a marigold as orange. Seeing a marigold to be orange is different from reading that marigolds are orange, and at least part of that difference derives from a difference in what it's like to visually experience something as orange compared with the experience of reading the word orange. Again using the jargon of philosophy, the experience of seeing a marigold as orange has a particular phenomenal character. Just as the content of the experience of seeing a marigold is similar in some ways to the content of seeing an orange, the phenomenal character of the two experiences is also similar. Experiences that are similar in what it is like to have them, in their phenomenal character, [Page 850]are similar in their experienced qualia, whereas experiences that differ in their phenomenal character are different in their experienced qualia.

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