I'm currently preparing for my A-level philosophy exam and am stuck on how a logical behaviourist would respond to the problem of qualia? The problem being that the 'what-is-likeness' of experience fails to be accounted for as there is no behaviour which reflects this sensation. So how would the behaviourist respond? or would they even deem qualia as a problem for their thesis?
Thanks.
This is a tough matter. The classic paper on this you might cite is Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat" PHilosophical Review 1974, reprinted in Mortal Questions, Cambridge 1979, 165-180. Nagel argued that a behavioral (and anatomical, third-person) analysis of bats would not disclose / capture / reveal the conscious state of what it is like to be a bat (the qualia involved). T.L.S. Sprigge came up with a similar line of reasoning at roughly the same time. I believe you may find his work in the OUP volume The Importance of Subjectivity. I actually think that behaviorists and their descendents (functionalists) do fail on this count to get at the intrinsic nature of subjective experience. Most of us (or so I believe) who take up this position hold that subjective states of consciousness are immediately apparent and (in a sense) require no argument on their behalf. Perhaps the best reply is the claim that those of us who appeal to qualia leave us with something entirely mysterious from...
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