title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Regaining his autonomy, Inza begins questioning Kent on his reluctance to share what his true responsibilities entail and claims that she believes he doesn't trust her, not believing his claims that he doesn't remember much of his activities as Doctor Fate. Her claim of trust issues angers him and Kent reveals that he does recall her being in the presence of a man and Fate having picked up feelings of guilt and questions her on that. In a moment of anger, she slaps Kent but apologizes afterwards and leaves. Later, Kent becomes Fate, who begins understanding that the jewel he countered was the manifestation of Vandaemon's power and the farmer was instead a Lord of Order who banded together with Vandaemon. He also believes that much of the present strife between Kent and Inza was partially caused by their interference as Dr. Fate unwillingly supplied them with magical power from his being. Ynar reveals that he and Vandaemon intend to rule the universe themselves without influence from the other Lords of Chaos and Order. Inza later appears before Fate, wanting to see Kent one last time before the world may be destroyed by Ynar and Vandaemon's alliance. Fate would gain an epiphany, believing Inza's not being influenced by their magic and the Tower of Fate being remained unaltered (due to being Inza, Kent, and Nabu's dwelling) meant that the human spirit, containing both elements of order and chaos, is powerful enough to resist against their power. Fate forces a merging of himself, Kent, and Inza, granting them the power to defeat Ynar and Vandaemon. In its aftermath, Inza gains a deeper understanding of Kent due to the merging, convinced that the pair do not trust one another enough. Kent reassures her that the both of them will work out their issues.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover, Doctor Fate is one of the numerous superheroes recruited by the Monitor in order to stop the Anti-Monitor. The event reveals that Doctor Fate's life and adventures is on one of the many parallel universes throughout the multiverse and the Anti-Monitor is a threat intended to become the sole ruler of realities. The Monitor intends to merge the multiverse into one, cohesive universe to make it strong but is killed by his protege, Harbringer, who is under Anti-Monitor's influence. Doctor Fate is later present as he and others attempt to piece the barrier separating the Earths. Doctor Fate is also later present as he along with other magic users lend their powers to the Spectre in order to confront the Anti-Monitor, although Spectre ultimately fails. Afterwards, Doctor Fate helps Amethyst, who has been blinded and transport her to Gemworld. In the aftermath of the series, despite the wide changes to various histories, much of Kent Nelson's history remained intact.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: During the "Zero Hour" crisis, Kent and Inza merge into Doctor Fate. However, uses his time-based powers to undo the magic that had kept the JSA young, which rapidly ages their bodies by several decades. The artifacts of Fate are also teleported back to Egypt, rendering Kent and Inza powerless. Realizing their time is short, the now elderly couple hunt down the smuggler Jared Stevens, who had recovered the helmet, cloak and amulet. Before they can transform into Doctor Fate once more, Kent and Inza are killed when their remaining life force is drained away by demons working for the villain Kingdom. Their souls then depart into the afterlife, leaving Jared to become the new Fate.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: During the "Blackest Night" event, Kent is briefly resurrected as a member of the Black Lantern Corps.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Years after the "Flashpoint" crossover led to the retroactively rebooted continuity the DC Universe with "The New 52, a newer version of Kent Nelson would appear during the DC You initiative. While still set within the new universe created from the New 52, the initiative was made to allow to emphasize storytelling over continuity. While Kent Nelson's first appearance in the fourth "Doctor Fate" series establishes him as the previous Doctor Fate to Khalid Nassour, much of his history remained unknown for a time.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Earlier mentions of the character established him as Khalid Nassour's grandnephew and uncle of his mother, Elizabeth Nassour (related through an unnamed brother who was a preacher), whom was inspired into archaeology thanks to Nelson. Through Elizabeth's history, it is also expressed that Kent's brother (who fathered Elizabeth) and their grandfather both were Christian preachers. Other stories establishes this version's history to be similar to his previous version prior to Flashpoint; Nelson's origin is mostly intact, with added details such as Nabu's manipulation of Kent's father, Sven, having costed him most of his own life savings and status as a credible archaeologist. The story also revealed Kent was manipulated physically on an atomic level, created to have the mindset and physical body in Nabu's preferred image, a more grim expression of his manipulation in his life.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the newly revised history in his superhero career, Nelson still encountered enemies such as Wotan and Khalis as well as having married Inza Cramer. Like his previous histories, his time as Doctor Fate still placed a burden on their marriage. Nelson also retained his history as a founding members of the JSA.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Unlike his previous history, however, Nelson had gained a sidekick in the form of 10 year old Salem the Witch Girl, an inhabitant of Limbo Town (the homeworld of Klarion the Witch Boy). Immune from her "bad fates" curse bestowed to female runaways of Limbo Town, which subjected people Salem cared for to varying levels of bad luck that included death, she became Nelson's apprentice for a time until she began growing frustrated from being unable to free herself of her curse. After the curse nearly killed Inza Cramer (whom was Nelson's girlfriend at the time), Salem would disappear. Kent would then approach the Justice Society Dark for assistance but their combined effort proved insufficient in locating her. Nelson's memory of Salem would later be erased from his mind for reasons not yet known.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the final pages "Prisoners of the Past" storyline, Kent would appear, claiming to see Khalid when in reality, he has sensed him as the new Doctor Fate. Subquentionally in the "Fated Threads" storyline, Kent learns of Khalid's early adventures as the new Doctor Fate while explaining the reason for his reappearance: having abandoned the Tower of Fate and being Doctor Fate for years, he is suddenly drawned back to it when he senses a dark threat and an agent that can oppose it: Khalid. Additionally, Khalid pleads with Kent to take the helm back so he can resume his normal life, in which Nelson declines, believing this to be a divine calling. Using his power, he assumes his moniker of Doctor Fate alongside Khalid as they work to advert a disaster caused by a mischievous demon, Nelson also simultaneously beginning to mentor him as the dark looming threat he sensed nears. When mummies begin attacking Brooklyn, Nelson appears to dispatch them while investigating whom has reanimated them. Eventually, his investigation leads him to the source of the dark magic around Brooklyn the threat in which his premonitions warned him of: Osiris. Nelson is quickly dispatched by the ancient deity, whom is seeking Khalid for supposed transgressions against Anubis, unaware of the former's attempt at completely usurping his godly station. Awakening later, he witnesses Bastet and the archangels explain the misunderstanding to Osiris and upon doing so, the ancient deity allows Khalid to live.