Qualia

Finding the neuronal correlates of consciousness (the NCC)hasbecome a
centralissue in cognitive neuroscience. However, thedefinition of the
keyword, "qualia", remains elusive, andeven researchers within the same
field use “qualia” in manydifferent ways, tothe extent that we cannot
answersimple questions such as "whetherpercepts offaces are qualia?" or
“emotion offear a quale?” Here, weoffer a possibledefinition of
“qualia” by consideringwhat are irreducibleunits ofperceptionfrom a
neuroscientificpoint ofview. Wepropose thatwhether apercept should
be considered as a single quale orcompound of qualia hinges onwhether the
perceptrequirestop-down attention forbinding or not. Ourhypothesis
predicts that “qualia” emergefrom neuronalcircuits thatbindelements of
perceptviageneticallyinstructed wiring orvia rewiring through extensive
learning. Chunked qualia can be boundflexiblyviatop-down attention, yet
this is just a combination of qualia,which needsto be distinguishedfrom
genuine qualia. Webelieve theeffort tomake a clearer consensus ofwhat
qualia are couldlead to a surge of neuroscientific investigation of
consciousness,based on ananalogy with researches on ‘elementary features’
following theproposal of Feature Integration Theory by Anne Treisman. We
propose that our newhypothesis will facilitate empirical research into
qualia byilluminatingmorefocusedissuesdirectly relevant to the Hard
Problem.