Can we get rid of qualia?
It is generally agreed that colours, sounds and so on are not inherent properties of the physical world. Rather, such “qualia” are produced in our experience by the action of physical energies on our perceptual systems. Such experiences dont exist without experiencers. But few would go so far as to deny the existence of conscious experiences altogether! Dennett, however, tries to do just that: “Philosophers have adopted various names for the things in the beholder (or properties of the beholder) that have been supposed to provide a safe home for the colors and the rest of the properties that have been banished from the external world by the triumphs of physics: raw feels, phenomenal qualities, intrinsic properties of conscious experiences, the qualitative content of mental states, and, of course, qualia, the term I use. There are subtle differences in how these terms have been defined, but I am going to ride roughshod over them. I deny that there are any such properties. But I agree wh
