The Original Version – Chapter 3

Quale, Conscious Awareness, and Conscious Experience

3.1. Quale and qualia

Figure 3.1 Visual, Auditory, and Olfactory Qualia

When one looks at a house, one experiences the vision of the house in one’s mind. When one listens to a song, one experiences the sound of the song in one’s mind. When one smells a rose, one experiences the odor of the rose in one’s mind [Figure 3.1]. Similarly, other kinds of experiences happen with other sensory perceptions: taste, touch, pain, etc. Moreover, one can also have similar experiences in phenomena that are not related to sensory perceptions, such as thinking of something, feeling happy, and reliving of past events. These mental phenomena – the vision of the house, the sound of the song, the odor of the rose, the thinking of something, the feeling of happiness, the reliving of past events, etc. in one’s mind – are real; their existence is undeniable. Each phenomenon has experiential characteristics that are unique and cannot be described by anything except itself. For example, the vision of the house has experiential characteristics of color, shape, and brightness while the musical sound has experiential characteristics of pitch, timbre, and loudness, and the rose odor has experiential characteristics of odor’s quality and strength. Each of these experiential characteristics – color, shape, pitch, timbre, odor’s quality, etc. – is unique and cannot be described by anything except itself. Such unique, indescribable experiential characteristics are called phenomenal characteristics [1,2].*

(*Related terms in the literature are phenomenal experiences [2-7], phenomenal consciousness [3,4,7,8], phenomenal character [3,4,6], phenomenal properties [4,9].)

To summarize:

Experiential characteristics are something that one can experience in one’s mind, such as color, shape, pitch, timbre, odor’s quality, happiness, and thought.

Phenomenal characteristics are experiential characteristics that are unique and indescribable.

A mental phenomenon that has phenomenal characteristics has to be experienced directly by a conscious subject for the subject to know what the mental phenomenon is like: what the vision of the house is like, what the sound of the music is like, what the odor of the rose is like, and so on. In this theory, a mental phenomenon that has phenomenal characteristics that can be experienced by a conscious subject will be called quale (singular form, plural form: qualia).

Definition: A quale is a mental phenomenon that has consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics.

It is important to note that it is possible that there are mental phenomena that have phenomenal characteristics but, for some reasons such as they are not connected to consciousness, they cannot be experienced by a conscious subject, that is, they are not consciously experienceable. Thus, by definition, they are not qualia in this theory even if they have phenomenal characteristics. The eventual conclusions, implications, predictions, and other statements that are valid for qualia by this definition are unproven for these mental phenomena that are not consciously experienceable.

Etymologically, quale and qualia are the terms that derive from a Latin word meaning for “what sort” or “what kind” [2]. Although the terms quale and qualia were first used in philosophy in 1929 by Lewis CI in a discussion of sense-data theory [4,6] and later by a lot of philosophers to describe and discuss this kind of phenomenon philosophically [4,6,7,9,10,11], at present these two terms are also used widely in cognitive neuroscience and related fields by many scientists in attempts to explain these phenomena physically [5]. However, the meaning of these terms can be different from author to author, and there is a lot of confusion regarding the definition of these two terms [5,6,12]. Therefore, to avoid confusion or uncertainty regarding what they mean in this theory, the working definition of these two terms in this theory will specifically be as stated above, which is similar to some authors’ [5].

A quale can be simple, such as a vision of the red color or a sound of the note C, or can be complex, such as a vision of a house or a sound of a song. A quale that is complex is composed of many more-basic qualia. For example, a complex quale of a vision of a house is composed of many more-basic qualia, such as color, brightness, shape, and dimension; and when one watches a movie, the complex quale that represents the movie in one’s mind is composed of both visual and sound qualia, which can be further subdivided into more basic qualia, such as color, shape, pitch, and timbre.

3.2. Conscious awareness, conscious experience, and subjective experience

Although a quale has consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics, there will be no experience of the quale occurring if the mind does not experience it. But for the mind to experience a quale, the mind must first be aware of the quale; if the mind is not aware of the quale, an experience cannot happen. For example, when one is concentrating on solving a difficult problem, one may not be aware of a soft sound that occurs in the surroundings and thus will not experience that sound quale. Therefore, it requires the mind to be aware of the quale for an experience of the quale to occur.

