Josh Adkisson

And Nothing Besides: The Absence of Qualia in Explanations of Empirical Data

The issue of qualia has plagued the philosophy of mind for some time, and it is not a
debate that will likely soon disappear. The questions surrounding qualia remain generally the
same: whether qualia exist, what they are, whether they are explainable in any substantial way,
whether they are reducible to physical phenomena, whether they help explain anything, including
scientific findings or thought experiments, and so on. The final questionwhether qualia help
explain anythingis perhaps the most interesting, as the question brings to light several
important aspects of the terminology of qualia, and, moreover, aspects of the problem of
consciousness itself. Discussing the relation between qualia and empirical data demands answers
to the other questions mentioned; however, for the purpose of this essay, I shall assume that
qualia are not reducible to physical events. This leaves an important questionwhat exactly are
qualia? This essay shall attempt to answer that question, ultimately showing that, because the
terminology of qualia is incomprehensible, qualia do absolutely no explanatory work in
accounting for those empirical observations which they ought account for in some fashion
As a term, qualia is fraught with problems. Blackmore states that A quale is what
something is like (21). A quale is commonly supposed to be raw perception, experience as
such, ineffable, indescribably, accessible only by what could be called a mystical experience.
There is no way to describe the quale of red to a colorblind person, no way to transfer the smell
of tobacco to someone who is incapable of smell, no way to show the deaf the sound of an old

violin. Indeed, even if one could translate these experiences into the language of another
person, they would not be the same qualia; an intrinsic part of a quale is that any given quale
belongs only to one person. Only I can experience the sight of a particular painting at a particular
time from a particular angle, and, most importantly, only I can do so as myself. Any sort of
transfer of a quale from myself to another would make it a different quale, by definition, for it
would belong to a different subject. One might say that qualia are the last refuge for the
Cartesian cherub that guards the ego's divinity, for it is only by qualia that dualism remains
justifiable. Though this claim initially may seem unfair, an examination of the term qualia
unveils pertinent meanings, latent in the concept of qualia itself. One aspect of this definition that
ought to stand out is that qualia are always defined in reference to other persons, but always in
reference as a way of distancing. Qualia are not objects which two people can beholdthey are
individuated experiences of individual persons. Every quale is ineffable, private, and infallibly
known qua itself by the one to whom the quale belongs. One cannot explain any particular quale
in the way that one can explain a mathematical truth, for qualia particularly are not subjects of
teaching. Yet, even so, every person has the charism of infallibility as regards qualia. Insofar as
one knows that he is experiencing a quale, and insofar as he knows the character of this quale,
this knowledge is infallible. Qualia are known infalliblythis may be the most significant aspect
of qualia, at least for our purposes.
Yet this does not quite point to the problem as clearly as is necessary. Quale, as a concept,
arises out of and leads back to a sort of inverse Cartesianism, which presupposes the external
world, and from this basis attempts to either justify, explain, or explain away consciousness,
qualia, and all such phenomena of questionable physicality. This inverse Cartesianism is most

evident in the various thought experiments used to justify the idea that qualia are non-physical.
Blackmore presents two of these arguments, the first being about Mary the color scientist and
the second being the philosophical zombie argument.
The Mary the color scientist argument supposes that, in the distant future, mankind has
discovered and formalized all that there is to know about the events in the brain and their
relations with behavior. Mary, a color scientist, knows everything having to do with color,
including how color works in the physical world, how eyes receive color, how the brain
processes color, how seeing color causes reactions in the perceiver, and so on. However, she has
lived her entire life in a black and white room. The thought experiment supposes that, were she
to leave and see colors for the first time, she would have new knowledge, specifically of what it
is like to see the colors she has never in fact seen before (Blackmore 23-24).1
The first thing to notice about this thought experiment is that it is focused on qualia as
objects which impart new knowledge. In the thought experiment, Mary bears the status of a
subject which [who] experiences or perceives a particular object, or rather several objects, i.e. the
qualia of various colors. The question of the thought experiment is whether, in perceiving these
new objects, new knowledge is obtained. If new knowledge is not obtained (in the circumstances
provided for by the thought experiment), then qualia either must be reducible or must not exist at
all. Yet what sort of object are qualia supposed to be? For, ostensibly, they are not objects that are
accessible to all; instead, they are private. Indeed, they are objects that are accessible only to the
subject to whom they belong. Only I can see a particular instance of red at a particular time from
my particular vantage point.
1

