Abstract

It has become popular to distinguish between phenomenal and non-phenomenal kinds of mentality and consciousness, for example, phenomenal and functional kinds of consciousness, or qualia and cognition. As Chalmers has so famously suggested, explaining mental phenomena like functionally “conscious” states constitutes some of the “easy problems” in philosophy of mind; explaining phenomenal consciousness, on the other hand, is the “hard problem.” One difficulty with this distinction is that it leaves open the nomological possibility of systems (“phenomenal zombies”) which are conscious in the functional sense but which have no experiential, subjective life. Chalmers=s response to this challenge is to argue that qualia naturally supervene on functional organization. In defense of this thesis, Chalmers introduces two closely related thought experiments: fading qualia and dancing qualia. In this paper, I challenge the arguments he develops out of these thought experiments. I argue that they are unconvincing - indeed, question begging - and ultimately based on an assumption which suggests that his view of cognition, and the hard/easy problem distinction more generally, is overly simplistic and misleading.