But when the mind is aware of a quale, not only an experience of the quale will occur but it will also be aware of the quale’s occurrence and of what the quale’s phenomenal characteristics are like. For example, when the mind is aware of a vision of a house, not only an experience of the vision of the house will occur but also the mind’s awareness of the vision’s occurrence and of what the vision’s phenomenal characteristics are like will occur.

This kind of awareness that there is an awareness of what the quale’s phenomenal characteristics are like occurring happens only when the subject is consciously aware of the quale. This is in contrast to when the mind is unconsciously aware of something else that is not qualia. In this latter case, the mind will not have awareness of what the phenomenal characteristics of that thing are like, such as in cases of unconscious awareness of blood levels of various substances (e.g., sodium, oxygen, and hormones), in which the mind is unconsciously aware of these blood levels and unconsciously reacts to them but never has awareness of what their phenomenal characteristics are like. Therefore, the former kind of awareness in which there is awareness of what the phenomenal characteristics are like occurring happens only when the subject is consciously aware of something and thus will be called conscious awareness. At this point, we can define that conscious awareness is mental awareness of something, with the awareness of that thing’s occurrence and of what that thing’s phenomenal characteristics are like occurring. But anything that has phenomenal characteristics that are consciously experienceable is a quale. Therefore, conscious awareness occurs with a quale only, not anything else. Accordingly, the definition of conscious awareness will be as follows:

Definition: Conscious awareness is mental awareness of a quale, with the awareness of the quale’s occurrence and of what the quale’s phenomenal characteristics are like occurring.

And an experience that occurs with the conscious awareness will be called conscious experience**.

Definition: A conscious experience is a mental experience that occurs with conscious awareness.

(** For the use of this term “conscious experience” in the literature, please see ref 2,9,11,13-18.)

Is should be noted that conscious awareness and a conscious experience always occur together because, in the process of being aware of a quale, an experience of the quale always occur simultaneously, and vice versa. Also, it should be noted that when conscious awareness and a conscious experience of a quale occur, there is also conscious awareness and a conscious experience of the two former mental processes occurring too – that is both the conscious awareness and the conscious experience themselves have qualia (mental phenomena that have consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics). This kind of awareness of awareness and an experience of an experience is a type of metacognition [19,20].

As any conscious experience of a quale (such as a vision of a house) occurs in the mind of the subject who is having the experience, the experience is limited to only that subject and only that subject knows what the experience is like (such as what the vision of the house is like). Although others can each have a conscious experience of a similar quale (such as a vision of the same house) and know what it is like for himself/herself, he/she can never have another’s conscious experience and can never know exactly what another’s conscious experience is like (such as what another person’s vision of the house is like). Therefore, each conscious experience is exclusively limited to the subject who has the experience and may be different among different subjects (see details in section 3.5). A conscious experience is thus, in this sense, subjective. Because of this, a conscious experience may be called a subjective experience [10,21] or a subjective conscious experience [7]. In this theory, however, the author considers that the conscious part is essential for the experience of a quale to occur but that the subjective part just occurs by the nature of the experience, so this kind of experience will be simply called a conscious experience.

3.3. Quale and conscious experience

It is to be noted that in the literature the terms quale (qualia) and conscious experience (or subjective experience or subjective conscious experience in some literature) may be used interchangeably to mean a mental phenomenon that has consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics (such as a vision of a house) or a conscious experience of the mental phenomenon (such as a conscious experience of the vision of the house) or both. That is, in some literature, there is no differentiation between the two terms and between the two phenomena – which can be confusing. So, the reader has to be careful which phenomenon is being discussed at that point in the literature and which meaning is being used for that term.

