“QUALIA”
The felt or “phenomenal” qualities claimed to be associated with mental experiences. In
other words, the supposed “properties” of mental states or events or sensations which
determine “what it is like” to have those states or sensations. The favorite example of
proponents of this curious notion is with colors, where supposedly “redness” is a “property”
of our sensation of seeing red things, “blueness” is a property of our sensation of seeing
blue things, etc. How this notion of qualia adds anything to simply seeing red things and
blue things, and recognizing that they are red or blue, is hard to understand!
The most notorious and seductive argument
in favor of the existence of “qualia” is the supposed possibility of “inverted color
spectrums”, where it is imagined that someone might look at red things and
nevertheless have the “same internal experience” of “blueness” that others have when they
look at blue things, and vice versa! (For a debunking of this idealist thought experiment,
see the entry for “inverted spectrum”.)
Qualia are imagined to be something over
and above the the physical and functional facts and characteristics of the brain which
allow us to categorize things as red or blue, painful or pleasant, big or small, etc. But
since this is the case, they must be unknowable “qualities”, not only to others, but even
to ourselves on different occasions. For example, how can we possibly know that our
experience of “redness” today is not identical to what we considered to be the experience
of “blueness” yesterday? It is only because the same external stimuli have activated the
same neural structures that allow us to make the same internal mental classifications (of
blue or red, etc.) as we did yesterday. In short, no such things as “qualia” which are
unconnected with objective neural states and functions are intelligible or even coherent
concepts.
The ways of thinking that have led to such
slippery and ill-formed notions as “qualia” are a modern form of philosophical
idealism that is still quite rampant on the part of bourgeois
philosophers in the sphere of the philosophy of mind.
QUALITATIVE LEAP
A major, relatively sudden, change in the state or character of something. Typically, the
way a major change or development happens is like this: Over a period of time a number of
small changes occur in the thing, and when these small changes have accumulated to some
critical threshold, a fundamental change or qualitative leap occurs. Thus, in a tea kettle
the water is gradually heated on the stove until it reaches 100 degrees Celsius, whereupon
the water suddenly begins to boil.
But what about that gradual warming process
itself? What is really going on there if we look at the situation very closely? What we find
is that even there it is a matter of many small qualitative leaps occurring. When a water
molecule bumps into the heated surface of the tea kettle, or into another water molecule
which has more energy than itself, it may suddenly acquire additional energy. With respect
to the tiny water molecule this is a major qualitative leap; with respect to the entire
mass of water in the tea kettle it is an extremely tiny change, and one of the many trillions
of similar tiny changes that collectively occur as the water gradually heats up.
Qualitative leaps seem to exist just about
everywhere, in nature, in society, and in human thought. In geophysics we have the gradual
accumulation of strain in a fault zone, which finally snaps in the form of an earthquake. Or
the accumulation of heat in the earth (due mostly to radioactive decay) which at some critical
point leads to a volcanic eruption. Radioactive decay is itself a qualitative leap that
occurs within an atom or sub-atomic particle. In evolutionary science we have a number of
small changes in the organism’s genome, which finally result in a leap to a new species.
According to the theory of “punctuated equilibrium”, these larger leaps often occur rather
suddenly in relation to both geologic time and the length of time in which the new species
then continues to exist. In human thought, we suddenly grasp a concept which has previously
eluded us, or suddenly remember a name that we have been trying to recall. And in society,
we sometimes have the accumulation of social strains and pressures leading to eventual social
revolution.
The recognition of the importance of
qualitative leaps in nature, thought and society is one of the subsidiary laws of
dialectics, and for this reason they are often called
dialectical leaps. Coming to understand our changing world is often a matter of learning
the specific conditions under which particular kinds of qualitative leaps occur.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel
on this topic.
QUANT [Recent Wall Street term]
Slang term for a quantitative financial analyst, often a mathematician or at least someone
extensively trained in mathematics, usually working for a bank or investment company, and
who supposedly can calculate to the high degree the varying risks in different kinds of
highly leveraged investments. The fact that these so-called financial geniuses (a few of whom
have even received the phoney “Nobel Prize” in economics) did not foresee or properly handle
the financial meltdown in late 2008 shows that their mathematical models did not reflect
actual capitalist economic reality.
QUINE, W. V. O. (1908-2000)
Influential American bourgeois philosopher who focused on deductive logic.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel about
Quine.
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