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the "Blue Beetle: Hard Times" storyline, taking place at some point prior to the events of the "Doctor Fate" fourth series, Nabu later appears before Ted Kord, warning him that the Blue Beetle scarab is the result of magic and not alien technology as previously thought. It is revealed through flashbacks that centuries ago, Nabu battled with Blue Beetle Scarab's intelligence, Khaji-Da, and nearly prevailed until the intervention of the Atlantean sorcerer, Arion, who was seemingly driven insane by his exposure to it (later revealed to be the instead the result of the Death Force infecting his mind), allowing the scarab to escape and resulting in Nabu trapping Arion. In the modern day, Kent Nelson is revealed to have been captured by Nabu and placed in some mystic stasis and preserving his body in the Tower of Fate, using him as some sort of anchor to the physical plane. When freed using his minions and an unsuspecting Nabu, Arion would defeat Nabu by severing the connection between the two characters, weakening Nabu by disallowing him to actively contribute and once more putting Nelson under stasis. Later, Terri Magus heals Nelson when she places the Helm onto him under the instruction of Nabu, the man now regaining control of his body. He later confronts Arion and helps Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle) defeat the sorcerer before trapping him within a coffin of imprison him within what is known as an "absolution crystal" for ten thousands years.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: During the "" event, Doctor Fate assists the Justice League in defeating the Dark Nights. He forms a search team with Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl to find Nth Metal in the Rock of Eternity, where he is supposedly killed by Black Adam.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Kent would make an appearance in the "Justice League Dark"'s "The Last Age of Magic" storyline, revealing to have to have since taken in Khalid as his apprentice to teach him the ways of magic in preparation of officially becoming a fully-trained Doctor Fate. After the events of Dark Nights: Metal and Justice League: No Justice storyline, Kent's body was subqentionally possessed by Nabu when he and Khalid decline to help him rid of magic by unleashing the Otherkind, a magical species that devour magic, having come to believe magic to be the source of the universe's problems. He would also turn Khalid into a vase and trap him within the Tower of Fate.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: When the newly established iteration of the Justice League Dark visit Kent and the Tower of Fate to ask Nabu information about the Otherkind, they learn that Nelson's body has been hijacked by Nabu and his young protege was since trapped for opposing his plan to rid the universe of magic. While in Kent's body, Nabu begins targeting locations of mystic significance and destroying them before meeting both John Constantine and Swamp Thing. The two attempt to thwart Nabu by calling upon their most powerful spells and abilities to attact the attention of more powerful beings to get them to intervene. Their attempts to fight Nabu attacts the attention of the Phantom Stranger, the ensuring conflict causing Nabu to seal away both Constantine and the Phanton Stranger inside the Helmet of Fate alongside the trapped soul of Kent Nelson.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the "Lords of Order" storyline, the events that depict how Nelson came to be under Nabu's control once more; with the previous storyline having been stated to take place weeks before; after the emergence of the Tree of Wonder and the Otherkind, Nabu and Kent fiercely debate about how to react to this new revelation, where Nabu states his intentions of wanting to rid the universe of magic. Opposing his plan, he attempts to curb further discussion of it in front of Khalid. Later that night, Nabu controls Kent's body while he slept to force him to put the helm on and subjugate him totally. When Nabu later meets his Lords of Order brethren to further discuss their plan and Khalid is discovered, Kent uses all his willpower to prevent Nabu from using his body to cast a spell capable of killing his grandnephew. Unable to deal a killing blow, he instead turns Khalid into a vase to remove him.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the present time, directly after the Last Age of Magic storyline, Nabu and a band of the Lords of Order (having taken the bodies of various magic users as hosts) begin destroying various worlds connected to magic witin the Sphere of Gods and eventually set their sights on Myrra, the dimension protected by the Blue Devil and the Nightmaster, in which said title has since fallen to Detective Chimp. As Nabu and the Lords begin destroying Myrra, survivors begin retreating even as they are pursued. Wiping out Myrra, the Lords also arrive at Kor and bargains with members of the Justice League Dark and other prominent magicians to erase their minds and power of magic in return for their lives. As the Lords continue their plans, they are interrupted by Wonder Woman and Zatanna, whom were granted chaos magic and became the new Lords of Chaos alongside others. With Zatanna empowering a weakened Jason Blood with the Demon Three, they free Kent Nelson and those trapped in the helm. Nelson then helps seal Nabu away into the helm but changes the criteria for his hosts, requiring a willing bearer to become Doctor Fate.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the aftermath, Wonder Woman asks Kent Nelson to once more don the helm and act as a member of Justice League Dark. Having grown tired of the role and in light of Nabu's recent attack on the community, he declines and recommends Khalid instead, who declines on account of wanting to undergo further study and training before adopting the role. Instead, Nelson and Khalid agree to join the Justice League Dark as advisors.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Now a member of Justice League Dark, Nelson and team come into conflict with the Injustice League Dark, the super-villain counterpart of their team led by Circe, having gathered the power of Hecate for herself, and enlisted other well known super-villains' of magical origin: Klarion the Witch Boy, Papa Midnite, Floronic Man, and Solomon Grundy. As Circe begins converting magical power sources to herself and rewriting the "rules of magic" and reality itself, the team struggles to battle Circe within her newfound power and allies, losing Swamp Thing in the process. As Circe's plan comes to fruition of hijackings Wonder Woman's body and enlisting Eclipso alongside her cause and Kent is vulnerable to her power. In a desperate act to save the team from Circe and Eclipso, Khalid reasons with Nabu and dons the helmet once more and turns the tide of the battle while the Lord of Order ceded his power to Kent's successor, allowing Wonder Woman the opportunity to barter Circe to be imprisoned in her own world with the power of Hecate residing within Wonder Woman.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the pages of "", the event taking place between the Witching War and A Costly Trick of Magic storyline, Nelson's version of Doctor Fate was with Green Lantern, Flash, and Wildcat when they were shown to be guarding the Valhalla Cemetery. Later in the story, Nelson appears to fight the a magical version of Batman from the Dark Multiverse known as "Bat-Mage"


