ABSTRACT
Some of our mental states are such that there is something it's like to have them. There is something it's like to have a visual experience of a predominantly red and orange scene, and that is different from what it's like to have a visual experience of a predominantly black and blue scene. We can say that a mental state is phenomenally conscious just in case there is something it's like to have that mental state, and take qualia to be the properties that give such mental states this feature. This chapter clarifies what it is to be minimally ontologically committed to qualia as properties. While some philosophers draw anti-physicalist conclusions from considerations based on qualia and phenomenal consciousness, others find qualia too problematic to reify. This chapter offers a ‘neutral’ conception of qualia according to which qualia are understood as properties of experiences in virtue of which there is something it's like to have those experiences. On this conception, from the existence of qualia alone, nothing substantial about physicalism or anti-physicalism follows.
