Imagine that you are
looking at a ripe tomato in daylight. Call your visual experience
'e'. Distinguish:
Imagine that you are
looking at a ripe tomato in daylight. Call your visual experience
'e'. Distinguish:
Properties of e: e.g., the property of occurring at such-and-such a time, the property of being caused by light reflecting off a tomato, etc.
Properties represented by e: redness, roundness (e represents that there is something red and round before you).
It is important not to confuse properties of a representation (e.g. a painting of a house) with properties represented by the representation. The painting is made of canvas and covered with paint; the painting represents that there is something made of bricks with four windows. Properties of the representation include being made of canvas and being covered with paint; properties represented by the painting include being made of bricks and having four windows. Notice that a property represented by an experience might be a property that is not possessed by anything you are aware of. If a straight stick looks bent then e represents the property of being bent, but you are not aware of anything that is in fact bent.
Properties presented in e: "phenomenal-redness", as we might call it -- the property of an area of your visual field (thought of as a mental array, or the screen of an internal television/movie theater) of which you can be directly aware.
It is controversial whether there are any properties presented in e. Peacocke thinks there are (see p. 442); Smart and Place think there aren't. (Recall Place on the "phenomenological fallacy", p. pp. 58-9.)
The word 'quale' (plural 'qualia') is used in different ways; these different senses must be kept separate to avoid becoming seriously confused.
Qualia1: the properties of experiences which mark similarities in what it's like to undergo the experiences. Thus, there is something distinctive it's like for you to see red things (as opposed to things of other colors). So, all your visual experiences as of ripe tomatoes, strawberries, etc., share a certain quale; all your visual experiences as of unripe tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., share another quale, etc. (Levine uses 'qualia' in this sense.)
That there are qualia1 is not controversial (or, at any rate, is relatively uncontroversial). That qualia1 can be reductively explained in physical or functional or intentional terms is controversial.
Qualia2: qualia1 (and so properties of experiences) that cannot be reductively explained in functional or physical terms. (See Jackson, p. 273.)
Qualia3: qualia1 that cannot be reductively explained in intentional (i.e. representational) terms. (See Tye, p. 447.)
That there are qualia2 or qualia3 is controversial (cf. Block, Qualia, second paragraph).
Qualia4: properties presented in experience. (The things that have qualia4 -- if indeed there are any -- are often called "sense data".)
As in effect mentioned above, that there are qualia4 is controversial.