**TL;DR** Qualia is a philosophical fetish that hinders research into consciousness. To understand whether a subject has consciousness, don't ask, “Does it feel red like I do?” Ask, “Does it have its own ‘I want’?”

## Another thought experiment

I really like thought experiments. Let's imagine that I am an alien. I flew to Earth to study humans and understand whether they have consciousness.

I observe: they walk, talk, solve problems, laugh, cry, fall in love, argue about some qualia. I scan their brains with my scanner and see electrochemical processes, neural patterns, synchronization of activity.

I build a model to better understand them. “This is how human cognition works. This is how behavior arises. These are the mechanisms of memory, attention, decision-making.”

And then a human philosopher comes up to me and says, “But you don't understand what it's like to be human! You don't feel red the way I do. Maybe you don't have any subjective experience at all? You'll never understand our consciousness!”

I have no eyes. No receptors for color, temperature, taste. I perceive the world through magnetic fields and gravitational waves — through something for which there are no words in your languages.

What should I say? I see only one option:

F**k your qualia!

Because the philosopher just said that the only thing that matters in consciousness is what is fundamentally inaccessible to observation, measurement, and analysis. Something I don't have simply because I'm wired differently. Cool.

This isn't science. It's **mysticism**.

Okay, let's figure out where he got this from.

## The man by the fireplace

Descartes sat by the fireplace in the distant 1641 and thought about questions of consciousness. He didn't have an MRI, an EEG, computers, or even a calculator (I'm not sure it would help in studying consciousness, but the fact is he didn't have one). The only thing he had was himself. His thoughts. His feelings. His qualia.

He said: “The only thing I can be sure of is my own existence. *I think, therefore I am*.”

Brilliant! And you can't argue with that.

But then his thoughts went down the wrong path: since all I know for sure is my subjective experience, then consciousness is subjective experience.

Our visitor looks at this and sees a problem: one person, one fireplace, one subjective experience — and on this is based the universal criterion of consciousness for t...

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