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the final storyline of the "Justice League Dark" title, Kent helps Khalid and the Justice League Dark in resorting order among the elemental forces of the DC Universe, re-convening a ritual known as the "Parliament of Life" which would balance out the elemental forces known as The Green, The Red, The Grey, and The Divided. Shortly after, Kent quits the team and reasons with Khalid that he wishes to experience normalcy in his life without the powers associate with Doctor Fate before embracing him and departs. When Khalid and the Justice League Dark later face the malevolent leader of the Otherkind, the Upside-Down Man, both Kent and Nabu appear as Khalid nearly passes out and takes his place in battle. Kent and Nabu began casting a spell capable of producing an attack strong enough to damage Upside-Down Man but it comes at the cost of a user's life force. As Khalid is unconscious, Nelson unleashes the blast and is killed as a result. While Upside-Down Man survives the blast, he is weakened enough for Zatanna to devise a means to ultimately defeat the entity. With Nelson dead, Khalid becomes the sole Doctor Fate incarnation albeit with a damage Helm of Fate from Nabu and Nelson's attempt.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: After the "Justice League Dark: A Costly Trick of Magic" and "Dark Nights: Death Metal" storylines, subsequent appearances of the character in stories take place prior to the character's depicted death in the final Justice League storyline, explaining various events in the character's previous history.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the "Doomsday Clock" limited series, Lois Lane is mailed a flash drive which contains newsreel footage of the Justice Society, including Doctor Fate. He was later seen with the Justice Society when Doctor Manhattan undoes the experiment that erased the Justice Society and the Legion of Super-Heroes.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In "The New Golden Age" one-shot, a younger version of Kent Nelson is showcased during the founding of the Justice Society of America in November 1940, with members such as Atom Smasher and Flash imploring Kent on their future. However, unlike prior depictions of the events, Nelson is instead shown a different vision of lost children accompanied by a Stranger before the helm overloads in power, causing him physical pain. As Green Lantern reassures they will face the threat together, Kent is instead disturbed that he cannot quite sense whom in question is causing this. Unknown to him during this time-frame, the Stranger's insertions of time includes also killing various incarnations of Doctor Fate in different timelines. Thirty-six years later, Doctor Fate is being in check up with Doctor Mid-Nite after having been injured during a battle with the super-villain, Vulcan, in the previous week. It is expressed that during the battle, Fate experienced visions of the future once more, seeing the same event he did in1940 as well now remembering his sidekick Salem the Witch Girl and having memories of his death four decades later from his current time-frame. While speaking to Power Girl about the JSA's reluctance in legacies and the team supposedly preventing women from having prominence on the team, Nelson contends with it, expressing that both Wonder Woman was a longtime member of the team and that he himself is aware that eventually, a new iteration of the JSA will emerge with the inclusion of a new Doctor Fate. Thirteen years prior to the present time of the book, Doctor Fate encounters Catwoman as she steals the Shen Ring of Hauhet, informing her of its cursed abilities to drive others mad by seeing glimpses into the future. As Catwoman aims to use her whip to deprive Nelson of the helm, he experiences visions once more but this time can see the stranger having killed other incarnations of Doctor Fate throughout time. Disoriented from the experience, he warns Catwoman of then that her future daughter will be among the casualties of the Stranger when she joins the JSA decades from then, with Catwoman not believing him initially.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: On his own, Kent Nelson various possess other super-powers, including immortality and being nearly invulnerable due to alterations made to his body from Nabu. In addition to this, Nabu's tutelage and alterations to his body raised his body to its mental and physical peak and granted him all the arcane lore and magical knowledge possessed by Nabu. Nelson himself is regarded as a brilliant archaeologist and earned a doctorate degree in the field. In his earlier appearances, the character also became a physician, having earned a medical doctorate degree and was skilled practitioner of jujutsu.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: A practicing sorcerer, Kent Nelson is often considered among the most powerful magic users in the DC Universe, with Nelson stated to be the most powerful incarnation of Doctor Fate (although Inza has also been contended to be more talented). As Doctor Fate, Nelson has access to powerful talismans associated with its bearers. With the usage of specific mystic artifacts provided by his mentor, Nabu, he is considered nearly unstoppable in battle and nearly unmatched in spell-casting.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In more recent versions of the character, Nelson's connection to Nabu's talismans (Artifacts of Fate) is intimate enough to draw power from a distance, granting him the ability to manifest a powerful facsimile of the Helm of Fate, Cloak of Destiny, and Amulet of Anubis, and use their powers without having the Helm of Fate on him physically.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Being the most recognized and powerful of Nabu's gifted artifacts, the Helmet of Fate allows for magical capabilities (spell-casting) and grants Kent Nelson numerous powers: flight, healing, and the manipulation of the natural elements (wind, earth, water, fire, and lightning). The helm also contains a vast library of spells in which the user can draw from.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: The amulet affords several powers for Nelson, including mind control, resistance to psychic/astral probing, and bolstering of his magical power. The amulet also allows the wearer to call upon and communicate with the spirits of the deceased. It also houses its own universe separate from the main universe, allowing the wearer to hide their existence or to trap powerful entities within.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: A magical cloak with mystic properties; the cloak is both fireproof and highly resistant towards some forms of magic.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: While powerful, separation from the Helmet of Fate significantly weakens Nelson, as he typically possess only a level of invulnerability, telekinesis, and flight. He is also still vulnerable to human weaknesses such as gas attacks and needing to breathe without the assistance of the helm's magic. In his more recent versions, his spell-casting and magical abilities are portrayed more formidable without the helm as he can still draw power from it. However, he does not have full access to the helm's power without it in his possession.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: Additionally, his incarnation of Doctor Fate is bound by the "rules of magic", making him unable to cast counter-spells against himself to nullify another spell after they've been cast, being only able to use his powers to protect him from the effects of whatever spell has been cast afterwards.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: After Mister Mind "eats" aspects of the fifty-two realities that make up the Multiverse, one of them, designated Earth-2, takes on visual aspects similar to the pre-"Crisis" Earth-Two, such as the Justice Society of America being this world's premier superteam.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: This version of Doctor Fate (based upon the Kent Nelson version of the character) along with the Spectre, suspects something is awry with Power Girl's mysterious reappearance.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: In the alternate timeline of the "Flashpoint" event, Kent Nelson works as a fortune teller in Haley's Circus. Kent tells his co-worker, trapeze artist Boston Brand, of his vision of Dick Grayson's death. The circus is then attacked by Amazons who are looking to steal the helmet. Kent is impaled and killed by an Amazon before the circus workers escape with the help of Resistance member Vertigo. With Boston's help, Dick escapes the Amazons' slaughter of the other circus workers and meets up with the Resistance, using the helmet as the new Doctor Fate.


