From Chaos to Qualia

From Chaos to Qualia

Gaylen Moore

I will propose that qualia – typically understood as the purely subjective, phenomenal elements of experience – are not specifically brain processes, but are instead best thought of as world processes that can be characterized as distributed self-organizing networks of Whiteheadian actual entities. If this is correct, then we need not wrestle with the materialist's "hard problem" of explaining how consciousness can arise from the purely objective particles and forces of fundamental physics, but we will need to explain in what sense microparticles and other physical objects are experiential and objectively real without embracing panpsychism. Since Whiteheadian actual entities have intrinsic natures grounding the subjective/phenomenal aspects of experience, and extrinsic relations grounding objective physical properties, we find that qualia, understood in light of Whiteheadian actual entities, can provide the metaphysical foundations for both the subjective and objective aspects of the world.