Qualia have long occupied a central place in the science and philosophy of consciousness, often invoked as the subjective residue that eludes physical explanation. In this paper, we argue that the classical concept faces serious explanatory and ontological difficulties. We present 10 reasons for setting it aside: (1) its unstable causal status; (2) the regress of the inner observer; (3) the...
Qualia have played a key role in the development of a science of consciousness. They brought into focus the question of whether explaining the availability of information for reasoning, verbal report, and the control of action would suffice to explain conscious experience. A science confined to access consciousness would have to justify that restriction and explain what became of the...
This paper addresses commentaries on “Rethinking Subjectivity: The Social Roots of Consciousness”. In response to Marraffa-Meini, the author defends his view by arguing that empirical evidence supports the emergence of social cognition faculties, such as motor mirroring and emotional contagion, before higher-level cognitive processes like deception. The author acknowledges the critique of the...
The mind has a subjective side. This is evidenced by a number of cognitive processes, including self-consciousness, first-person perspective, qualia, and individual differences in perception and emotion. In the early decades of cognitive science, these types of mental events were studied very cautiously. It was feared that they would compromise the experimental character of the new science of...
The Sense of Ownership (SoO) and the Sense of Agency (SoA) are two key components of bodily self-consciousness. In this experiment, we investigated how they are affected by variations in the ecological validity of the moving Rubber Hand Illusion (mRHI) paradigm, which typically include three movement conditions: active congruent, passive congruent, and active incongruent. These conditions were...