Qualia as query act, the phenomenology of predictive error coding.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2025 Herbert W Harris
Consciousness, especially the subjective, ineffable quality of experience known as qualia, can be better understood by combining phenomenology with neuroscience. Drawing on Thomas Nagel's question about what it is like to be something and Husserlian phenomenology, the paper proposes that predictive error coding (PEC) offers a neuroscientific model for this integration. PEC treats the brain as an active inference system that continuously generates and updates predictions about sensory inputs. The concept of "query acts" is introduced to describe the brain's interrogative engagement with sensory information, linking phenomenological intentionality with predictive mechanisms.