The notion of qualia continues to be one of the most controversial debates in philosophy. Qualia are described as the phenomenal qualities accompanying experiences; we use qualia to express what something is like to us. This essay will evaluate Daniel Dennett’s position regarding qualia and it’s relation to consciousness. I will address Dennett’s reasoning and use controversial objections to support my position on validating the concept of qualia. C. I. Lewis first introduced qualia to philosophy as properties of sense-data in 1929. Since it’s first appearance, qualia have been expanded to the subjective properties of experiences. The qualia of experiences present a distinctive sensation that assist in differentiating each unique experience …show more content…
He uses a total of 15 “intuition pumps” as experimental examples to defend his conviction that there are merely no qualia at all. I will examine and explain two of Dennett’s intuition pumps. The first intuition pump, Watching you Eat Cauliflower examines an individual whom dislikes cauliflower watching someone else eat cauliflower, it advocates that the individual whom dislikes cauliflower hypothesizes that cauliflower taste different to the other individual, this plausible suggestion would make the taste of cauliflower subjective. Since the qualia of eating cauliflower are subjective, how could we come to terms with the fundamental property of cauliflower? Dennett use this example to say that rather than try to prove the phenomenal property of the experience, we should deny that such property exists. Dennett’s 7th intuition pump, Chase and Sanborn, details two Maxwell House coffee tasters, Chase and Sanborn, whom for years agreed upon both enjoying the taste and the consistency of said coffee. Suddenly, both Chase and Sanborn change their opinion about the coffee. Chase states that while the consistency of the coffee stayed the same, he no longer enjoys the taste, while Sanborn states that the consistency of the coffee has changed leading him to no longer enjoy the taste. Both Chase and Sanborn originally enjoyed the taste of Maxwell House coffee but overtime began to dislike the taste for different reasons. Dennett uses this example to conclude that the perceptions of qualia are incomprehensible and the only logical resolution would be to quine