However, current knowledge in neurophysiology indicates that, although the two phenomena – quale and conscious experience – are closely related functionally, they are separate phenomena: they are created by different neural processes and can change independently of each other. For example, a visual quale of a house is created by visual perception neural processes in various visual perception areas while a conscious experience of the vision is generated by a re-entrant and synchronization between the consciousness neural process (which is likely to be the complex network of neurons with long-range axons densely distributed in prefrontal, parieto-temporal,  medial temporal, and cingulate cortices [22,23]) and the visual perception neural processes that generate the vision of the house. Separate disturbances in the neural process that creates a quale without disturbing the neural process that creates a conscious experience can occur, and vice versa. For example, when a person is consciously experiencing the visual and the auditory qualia of his/her surroundings, if there is an acute stroke affecting the right occipital lobe causing left hemianopia, the person’s visual qualia will be correspondingly affected, but his overall conscious experience will still be intact, as is evident by the fact that he/she can still consciously experiences the auditory and the remaining visual qualia normally. On the other hand, if the person becomes drowsy, his/her conscious experience (and conscious awareness) of the visual and auditory qualia of the surroundings will become less and less and fade away while the qualia themselves are still undisturbed (that is, the phenomenal characteristics of the visual and the auditory qualia are undisturbed, for example, a scotoma, a patch of achromatopsia [color perception defect], or a distortion in the vision’s color or in the sound’s pitch and timbre does not occur). Therefore, in this theory, the two phenomena are two different phenomena and will be referred to with separate terms:

– Only quale (qualia), not any other term, is used for a mental phenomenon that has consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics, and quale (qualia) is used to refer to only this phenomenon, not anything else.

– Only conscious experience, not any other term, is used for a conscious experience of a quale, and conscious experience is used to refer to only this mental experience, not anything else.

3.4. Causes and types of qualia

As a quale is a mental phenomenon – a phenomenon of a mental process – it is part of a mental process. And as a mental process is part of a neural process (Theorem 1), the quale must be part of a neural process too. Therefore, like its mental process, it must be created by, be at the same location as, and change and disappear with its neural process. And, like its mental process, a quale should function as part of its neural process too. But how exactly it functions as part of its neural process will be examined in Chapter 5.

All mental phenomena that have consciously experienceable phenomenal characteristics are qualia. Thus, there are many types of qualia. They can be classified into two types:

1.Sensory perception qualia

   – External sensory perception qualia

   – Internal sensory perception qualia

2. Non-sensory perception qualia

  1. Sensory perception qualia are qualia that occur in perceptions of sensations. They can be subdivided into external sensory perception qualia and internal sensory perception qualia. External sensory perception qualia are qualia that occur in perceptions of sensations that occur from stimuli outside the body. They are visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and cutaneous sensory perception qualia. Internal sensory perception qualia are qualia that occur in perceptions of sensations that occur from stimuli inside the body. They are vestibular, proprioceptive, and visceral sensory perception (i.e., visceral pain, distension, cramps, nausea, etc.) qualia. It is likely that some animals that have sensory modalities that human beings do not, such as magnetoreception in birds, bats, bees, and sharks [24,25,26]or electroreception in electric fish [27], have specific qualia for these sensory perceptions too. Each kind of sensory perception qualia has phenomenal characteristics, which are unique, cannot be described based on any other qualia or anything else, and must be consciously experienced to know what it is like for oneself (e.g., what the vision is like, what the sound is like, what the magnetoreception is like, or what the electroreception is like). Each kind of sensory perception qualia may include several types of basic qualia, such as visual qualia include color, brightness, shape, and other basic visual qualia. And each type of basic qualia has its own phenomenal characteristic, which is unique, cannot be described based on any other qualia or anything else, and must be consciously experienced to know what it is like for oneself (e.g., what the color is like, what the brightness is like, or what the shape is like). Sensory perception qualia, both external and internal, represent and contain information of something in the outside world. They are usually vivid in experiential characteristic manifestations.

To be noted is that not all the sensations that occur inside the body have qualia. In fact, a majority of internal sensations that convey information from various organs or tissues inside the body, such as pressure in the blood vessels (sensed by baroreceptors in carotid sinuses and the aortic arch), blood oxygen level (sensed by chemoreceptors in the carotid body and the aortic body), blood pH and carbon dioxide level (sensed by chemoreceptors in the medulla), and various hormone levels (sensed by various hormone receptors), do not have qualia. Also, to be noted is that sensory perception qualia occur in only the final stages of sensory perception, such as the final stages of visual perception – which create visual qualia of color, brightness, shape, etc. All the earlier stages of sensory perception, such as the first stage of processing raw sensory signals that arrive at the primary sensory cortical area, do not have qualia, and we do not know what their phenomenal characteristics are like, i.e., what these sensory signals are like at these early stages. The fact that some sensations have qualia while some do not and the fact that qualia occur only in the final stages of sensory perception can give clues to why and how qualia and conscious experience occur. This point will be discussed in more details in the next three chapters.

