Valence of Consciousness

Why We Need to Study Consciousness

Kenneth Shinozuka

This summer, I had the privilege of interning at the Qualia Research Institute (QRI), a San Francisco–based research nonprofit that is dedicated to discovering the science of consciousness (qualia are subjective experiences). Its approach rests on two core philosophical assumptions: The first is “qualia formalism,” which claims that our subjective experience has a mathematical structure. The second is “valence realism,” the view that we can objectively measure the so-called valence of conscious experience—that is, how pleasant an experience feels.

These ideas serve as the foundation for QRI’s “symmetry theory of valence.” The theory claims that if a subjective experience can be represented as some kind of a mathematical object, then the symmetry of that object corresponds to how pleasant the experience is.

You may notice that the symmetry theory of valence doesn’t directly solve the hard problem of consciousness. It is meant to explain the valence of experience, not the nature of experience and how, if at all, it emerges from the brain. Valence, however, is arguably the defining feature of consciousness. Indeed, it seems that there is nothing more fundamental to consciousness than the felt-sense of whether the experience is good or bad.

Without this, the experience wouldn't matter, at least not intrinsically.Indeed, it seems that there is nothing more fundamental to consciousness than the subjective feeling of an experience. QRI has one of the few theories that makes empirical claims about the mathematical structure that corresponds to valence. Consequently, it has a much more tractable approach to consciousness than past philosophical speculation. With this perspective, QRI may carry the keys to unlocking the answer to a profound enigma—that we’ve known all along.

To me this seems to be just another blind alley. A mathematical structure of subjective goodness and badness (if it really could be created) would still not be the ultimate nature in itself of this quality of subjectivity, any more than the mathematics of the physics of quarks constitute the ultimate nature of matter in itself. The ultimate nature of matter in itself is probably not knowable except in that it may be Consciousness in itself (some form of Idealism). This endeavor would seem to just boil down to confirming that ultimately philosophy and metaphysics rule.