The Case for Qualia - A Review

This is a review of "The Case for Qualia," a collection of nineteen essays edited by Edmond Wright, defending the notion of qualia and its significance.  The review has three parts. Part 1 lays out the general metaphysic in which the debate on qualia has been unfolding - the classical or spatial metaphysic.  Part 2 traverses the essays and relates the problems they encounter to this classic metaphysic, particularly the complete failure to grasp the significance of form as qualia - a precise legacy of Galileo's initial definition of the classic metaphysic - and therefore the failure to grasp the nature of the problem as the origin of the image of the external world (with all its forms).  Part 3 sketches a transformed metaphysic – a temporal metaphysic – along with the model of the origin of the image of the external world, with all its qualia, that this model entails. This is both the metaphysic and the concrete model of the brain developed by Bergson (1896/1912), and is an approach to the subject neglected, with nary a reference, in the collection.