Abstract

The qualities that characterize the smell of the lilacs, sensation of the sun, or taste of the honey are all what this book calls sensory qualities. Broadly speaking, such qualities characterize what it is like to sense or perceive things. There are various names for the qualities in question. The problem posed here concerns the nature of qualia, of the qualitative character of some mental states. These qualities characterize how the world seems from a particular point of view, so they are also labeled subjective qualities, phenomenal qualities, and phenomenological properties. Other authors have named them raw feels and sensuous qualities. Some mental states have a ‘qualitative’ character, while others do not. Sensation and perception have as necessary conditions the occurrence of various internal states of the subject.