Daniel Dennett responds to this thought experiment by accusing it of failing to play by its own rules. His
argument is presented in more detail in Blackmore, pp. 24-25. Suffice to say, it is not my intention to disprove
that the thought experiment does what it is trying to do. Rather, the point is precisely to examine what it is trying
to do in detail.

Yet this does not answer what sort of object qualia are. Looking again at the three aspects
of qualiaineffable, private, and infallibleit would seem that their role as object is
unimportant. The most significant aspect of qualia is that they imply a subject; it would seem,
even, that they necessarily imply that there must be a conscious subject, ego, or consciousness.
Indeed, this implication is one of the main reasons for qualia being employed in argumentation.
If qualia imply consciousness, then, supposing one can support their existence, consciousness
exists.2 In this light, it would be most prudent to briefly examine the second of the justifications
for qualia which Blackmore discusses: the philosopher's zombie. This discussion will
demonstrate what has just been said concerning the logical implication inherent in the concept.
This thought experiment imagines the existence of a kind of mindless doppelgnger,
which looks like you, acts like you, speaks like you, and in every detectable way is physically
identical with you, but is not conscious (Blackmore 25). This zombie would be entirely
indistinguishable from a human being, and one would be entirely incapable of determining the
zombie-status of any other ostensible human being. Blackmore continues, stating that There is
nothing it is like to be this creature. There is no view from within. No consciousness. No qualia
(25). Here one finds consciousness and qualia linked in the way that I outlined above. A lack of
consciousness implies a lack of qualia; contrapositively, the existence of qualia implies the
existence of consciousness. Even more interesting, however, is Chalmers' explanation of the
import of this thought experiment: [T]he logical possibility of zombies seems . . . obvious to
me. A zombie is jus something physically identical to me, but which has no conscious experience

One must note that logical implication is a two-way street, or, as has been said, one man's modus ponens is
another man's modus tollens. If the existence of qualia implies the existence of a consciousness, then nonexistence of consciousness implies the non-existence of qualia. This is an oft overlooked fact, but a highly
significant one, which this essay will, unfortunately, not discuss in depth,

all is dark inside (qtd. in Blackmore 25).3 It is a central question in the philosophy of mind
whether all is dark inside, whether at the center of my Being there is nothing at all. This problem
can only be mentioned here; we must drop it, and pick it up again much later, when all the tools
to work with it are in place.
Now, if qualia imply consciousness, as the supporters of qualia must say, then the next
question that arises is whether any data exists which would justify the existence of qualia. This
question is significant, for qualia ought to be justifiable in reference to more than that which they
are attempting to prove. If one's proof of qualia is, I have conscious experience of qualia;
therefore qualia exist, one is only arguing in a rather uninspiring circle, for qualia are used in
argumentation exclusively to justify the existence of consciousness. Qualia ought to be justifiable
in terms of empirical data; yet it is not clear what such a justification should look like. One
cannot empirically prove qualiathey are supposed to be ineffable and private. However, one
can use qualia as explanation of certain expeiments or empirical data, then qualia is serving a
function in the cosmos of ideas; it is serving as a theory, which has the goal of explaining the
available data. Insofar as it explains the available data, and none of the data contradict the
existence of qualia, qualia serves as a good theory, and will until new data come along and
contradict the theory. What, then, should qualia explain? Only those experiments which have to
do with perception in some fashion, or, rather, with peculiar variations on how perception
normally functions. The two sorts of data which match these criteria are the experiments in the
illusion of filling in the gaps, and the experiments done on split-brain patients.
Filling in gaps occurs in a variety of circumstances. One example given by Blackmore
is when, upon seeing the legs of a cat who is partly obscured by a chair, one fills in the rest of
3

