Sensing Qualia.
Frontiers in systems neuroscience January 1, 2022 Paul Skokowski 9 citations
Explaining qualia—the subjective contents of conscious experience—within a naturalistic framework is challenging. Examining Behaviorism, Identity Theory, Functionalism, and Integrated Information Theory reveals each fails to adequately account for qualia. To overcome this, the senses should be interpreted as physical detectors. A new theory, Grounded Functionalism, is proposed that preserves multiple realizability while providing a scientifically grounded approach to explaining qualia in the natural world.