Qualia and the Formal Structure of Meaning

TL;DR

This paper proposes that subjective meaning, as intrinsic to qualia, constitutes the phenomenal content of consciousness, linking philosophical concepts with formal semantic structures to explain conscious experience.

Contribution

It introduces a formal framework connecting subjective meaning, qualia, and semantic structures, extending Frege's sense to consciousness and formalizing the mind-matter relationship.

Findings

Subjective meaning is intrinsic to qualia and ubiquitous in conscious experience.

A formal map interprets syntactic structures within semantic space, representing phenomenal content.

The approach bridges philosophy of language and consciousness studies with formal models.

Abstract

This work explores the hypothesis that subjectively attributed meaning constitutes the phenomenal content of conscious experience. That is, phenomenal content is semantic. This form of subjective meaning manifests as an intrinsic and non-representational character of qualia. Empirically, subjective meaning is ubiquitous in conscious experiences. We point to phenomenological studies that lend evidence to support this. Furthermore, this notion of meaning closely relates to what Frege refers to as "sense", in metaphysics and philosophy of language. It also aligns with Peirce's "interpretant", in semiotics. We discuss how Frege's sense can also be extended to the raw feels of consciousness. Sense and reference both play a role in phenomenal experience. Moreover, within the context of the mind-matter relation, we provide a formalization of subjective meaning associated to one's mental representations. Identifying the precise maps between the physical and mental domains, we argue that syntactic and semantic structures transcend language, and are realized within each of these domains. Formally, meaning is a relational attribute, realized via a map that interprets syntactic structures of a formal system within an appropriate semantic space. The image of this map within the mental domain is what is relevant for experience, and thus comprises the phenomenal content of qualia. We conclude with possible implications this may have for experience-based theories of consciousness.