The emphasis is added.

the cat. There are a variety of experiments, but an examination of one will suffice for our
purposes, for only the general idea is necessary for this inquiry. In the illusion in figure 6.7
(Blackmore 90), one adjusts the distance of eye to the image until his blind spot falls upon the
empty section of rocks.4 The question of qualia enters into this experiment when we attempt to
find what explanatiory work qualia would be doing in said experiment.
In the experiment, when I have properly adjusted the distance between myself and the
image, the gap in the rocks does not appear to be a gap. I would say I see rocks. I could say
some things about the rocks. They are grey, like the others. I would be able to say roughly what
size they were. Yet I could give no details. I could not count them, for instance, or tell if one was
square shaped, or any such thing. I could state certain aspectsthe color, the rough size, and so
onwithout saying anything specific. Reframing this in terms of qualia, it would seem that I
perceive the qualia of the illusion. But what sort of qualia are these, and what are they qualia of?
Where exactly does the grey exist, for instance? This question is significant because, in normal
discussions of qualia, the qualia are connected with actual objects. I perceive an actual rock, and
the qualia involved are associated with an actual object in some way. With illusions of this sort,
however, the qualia involved correspond to something which is not there in reality. There are
qualia in spite of there being no actual image of a rock in the place where I identify the qualia as
coming from. As discussed above, qualia are objects of the mind; while one can explain all
the physical processes that are involved in perception of the color grey, one cannot reduce qualia
to the physical processes that would seem to produce the qualia.
Yet this is not helpful if qualia are supposed to help explain these sorts of experiments.
Qualia are supposed to connect the world of the mind to the world of physical reality, for qualia
4

I will not reproduce the whole illusion here; one can view the image and the explanation in Blackmore's text.

are what one uses to prove that there is a world of the mind to begin with. Thus, qualia ought to
be able to explain this experiment, or at least some aspect of it, for what comes into question in
such blind-spot illusions is precisely the connection between what is seen and what is physical.
The only thing qualia can explain in the experiment, however, is the existence of qualia. What
more can one say of qualia in the blind spot than that there appear qualia which do not
correspond to physical reality? One cannot argue that qualia are necessary for explaining these
discrepancies, for to argue as much would ultimately be to repeat the argument that qualia are
necessary because of conscious experience. There does not seem to be anything in this
experiment which contradicts the idea of qualia, but there is likewise no reason for believing in
qualia, at least based on this set of data, and a noticeable absence of the explanation that there
ought to be if qualia do indeed exist.
However, in cases of split-brain patients and the experiments in which they play a part,
the tide begins to turn decisively against qualia; in these experiments, not only do qualia do no
explanative work, but, moreover, the experiments cast doubt on the very concept of qualia.
Blackmore presents the results of several experiments; I shall sumarize the relavent data. In these
experiments, generally a subject with a split-brain is placed in front a screen that is divided in
such a way that the words or images displayed on one side are only recieved by one hemisphere.
In an experiment wherin an image of some object is flashed on the right side of the screen, a
split-brain patient would be able to say what it is, for verbal activity occurs in the left side of the
brain (images from the right visual field are also sent to the left side of the brain). However, if
the same image is shown in the left visual field, the patient cannot say what appears. In other
experiments, the subject could retrieve, with the left hand, some object he could see in the left

