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Reply to Lopes

2000; Wiley; Volume: 60; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2653495

1933-1592

Fred Dretske,

Philosophy, Science, and History

There is a terminological matter that should be settled before getting down to business. Lopes himself is not confused about this, but a reader-especially one who doesn't pay much attention to footnotes (I am thinking of footnote 2)-might easily be. On the first page I am accused of denying the existence of qualia. I was shocked to read this because (although we didn't call them that then) I have been a staunch fan of qualia for at least thirty years. Lopes says that I must deny their existence because qualia, the what-it-is-like qualities of phenomenal experience, are, he assures us, non-representational, properties of experience. Since I defend a representational theory of qualia, my theory, it seems, is false by definition. What is going on here? An ambiguity. Since the ambiguity infects a great many discussions of qualia, it is, I believe, worth taking a moment to get clear about it. Qualia are certainly to experience if by intrinsic we mean something like to, inherent in, or constitutive of' experience. The quale red, for instance, is essential to the experience of red. Change this quale to green, for instance, and you get a different experience-an experience of green. Change this quale to the sound of thunder and the experience becomes an experience in an altogether different perceptual modality. Since the quale makes the experience the kind of experience it is-an experience of red rather than an experience of green or thunder-the quale is to an experience in the sense of being essential to its being the kind of experience it is. If this is what we mean by intrinsic, then I am happy to agree that qualia are to phenomenal experience. But in this sense does not contrast with representational. A representational theory of qualia, in fact, explains why qualia are in this sense. For if experiences are internal representations and qualia are the properties that these internal representations represent things as having, then qualia are (i.e., essential) to experiences. If two representations represent X differently-one as red, the other as