Abstract
David Chalmers' dancing qualia argument is intended to show that phenomenal experiences, or qualia, are organizational invariants. The dancing qualia argument is a reductio ad absurdum, attempting to demonstrate that holding an alternative position, such as the famous inverted spectrum argument, leads one to an implausible position about the relation between consciousness and cognition. In this paper, we argue that Chalmers' dancing qualia argument fails to establish the plausibility of qualia being organizational invariants. Even stronger, we will argue that the gap in the argument cannot be closed.
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References
Chalmers, D.J. (1994), A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition. Technical Report PNP Technical Report 94-03, Washington University.
Chalmers, D.J. (1995), ‘The Puzzle of Conscious Experience’. Scientific American, 273: 80–86.
Chalmers, D.J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press.
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van Heuveln, B., Dietrich, E. & Oshima, M. Let's Dance! The Equivocation in Chalmers' Dancing Qualia Argument. Minds and Machines 8, 237–249 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008273402702
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008273402702