2. Non-sensory perception qualia are qualia that occur in mental processes that do not perform sensory perception function. They occur in cognitive perceptions (such as perception of time, of existence, of self, and of non-self), cognitive executive functions (such as thinking of something, reliving past events, planning actions, making decisions, and controlling volitional movement), and emotions (such as happiness, sadness, and anger). Like sensory perception qualia, these qualia have phenomenal characteristics, which are unique, cannot be described based on any other qualia or anything else, and must be consciously experienced to know what each of them is like for oneself. Non-sensory perception qualia represent and contain information of conscious activities in the mind. They are usually not as vivid in experiential characteristic manifestations as sensory perception qualia are.

To be noted here also is that all of these non-sensory perception qualia occur exclusively in highest-level cognitive, executive mental processes. All lower-level mental processes, which comprise the vast majority of mental processes, such as mental processes of the basal ganglia, brainstem nuclei, and cerebellum, do not have qualia. Again, the fact that the highest-level cognitive mental processes have qualia while the lower-level mental processes do not gives clues to why and how qualia and conscious experience occur. This point, too, will be discussed in more details in the next three chapters.

3.5. Sensory perception qualia as representations of the outside world

A sensory perception quale of the outside world, such as a vision of a house, a sound of a song, or an odor of a rose, may seem real; however, it is not the physical thing itself. It is just the mental phenomenon of a sensory perception mental process, which occurs from a sensory perception neural process, occurring to represent that thing in the outside world. But because the process of sensory perception of the outside world depends on many factors, such as in a case of a visual perception of a house: the external physical factors (the light that is illuminating the house, the medium through which the light must pass, the distance between the house and the eyes, etc.), the internal anatomical properties of the whole visual pathway (from the cornea to the visual perception areas in the brain), and the physiologic functions of the whole visual pathway (from the generation of visual signals in the retina through several steps of signal processing in visual perception neural processes to the final visual perception neural processes in the brain), the final neural perception of the outside world and the resulting quale usually do not represent the outside world identically in details but are just approximate and modified representations of it. As the details of the perception and of the quale are the information about the outside world, the final information that is contained in the perception and the quale is not identical with that of the outside world. Sometimes, the inaccuracy produced in the perception may be so great that it results in an illusion, or there may be an anomaly in the perception system that causes a different perception to occur in association with the primary perception and results in a condition called synesthesia [28-45].

Some examples of inaccuracy in perceiving the outside world are as follows:

– The visual quale of a house when one looks at the house at a distance does not contain the complete visual details of the house, such as a nail in the house wall, a patch of dirt on the door, or a small crack in the window – this inaccuracy occurs as the results of an external physical factor (the distance) combined with an internal physiologic property (the limited spatial resolution of the retina).

– The visual quale of a fish in a stream is distorted and wavering even if the actual fish is not distorted and stays still – this distortion and wavering occur because of the unsteady refraction of the flowing water that the light from the fish must pass through.

– The quale of pain in the shin after it hits something hard is reduced in intensity if the shin is lightly stroked or massaged – this change in intensity of the pain quale occurs physiologically by the pain gate-control system or by the change of combinatorial coding of primary afferent neurons [46-51].

– An auditory illusion quale of a third tone – a binaural beat – can be heard when two different pure-tone sine waves with frequencies lower than 1,500 Hz and less than 40 Hz difference between them are presented separately through each ear [52]. This illusion is created physiologically in the auditory perception system [53-57].

– Various visual illusions occur physiologically in normal people, such as scintillating grid illusion in Figure 3.2 and rotating movement illusion in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.2 Scintillating Grid Illusion. The picture consists of gray bars on the black background with small white discs at the intersections. The illusion is dark dots that appear and disappear (scintillate) at the intersection randomly.