title: Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)

text: An alternate version of Doctor Fate, known as Doc Fate, is shown to exist on the pulp fiction-influenced world of Earth-20. Doc Fate is an African-American gunslinger and occultist named Kent Nelson who is based in a windowless Manhattan skyscraper. Doc Fate forms and leads a team of adventurers known as the Society of Super-Heroes, which includes the Immortal Man, the Mighty Atom, the Blackhawks and the Green Lantern Abin Sur.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Lliana Bird (born 17th August 1981), known professionally as Birdy, is a British radio presenter, writer, actor, and co-founder of charities Help Refugees (now known as Choose Love) and The Kindly Collective. She is a former presenter on Radio X.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird presented the Sunday evening show on Radio X, formerly known as Xfm, where she worked from 2014 to 2021. She has also previously contributed to Capital Radio, Virgin Radio, LBC and BBC Three Counties Radio. She is also a regular guest on LBC, BBC 5 Live and BBC London.


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2010 she presented a series of radio documentaries about independent record labels entitled "Independents Day". She presented on XFM from 2007 until 2015, when the station rebranded as Radio X. Bird was the final live presenter on Xfm, delivering the final live link and playing the song that the station began on, MC5'S 'Kick Out The Jams'


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird presents a weekly podcast entitled "Geek Chic's Weird Science" which was selected as iTunes Best of 2014.


title: Lliana Bird

text: She also co-presents "Get It Off Your Breasts" alongside Emma Gannon, a female-focussed podcast featuring unfiltered roundtable discussions


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird has appeared on Sky News and BBC Breakfast as a guest commentator. She previously presented TFTV and XFM's online station, XFM TV. In 2014 she presented a conservation series about London Zoo. In 2016 she was a guest on BBC's Springwatch.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird has also worked as an actress in various productions, including "Fiddler on the Roof" at The Lyric Theatre, "Boom-bang-a-bang" at the Etcetera Theatre, and "The Christmas Cock-up" at The Cockpit Theatre.


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2009, Bird set up a theatrical production company called Bird & Be with Phoebe Barran. Their first production was a run of Orlando Wells' "The Tin Horizon" at Theatre 503, which received positive reviews from critics.


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2013 she co-produced Orlando Wells' adaption of Patrick Hamilton's "The Duke in Darkness", which ran from 16 April to 11 May at the Tabard Theatre.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird has appeared in several episodes of The Mighty Boosh, and in episodes of "Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy" Series 1 and 2.


