# Contested concept: qualia

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

---

- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: Claims that qualia should be rejected or explained are talking about different referents.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/qualia` (data: `/concept/qualia.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Causal and entailed by neural activity** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **Non-physical facts learnable only through experience** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **Phenomenal contents, distinct from the givenness of experience** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **Pure mental experience detached from information processing role** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [The concept of qualia should be rejected.](/claim/claim_2ed5c2e18834.md) _(sense: Pure mental experience detached from information processing role)_
- [The knowledge of "what red looks like" is distinct from, and irreducible to, Mary's prior physical knowledge of the brain or visual system.](/claim/claim_44498d32e36c.md) _(sense: Non-physical facts learnable only through experience)_
- [The hypothetical concept of qualia, pure mental experience, detached from any information-processing role, will be viewed as a peculiar ide…](/claim/claim_587f4c965f23.md) _(sense: Pure mental experience detached from information processing role)_
- [Qualia are entailed by neural activity.](/claim/claim_6621a375febf.md) _(sense: Causal and entailed by neural activity)_
- [The hard problem [of consciousness] is not about qualia, but about the what-it-is-like-ness of experience in Nagel's sense, about the given…](/claim/claim_73effb40a7de.md) _(sense: Phenomenal contents, distinct from the givenness of experience)_
- [Qualia are themselves causal.](/claim/claim_96cfb878d672.md) _(sense: Causal and entailed by neural activity)_
- [Today there is a strong tendency to simply equate consciousness with the qualia [in philosophy of mind].](/claim/claim_ed4260197f45.md) _(sense: Phenomenal contents, distinct from the givenness of experience)_
- ["What red looks like" is a non-physical fact that can be learned only through direct experience (qualia).](/claim/claim_f5dd9c7e7c18.md) _(sense: Non-physical facts learnable only through experience)_