visual field which he was told to retrieve. If asked what he was retrieving, however, he would
say something like a bottle, as his left hand would be retrieving a hammer (Blackmore 111112). In another experiment, Donald MacKay taught both halves of a split-brain patient's brain to
play a guessing game. The left side of the brain was guess a number and say it, using the mouth,
and the right side was to point, using the left hand, to cards with up, down, or OK written
on them, until the left side guessed correctly (Blackmore 114).
One could hardly argue that these experiments are explainable in terms of qualia. Qualia
are subjective experiences, but in order for there to be subjective experiences, there must be a
subject; they are objects of the mind, but in order for there to be objects of mind, there must be a
mind. Yet if, in one body, there are two systems of interpretation, two separated subjectivities
which can go so far as to play games against each other, then the idea that qualia are known
infallibly becomes problematic, and demands an answer to the question, known by whom?
This problem, too, is one which qualia ought to be able to explain, for fundamentally what is at
issue are two syestems of qualia which can interact, but remain separate. Both systems recieve
visual stimuli, but act in differing ways in response to these stimuli. Both are able to express
themselves, but while one is able to express itself in speech, the other can respond primarily in
hand motions. Nonetheless, the idea of qualia gives no explanation, nor can it. For qualia to
insert themselves into this situation, they would require the presupposition of a conscious mind;
were there no conscious mind, then the only possibilities remaining are a mind split in some
way.5 But this mind would not be the sort of mind that can aid with the task of infallible
knowledge of qualia, for, unless one states that the qualia that arise are purely internal
5

I have chosen to avoid discussing precisely into what the mind may be splitsome suppose it is split into two
consciousnesses, others suppose it is divided into two persons. I have simply decided to speak of the thing as
two systems, for that much can be stated with certainty.

perceptions of what happens in each hemisphere (which, again, is a presupposition of a

conscious mind), there remains no way of holding on to the infallible knowledge which one
recieves from qualia. There are, as I stated, two systems of qualia existing simultaneously.
Moreover, because qualia are used to prove the existence of a conscious mind, or ego, one cannot
then assume the mind to prove qualiathat is circular reasoning in its worst and most boring
form. Consequently, one is left with a significant problem, wherin the notion of qualia does not
at all aid in the discussion of precisely how split-brain patients would percieve qualia, for qualia
cannot, in this instance, fulfill their own criterion for existence, namely the criterion that they are
known infallibly. They cannot fulfill it because there is no evidence of a singular knower, unless
one is willing to posit that split-brain patients are two persons with two separate minds. Thus, the
experiments with split-brain patients indicate some severe problems with the idea of qualia.
At the end of this inquiry, one comes away with no cause for believing in qualia from the
perspective of emperical study, for qualia simply has nothing to offer save itself and
consciousness. Yet, as the discussion of the philosopher's zombie proves, the concept of qualia
exists to prove that there is a consciousness, or in other words, that the existence of qualia
implies the existence of a consciousness, at least as the advocates of qualia argue. Where, then,
does this leave the philosophy of mind? The only answer is with nothing. Chalmers remarked
about the philosopher's zombie, all is dark inside (qtd. in Blackmore 25). Yet this is precisely
what one is left with when disregarding qualia as a meaningful or helpful toolnothing, an
absence. While it would not be fair or true to claim that the argument in this essay has disproven
the existence of a conscious egofor this was never the pointit would be true to say that the
concept of qualia are a major, if not the major, support for the idea of a conscious ego, and with

such a support knocked out, the system looks much less credible. So let us merely assume we are
left with nothingwhat then? Can one even do philosophy of mind without a mind, as
commonly conceived of? The answer is, Yes, only if one is willing to stop thinking in terms of
how the mind is commonly coneived of. Ultimately, one has two possible paths: one can
continue a trend of inverse Cartesianism, working from the external world to the internal, and
doing something similar to the project this essay has been engaged in; alternatively, one can
eschew materialism and inverse Cartesianism, and instead pay careful attention to the fabric and
texture of human experience. Indeed, it is ultimately desireable to do philosophy of mind in such
a way that this texture of human experience, for that was the very thing qualia wanted to speak
of, but could not, because they only existed in the minds of their creators for the sake of proving
a point, not as things valuable in themselves. This project, therefore, is the one which must be
brought into philosophy of mind to resolve (or allow for) the absence left by qualia.