Figure 3.3 Another moving illusion from Opticalillusionshare.blogspot. The picture is a still picture, yet a rotating movement of the circles is seen. The rotating movement can be seen best when not looking at the picture directly.

– A color perception quale occurs together with an auditory perception quale when a person who has sound-color synesthesia hears a musical sound. This additional visual quale is created by a neural connection anomaly between the auditory and the visual perception systems [58,59,60].

In representing the outside world, the inaccuracy of a neural process’s perception and the inaccuracy of its associated quale involve all details of the outside world, not only the physical details as discussed above but also the temporal details. For example, in a case of a visual perception of a house, it takes time from the moment the house reflects off light signals to the moment the visual neural processes perceive it and the resulting visual quale of the house occurs. So, the house that we see in the mind is not the real-time house but the house a few milliseconds ago. This can be very obvious in cases of very distant objects: the sun we see is not a real-time sun but an 8-minute-ago sun at an 8-minute-ago position in the sky, and a supernova is seen bursting after it has actually vanished millions of years ago at the position in the sky where it is not right now. Also, a temporal inaccuracy may arise physiologically from the work of neural processes themselves, such as the prolongation of time that we feel in the stopped-clock illusion [61-64].

In summary, a sensory perception quale is the result of the function of a sensory perception neural process to represent a physical thing in the outside world but is not the physical thing itself. As there are many factors involved in the process of perception of the outside world, the details – which are the outside world’s information – of the quale are not exactly identical with the details of the outside world and are only as accurate as those contained in the quale’s neural process. Thus, a sensory perception quale is just an approximate, modified representation of something in the outside world, and illusion qualia or synesthetic qualia, which represent nothing real in the outside world, may also occur.

  1. If qualia are just representations of things in the external world, whatare those things in the external world really like by themselves?

Things in the external world do not have color, shape, size, dimension, hardness, odor, etc. by themselves; they just have properties that can create these sensory perceptions in a being’s nervous system and mind via the being’s sensory perception systems.

Figure 3.4 Qualia among Different Subjects

Thus, no being can claim that his/her/its perception quale of a thing in the external world is that thing or that his/her/its perception quale is the only one that is the correct representation of that thing. Similarly, perceptions of space, time, and existence are not what space, time, and existence are either. The former entities are just mental phenomena that are created to represent the latter entities, but they are not the same. What things in the outside world, space, time, and existence are like by themselves is an unanswerable question because the question involves the discrepant terms “are like” and “by themselves”. The first term “are like” needs an observer while the second term “by themselves” excludes an observer; so they are conflicting terms, and the situation in the question cannot happen. However, what those things really are by themselves is a valid question. The answer is that they are just entities with properties to created sensory perceptions and qualia, which manifest themselves as vision, sound, space, time, etc., in some entities that have signal-processing systems, such as humans or other animals with a nervous system. So the correct depiction of Figure 3.4 is, in fact, Figure 3.5. The man, the woman, the dog, the bee, and the house do not have shape, size, color, etc. as we perceive them by themselves. Shape, size, color, etc. of all things exist in the mind of the observers only.

Figure 3.5 Qualia exist only in the minds

3.6. Consciousness and quale’s phenomenal characteristics

As discussed in 3.2., a quale, such as a visual quale of a house, which is created by the visual perception neural processes, is to be read or experienced by the consciousness neural process for a conscious experience of the quale to occur. If either the quale or the reading by the consciousness neural process does not occur, the conscious experience of the quale will not occur. Evidently, if the quale (such as the visual quale of the house) does not occur in the first place (such as when one is not looking at the house), the conscious experience of the quale (such as the conscious experience of the visual quale of the house) cannot and will not occur. Yet, even if the quale does occur but does not gain access to and is not read by the consciousness neural process because the duration of the quale’s occurrence is too brief [65] or because the consciousness neural process is distracted to attend something else, the conscious experience of the quale cannot and will not occur either [65]. For example, in an experiment called Binocular Rivalry, when a picture of a face and a picture of a house are separately but simultaneously presented to each eye at the same location in the visual field, only one picture – either a face or a house, not a mixture of them – will be perceived at any moment [Figure 3.6]. This is because both pictures rival each other to gain access to the consciousness and because at any moment only one picture can succeed in doing so [66-70].