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2018 Bird wrote and co-directed her first short film ‘Snapshots’ starring Paul Kaye and Mark Benton. It went on to win several awards.


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2016 she released a book, "The Mice Who Sing for Sex (and other weird tales from the world of science)" with Dr Jack from her "Geek Chic's Weird Science" podcast.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird is the co-founder of Help Refugees (now known as Choose Love), a humanitarian organisation providing aid to refugees across Europe and beyond. Help Refugees was named as one of the NESTA New Radicals and won Liberty's "Jo Cox, More in Common" award. Bird was also named as one of "Foreign Policy"'s "Top 100 Global Thinkers 2016".


title: Lliana Bird

text: In 2017 Bird co-founded The Kindly Collective, which brings people together to fundraise and champion projects supporting women, children and creatures across the globe.


title: Lliana Bird

text: Bird has lived with comedian Noel Fielding since about 2010. They live in Highgate, north London. Bird and Fielding have two daughters, one born in 2018 and the other born in August 2020.


title: Qualia

text: In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term "qualia" derives from the Latin neuter plural form ("qualia") of the Latin adjective "quālis" () meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in a specific instance, such as "what it is like to taste a specific this particular apple now".


title: Qualia

text: Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of "pain" of a headache, the "taste" of wine, as well as the "redness" of an evening sky. As qualitative characters of sensation, qualia stand in contrast to propositional attitudes, where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.


title: Qualia

text: Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett once suggested that "qualia" was "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us".


title: Qualia

text: Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of qualia under various definitions remain controversial. While some philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett argue that qualia do not exist and are incompatible with neuroscience and naturalism, some neuroscientists and neurologists like Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch and Rodolfo Llinás state that qualia exist and that the desire to eliminate them is based on an erroneous interpretation on the part of some philosophers regarding what constitutes science.


title: Qualia

text: There are many definitions of qualia, which have changed over time. One of the simpler, broader definitions is: "The 'what it is like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc."


title: Qualia

text: C.S. Peirce introduced the term "quale" in philosophy in 1866 (Writings, Chronological Edition, Vol. 1, pp. 477–478).


title: Qualia

text: Frank Jackson later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes".


title: Qualia

text: Daniel Dennett identifies four properties that are commonly ascribed to qualia. According to these, qualia are:


title: Qualia

text: If qualia of this sort exist, then a normally sighted person who sees red would be unable to describe the experience of this perception in such a way that a listener who has never experienced color will be able to know everything there is to know about that experience. Though it is possible to make an analogy, such as "red looks hot", or to provide a description of the conditions under which the experience occurs, such as "it's the color you see when light of 700-nm wavelength is directed at you", supporters of this kind of qualia contend that such a description is incapable of providing a complete description of the experience.


title: Qualia

text: Another way of defining qualia is as "raw feels". A "raw feel" is a perception in and of itself, considered entirely in isolation from any effect it might have on behavior and behavioral disposition. In contrast, a "cooked feel" is that perception seen as existing in terms of its effects. For example, the perception of the taste of wine is an ineffable, raw feel, while the experience of warmth or bitterness caused by that taste of wine would be a cooked feel. Cooked feels are not qualia.


title: Qualia

text: According to an argument put forth by Saul Kripke in his paper "Identity and Necessity" (1971), one key consequence of the claim that such things as raw feels can be meaningfully discussed – that qualia exist – is that it leads to the logical possibility of two entities exhibiting identical behavior in all ways despite one of them entirely lacking qualia. While very few ever claim that such an entity, called a philosophical zombie, actually exists, the mere possibility is claimed to be sufficient to refute physicalism.


title: Qualia

text: Arguably, the idea of hedonistic utilitarianism, where the ethical value of things is determined from the amount of subjective pleasure or pain they cause, is dependent on the existence of qualia.


title: Qualia

text: Since it is by definition impossible to convey qualia verbally, it is also impossible to demonstrate them directly in an argument; so a more tangential approach is needed. Arguments for qualia generally come in the form of thought experiments designed to lead one to the conclusion that qualia exist.


title: Qualia

text: Although it does not actually mention the word "qualia", Thomas Nagel's paper "What is it like to be a bat?" is often cited in debates over qualia. Nagel argues that consciousness has an essentially subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect. He states that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to "be" that organism – something it is like "for" the organism." Nagel also suggests that the subjective aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science. He claims that "if we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue about how this could be done." Furthermore, he states that "it seems unlikely that any physical theory of mind can be contemplated until more thought has been given to the general problem of subjective and objective."


title: Qualia

text: The inverted spectrum thought experiment, originally developed by John Locke, invites us to imagine that we wake up one morning and find that for some unknown reason all the colors in the world have been inverted, i.e. swapped to the hue on the opposite side of a color wheel. Furthermore, we discover that no physical changes have occurred in our brains or bodies that would explain this phenomenon. Supporters of the existence of qualia argue that since we can imagine this happening without contradiction, it follows that we are imagining a change in a property that determines the way things look to us, but that has no physical basis. In more detail:


title: Qualia

text: The argument thus claims that if we find the inverted spectrum plausible, we must admit that qualia exist (and are non-physical). Some philosophers find it absurd that armchair theorizing can prove something to exist, and the detailed argument does involve a lot of assumptions about conceivability and possibility, which are open to criticism. Perhaps it is not possible for a given brain state to produce anything other than a given quale in our universe, and that is all that matters.


