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The concepts of 'qualia' and 'lifeworld' are not directly comparable. Qualia are qualitative aspects of experiences, but lifeworlds are complexes of objects ass

The concepts of 'qualia' and 'lifeworld' are not directly comparable. Qualia are qualitative aspects of experiences, but lifeworlds are complexes of objects associated to a 'perspective' which operates on them (and possibly constitutes them) - essentially subjective worlds. The point of contact between those ideas is this: different lifeworlds could include the same objects but have a different qualitative character. The trick is that saying that the objects in two different lifeworlds are the same might make the assumption that the objects are 'given' (then, the qualitative aspect would be extrinsic to them). But if the subject of the lifeworld actively constitutes the objects of the world the objects could be different anyway, because those qualitative aspects would be intrinsic. Imagine a meadow. An insect experiences differently than a girl who is picking flowers, and both experience it differently than a cow who pastures (I think this is Uexkull's [who introduced the notion of Lebenswelt] own example). We might assume that beyond those lifeworlds there is a real world that grounds them and includes the objects that they . But it is not clear that the objects in all those worlds are the same, because the cognition of the insect, the cow and the girl might carve the world in different ways. Btw, historically, similar ideas where explored by William James around the same time the early phenomenologists and proto-phenomenologists (like Brentano), and James' influence through pragmatism fed back into analytic philosophy. Mainstream analytic philosophers more or less abandoned the idea for a while because of the influence of behaviorism (e.g. Ryle), but I don't think it was ever entirely expurged.

pmoriarty 9y ago
It sounds like with the lifeworld concept, the Phenomenologists were coming up with another way to talk about solipsism. Would I be mistaken in thinking about lifeworlds like that?
- fmoralesc 9y ago
  Well, they didn't necessarily give in to solipsism. The original idea was meant to accommodate, I think, the idea that different subjects could have entirely different experiences and still share a world. Actually, I think Husserl's idea that lived worlds have 'horizons' (beyond which you can somehow anticipate something you don't see) can capture the thought that the experience of others can be somehow be part of our own, so solipsism is partially defeated. But this is just a rough thought.

pmoriarty 9y ago

It sounds like with the lifeworld concept, the Phenomenologists were coming up with another way to talk about solipsism. Would I be mistaken in thinking about lifeworlds like that?

fmoralesc 9y ago
Well, they didn't necessarily give in to solipsism. The original idea was meant to accommodate, I think, the idea that different subjects could have entirely different experiences and still share a world. Actually, I think Husserl's idea that lived worlds have 'horizons' (beyond which you can somehow anticipate something you don't see) can capture the thought that the experience of others can be somehow be part of our own, so solipsism is partially defeated. But this is just a rough thought.