What are the Indecomposable Phenomenal Units of Qualia Structures?
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Ryota Kanai
PsyArXiv May 20, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/nbxdk_v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | The authors argue that qualia, narrowly defined, are indecomposable units of phenomenal experience that remain structurally stable without top-down attention, linking qualia to perceptual binding. They discuss a dual-task experiment in which withdrawing attention collapsed qualia structures for geometric shapes but not for faces, and examine whether the concept of a fundamental "unit" of experience fits the Qualia Structure paradigm. |
Abstract
A central obstacle to a science of qualia is not only that qualia are subjective, but that we lacka principled way to individuate them. Before asking which neural mechanisms generate qualia,we must ask what counts as one quale rather than a compound of several experientialelements. Here we propose that qualia, in the narrow sense, should be defined asindecomposable units of phenomenal experience. This definition links qualia to perceptualbinding: some perceptual contents are automatically bound by genetically specified orextensively learned neural circuits, whereas others require top-down attention to be transientlycomposed. We argue that qualia, in the narrow sense, correspond to perceptual units thatremain structurally stable without top-down attention. Recent work on qualia structuresextends this proposal by showing that spatial attention can preserve or collapse the relationalstructure among experiences. In particular, we discuss the results from a recent dual-taskexperiment finding that withdrawing attention collapses qualia structures for geometric shapesbut not for faces. We will discuss how the concept of fundamental “unit” of experience may ormay not be compatible with the overall framework of the Qualia Structure paradigm.