title: Qualia

text: The idea that an inverted spectrum would be undetectable in practice is also open to criticism on more scientific grounds (see main article). There is an actual experiment – albeit somewhat obscure – that parallels the inverted spectrum argument. George M. Stratton, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, performed an experiment in which he wore special prism glasses that caused the external world to appear upside down. After a few days of continually wearing the glasses, an adaptation occurred and the external world appeared righted. When the glasses were removed, perception of the external world again returned to the "normal" perceptual state. If this argument provides indicia that qualia exist, it does not necessarily follow that they must be non-physical, because that distinction should be considered a separate epistemological issue.


title: Qualia

text: A similar argument holds that it is conceivable (or not inconceivable) that there could be physical duplicates of people, called "philosophical zombies", without any qualia at all. These "zombies" would demonstrate outward behavior precisely similar to that of a normal human, but would not have a subjective phenomenology. It is worth noting that a necessary condition for the possibility of philosophical zombies is that there be no specific part or parts of the brain that directly give rise to qualia: The zombie can only exist if subjective consciousness is causally separate from the physical brain.


title: Qualia

text: Joseph Levine's paper "Conceivability, Identity, and the Explanatory Gap" takes up where the criticisms of conceivability arguments, such as the inverted spectrum argument and the zombie argument, leave off. Levine agrees that conceivability is flawed as a means of establishing metaphysical realities, but points out that even if we come to the "metaphysical" conclusion that qualia are physical, there is still an "explanatory" problem.


title: Qualia

text: However, such an epistemological or explanatory problem might indicate an underlying metaphysical issue – the non-physicality of qualia, even if not proven by conceivability arguments is far from ruled out.


title: Qualia

text: This thought experiment has two purposes. First, it is intended to show that qualia exist. If one accepts the thought experiment, we believe that Mary gains something after she leaves the room – that she acquires knowledge of a particular thing that she did not possess before. That knowledge, Jackson argues, is knowledge of the quale that corresponds to the experience of seeing red, and it must thus be conceded that qualia are real properties, since there is a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not.


title: Qualia

text: The second purpose of this argument is to refute the physicalist account of the mind. Specifically, the knowledge argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical truths. The challenge posed to physicalism by the knowledge argument runs as follows:


title: Qualia

text: First Jackson argued that qualia are epiphenomenal: not causally efficacious with respect to the physical world. Jackson does not give a positive justification for this claim – rather, he seems to assert it simply because it defends qualia against the classic problem of dualism. Our natural assumption would be that qualia must be causally efficacious in the physical world, but some would ask how we could argue for their existence if they did not affect our brains. If qualia are to be non-physical properties (which they must be in order to constitute an argument against physicalism), some argue that it is almost impossible to imagine how they could have a causal effect on the physical world. By redefining qualia as epiphenomenal, Jackson attempts to protect them from the demand of playing a causal role.


title: Qualia

text: Later, however, he rejected epiphenomenalism. This, he argues, is because when Mary first sees red, she says "wow", so it must be Mary's qualia that cause her to say "wow". This contradicts epiphenomenalism. Since the Mary's room thought experiment seems to create this contradiction, there must be something wrong with it. This is often referred to as the "there must be a reply" reply.


title: Qualia

text: In "Consciousness Explained" (1991) and "Quining Qualia" (1988), Dennett offers an argument against qualia by claiming that the above definition breaks down when one tries to make a practical application of it. In a series of thought experiments, which he calls "intuition pumps", he brings qualia into the world of neurosurgery, clinical psychology, and psychological experimentation. His argument states that, once the concept of qualia is so imported, it turns out that we can either make no use of it in the situation in question, or that the questions posed by the introduction of qualia are unanswerable precisely because of the special properties defined for qualia.


title: Qualia

text: In Dennett's updated version of the inverted spectrum thought experiment, "alternative neurosurgery", you again awake to find that your qualia have been inverted – grass appears red, the sky appears orange, etc. According to the original account, you should be immediately aware that something has gone horribly wrong. Dennett argues, however, that it is impossible to know whether the diabolical neurosurgeons have indeed inverted your qualia (by tampering with your optic nerve, say), or have simply inverted your connection to memories of past qualia. Since both operations would produce the same result, you would have no means on your own to tell which operation has actually been conducted, and you are thus in the odd position of not knowing whether there has been a change in your "immediately apprehensible" qualia.


title: Qualia

text: Dennett's argument revolves around the central objection that, for qualia to be taken seriously as a component of experience – for them to even make sense as a discrete concept – it must be possible to show that


title: Qualia

text: Dennett attempts to show that we cannot satisfy (a) either through introspection or through observation, and that qualia's very definition undermines its chances of satisfying (b).


title: Qualia

text: Supporters of qualia could point out that in order for you to notice a change in qualia, you must compare your current qualia with your memories of past qualia. Arguably, such a comparison would involve immediate apprehension of your current qualia "and" your memories of past qualia, but not the past qualia "themselves". Furthermore, modern functional brain imaging has increasingly suggested that the memory of an experience is processed in similar ways and in similar zones of the brain as those originally involved in the original perception. This may mean that there would be asymmetry in outcomes between altering the mechanism of perception of qualia and altering their memories. If the diabolical neurosurgery altered the immediate perception of qualia, you might not even notice the inversion directly, since the brain zones which re-process the memories would themselves invert the qualia remembered. On the other hand, alteration of the qualia memories themselves would be processed without inversion, and thus you would perceive them as an inversion. Thus, you might know immediately if memory of your qualia had been altered, but might not know if immediate qualia were inverted or whether the diabolical neurosurgeons had done a sham procedure.


