Consciousness and Qualia
Advances in Consciousness Research May 15, 1998 Leopold Stubenberg
Consciousness involves qualitative experiences—pains, colors, sounds—called qualia, which are problematic because they seem to lack something that bears or owns them. The usual candidates for this ownership relation, such as introspection or higher-level thoughts, fail to explain what it means to have a quale. The author solves both problems with bundle theories: phenomenal objects are bundles of qualia, eliminating the need for separate bearers, and the self is a bundle, so having a quale simply means it belongs to the bundle one is. The argument prioritizes phenomenological adequacy and the first-person perspective.