Figure 3.6 Binocular Rivalry

Thus, for a conscious experience of a quale, with the awareness of the quale’s occurrence and of what the quale’s phenomenal characteristics are like, to occur, it needs both the occurrence of the quale and the reading of the quale by the consciousness. Now, the question is whether the manifestation of a quale’s phenomenal characteristic in the mind depends on consciousness too, such as when we enter a room with red walls, the walls will appear red if we look with bare eyes but will appear violet, purple, gray, etc. if we look through different colored lenses – that is, the apparent color of the walls depends on both the intrinsic color of the walls and the colored lenses used in seeing the walls. Is it the case that the manifestation of a quale’s phenomenal characteristic in the mind, like the apparent color of the walls, depends on both the quale and the reading by the consciousness and can thus be different in different consciousnesses?

If the manifestation of a quale’s phenomenal characteristic in the mind also depends on consciousness, when there are abnormalities in the consciousness, there should be some abnormalities in the manifestation of the quale’s phenomenal characteristic too. But such correlative phenomena never occur. Lesions specifically in the consciousness neural process, such as lesions in the reticular activating system, medial prefrontal cortex, or posterior cingulate cortex, that principally affect consciousness and do not involve any quale’s neural process never cause abnormalities in the quale’s phenomenal characteristic: they never cause phenomenal characteristic defects (scotoma, achromatopsia, hypesthesia, etc.) or phenomenal characteristic distortions (of image, of sound, of odor, etc.) in the quale. This fact is evident clinically: such abnormalities in qualia’s phenomenal characteristics never occur in various cases of encephalitis, encephalopathies, increased intracranial pressure, etc. if the qualia’s neural processes are spared. The awareness of the qualia may be lessened or heightened by the level of alertness of consciousness (such as when we are near unconsciousness from pharmacological effects or pathological conditions, drowsy, normally awake, or intensely alert from emotion or exciting situations), but that is the overall awareness of the qualia, not the change in the qualia’s phenomenal characteristics, that is affected by the change in consciousness’s alertness.

Thus, there is no evidence that the consciousness neural process contributes anything to the manifestation of a quale’s phenomenal characteristic in the mind. It is evident that a quale’s phenomenal characteristic is determined by only the quale’s neural process and that the consciousness neural process just functions to be aware of and experience it as it is. Thus, for example, the hue, saturation, luminance, etc. of the red-color quale or all the details of the visual quale of the house are determined solely by the neural perception processes of the red color or of the house, respectively, and are not affected by the consciousness neural process. This fact will help answer the question of whether different qualia of the same thing exist, such as whether different people perceive the same color differently (i.e., in different hues). This will be discussed in details in Chapter 7.

3.7. Implications

Theoretically, conscious experiences of another person’s qualia or even of some animal’s qualia, such as echolocation or magnetoreception senstaion, are possible if the consciousness neural process can connect to and read the qualia in another person or some animal. So, theoretically, it is possible for us to feel what echolocation or magnetoreception is like by setting up such connections.

It is possible that some electronic processes in computers or robots, like some neural processes, have phenomenal characteristics occurring within them. However, because computers and robots do not have specialized circuits to read phenomenal characteristics (in comparison to a human, who has a consciousness neural process to read, be aware of, and experience a quale), it is certain that any phenomenal characteristics that may occur are not read, processed, or stored in their systems and that awareness and experiences of those phenomenal characteristics do not and cannot occur. Thus, even if qualia may occur in computers and robots, equivalences of conscious awareness and conscious experiences of qualia do not and cannot occur in present-day computers and robots.

3.8. Predictions

  • If the consciousness neural process in one being is connected to and is able to read a mental process that have qualia in another being, the former being will have conscious experience of the qualia of the latter being, be it the usual kind of qualia that the former being has experiences before or the novel kind of qualia that the former being never has experiences before.
  • It will never be found that a computer or a robot that does not have a circuit to read qualia-like phenomena that may occur in it has awareness and experiences of those phenomena. All bits of data in its system will be found to contain information of only what its circuits are built for, and no bits of data in its system will ever be found to represent such awareness and experiences.

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