title: Qualia

text: Dennett also has a response to the "Mary the color scientist" thought experiment. He argues that Mary would not, in fact, learn something new if she stepped out of her black and white room to see the color red. Dennett asserts that if she already truly knew "everything about color", that knowledge would include a deep understanding of why and how human neurology causes us to sense the "quale" of color. Mary would therefore already know exactly what to expect of seeing red, before ever leaving the room. Dennett argues that the misleading aspect of the story is that Mary is supposed to not merely be knowledgeable about color but to actually know "all" the physical facts about it, which would be a knowledge so deep that it exceeds what can be imagined, and twists our intuitions.


title: Qualia

text: If Mary really does know everything physical there is to know about the experience of color, then this effectively grants her almost omniscient powers of knowledge. Using this, she will be able to deduce her own reaction, and figure out exactly what the experience of seeing red will feel like.


title: Qualia

text: Dennett finds that many people find it difficult to see this, so he uses the case of RoboMary to further illustrate what it would be like for Mary to possess such a vast knowledge of the physical workings of the human brain and color vision. RoboMary is an intelligent robot who, instead of the ordinary color camera-eyes, has a software lock such that she is only able to perceive black and white and shades in-between.


title: Qualia

text: RoboMary can examine the computer brain of similar non-color-locked robots when they look at a red tomato, and see exactly how they react and what kinds of impulses occur. RoboMary can also construct a simulation of her own brain, unlock the simulation's color-lock and, with reference to the other robots, simulate exactly how this simulation of herself reacts to seeing a red tomato. RoboMary naturally has control over all of her internal states except for the color-lock. With the knowledge of her simulation's internal states upon seeing a red tomato, RoboMary can put her own internal states directly into the states they would be in upon seeing a red tomato. In this way, without ever seeing a red tomato through her cameras, she will know exactly what it is like to see a red tomato.


title: Qualia

text: Dennett uses this example as attempt to show us that Mary's all-encompassing physical knowledge makes her own internal states as transparent as those of a robot or computer, and it is almost straightforward for her to figure out exactly how it feels to see red.


title: Qualia

text: Perhaps Mary's failure to learn exactly what seeing red feels like is simply a failure of language, or a failure of our ability to describe experiences. An alien race with a different method of communication or description might be perfectly able to teach their version of Mary exactly how seeing the color red would feel. Perhaps it is simply a uniquely human failing to communicate first-person experiences from a third-person perspective. Dennett suggests that the description might even be possible using English. He uses a simpler version of the Mary thought experiment to show how this might work. What if Mary was in a room without triangles and was prevented from seeing or making any triangles? An English-language description of just a few words would be sufficient for her to imagine what it is like to see a triangle – she can simply and directly visualize a triangle in her mind. Similarly, Dennett proposes, it is perfectly, logically possible that the quale of what it is like to see red could eventually be described in an English-language description of millions or billions of words.


title: Qualia

text: In "Are we explaining consciousness yet?" (2001), Dennett approves of an account of qualia defined as the deep, rich collection of individual neural responses that are too fine-grained for language to capture. For instance, a person might have an alarming reaction to yellow because of a yellow car that hit her previously, and someone else might have a nostalgic reaction to a comfort food. These effects are too individual-specific to be captured by English words. "If one dubs this inevitable residue "qualia", then qualia are guaranteed to exist, but they are just more of the same, dispositional properties that have not yet been entered in the catalog [...]."


title: Qualia

text: According to Paul Churchland, Mary might be considered to be like a feral child. Feral children have suffered extreme isolation during childhood. Technically when Mary leaves the room, she would not have the ability to see or know what the color red is. A brain has to learn and develop how to see colors. Patterns need to form in the V4 section of the visual cortex. These patterns are formed from exposure to wavelengths of light. This exposure is needed during the early stages of brain development. In Mary's case, the identifications and categorizations of color will only be in respect to representations of black and white.


title: Qualia

text: In his book "Good and Real" (2006), Gary Drescher compares qualia with "gensyms" (generated symbols) in Common Lisp. These are objects that Lisp treats as having no properties or components and which can only be identified as equal or not equal to other objects. Drescher explains, "we have no introspective access to whatever internal properties make the "red" gensym recognizably distinct from the "green" [...] even though we know the sensation when we experience it." Under this interpretation of qualia, Drescher responds to the Mary thought experiment by noting that "knowing about red-related cognitive structures and the dispositions they engender – even if that knowledge were implausibly detailed and exhaustive – would not necessarily give someone who lacks prior color-experience the slightest clue whether the card now being shown is of the color called red." This does not, however, imply that our experience of red is non-mechanical; "on the contrary, gensyms are a routine feature of computer-programming languages".


title: Qualia

text: D.K. Lewis has an argument that introduces a new hypothesis about types of knowledge and their transmission in qualia cases. Lewis agrees that Mary cannot learn what red looks like through her monochrome physicalist studies. But he proposes that this doesn't matter. Learning transmits information, but experiencing qualia doesn't transmit information; instead it communicates abilities. When Mary sees red, she doesn't get any new information. She gains new abilities – now she can remember what red looks like, imagine what other red things might look like and recognize further instances of redness.


title: Qualia

text: Lewis states that Jackson's thought experiment uses the "phenomenal information hypothesis" – that is, the new knowledge that Mary gains upon seeing red is phenomenal information. Lewis then proposes a different "ability hypothesis" that differentiates between two types of knowledge: knowledge "that" ("information") and knowledge "how" ("abilities"). Normally the two are entangled; ordinary learning is also an experience of the subject concerned, and people both learn information (for instance, that Freud was a psychologist) and gain ability (to recognize images of Freud). However, in the thought experiment, Mary can only use ordinary learning to gain know-that knowledge. She is prevented from using experience to gain the know-how knowledge that would allow her to remember, imagine and recognize the color red.


title: Qualia

text: We have the intuition that Mary has been deprived of some vital data to do with the experience of redness. It is also uncontroversial that some things cannot be learned inside the room; for example, we do not expect Mary to learn how to ski within the room. Lewis has articulated that information and ability are potentially different things. In this way, "physicalism" is still compatible with the conclusion that Mary gains new knowledge. It is also useful for considering other instances of qualia; "being a bat" is an ability, so it is know-how knowledge.


title: Qualia

text: The artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky thinks the problems posed by qualia are essentially issues of complexity, or rather of mistaking complexity for simplicity.


title: Qualia

text: Michael Tye holds the opinion there are no qualia, no "veils of perception" between us and the referents of our thought. He describes our experience of an object in the world as "transparent". By this he means that no matter what private understandings and/or misunderstandings we may have of some public entity, it is still there before us in reality. The idea that qualia intervene between ourselves and their origins he regards as "a massive error"; as he says, "it is just not credible that visual experiences are systematically misleading in this way"; "the only objects of which you are aware are the external ones making up the scene before your eyes"; there are "no such things as the qualities of experiences" for "they are qualities of external surfaces (and volumes and films) if they are qualities of anything." This insistence permits him to take our experience as having a reliable base since there is no fear of losing contact with the realness of public objects.


title: Qualia

text: In Tye's thought there is no question of qualia without information being contained within them; it is always "an awareness that", always "representational". He characterizes the perception of children as a misperception of referents that are undoubtedly as present for them as they are for grown-ups. As he puts it, they may not know that "the house is dilapidated", but there is no doubt about their seeing the house. After-images are dismissed as presenting no problem for the Transparency Theory because, as he puts it, after-images being illusory, there is nothing that one sees.


title: Qualia

text: Tye proposes that phenomenal experience has five basic elements, for which he has coined the acronym PANIC – Poised, Abstract, Nonconceptual, Intentional Content. It is "Poised" in the sense that the phenomenal experience is always presented to the understanding, whether or not the agent is able to apply a concept to it. Tye adds that the experience is "maplike" in that, in most cases, it reaches through to the distribution of shapes, edges, volumes, etc. in the world – you may not be reading the "map" but, as with an actual map there is a reliable match with what it is mapping. It is "Abstract" because it is still an open question in a particular case whether you are in touch with a concrete object (someone may feel a pain in a "left leg" when that leg has actually been amputated). It is "Nonconceptual" because a phenomenon can exist although one does not have the concept by which to recognize it. Nevertheless, it is "Intentional" in the sense that it represents something, again whether or not the particular observer is taking advantage of that fact; this is why Tye calls his theory "representationalism". This last makes it plain that Tye believes that he has retained a direct contact with what produces the phenomena and is therefore not hampered by any trace of a "veil of perception".


title: Qualia

text: Roger Scruton, whilst sceptical of the idea that neurobiology can tell us a great amount about consciousness, is of the opinion that the idea of qualia is incoherent, and that Wittgenstein's famous private language argument effectively disproves it. Scruton writes,


title: Qualia

text: In his book "On Human Nature", Scruton does pose a potential line of criticism to this, which is that whilst Wittgenstein's private language argument does disprove the concept of reference to qualia, or the idea that we can talk even to ourselves of their nature, it does not disprove its existence altogether. Scruton believes that this is a valid criticism, and this is why he stops short of actually saying that qualia don't exist, and instead merely suggests that we should abandon them as a concept. However, he does give a quote by Wittgenstein as a response: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."


title: Qualia

text: David Chalmers formulated the "hard problem of consciousness", raising the issue of qualia to a new level of importance and acceptance in the field. In Chalmers (1995) he also argued for what he called "the principle of organizational invariance". In this paper, he argues that if a system such as one of appropriately configured computer chips reproduces the functional organization of the brain, it will also reproduce the qualia associated with the brain.


title: Qualia

text: E. J. Lowe, of Durham University, denies that holding to indirect realism (in which we have access only to sensory features internal to the brain) necessarily implies a Cartesian dualism. He agrees with Bertrand Russell that our "retinal images" – that is, the distributions across our retinas – are connected to "patterns of neural activity in the cortex" (Lowe, 1996). He defends a version of the "causal theory of perception" in which a causal path can be traced between the external object and the perception of it. He is careful to deny that we do any inferring from the sensory field, a view which he believes allows us to found an access to knowledge on that causal connection. In a later work he moves closer to the non-epistemic theory in that he postulates "a wholly non-conceptual component of perceptual experience", but he refrains from analyzing the relation between the perceptual and the "non-conceptual". Most recently he has drawn attention to the problems that hallucination raises for the direct realist and to their disinclination to enter the discussion on the topic.


title: Qualia

text: John Barry Maund, an Australian philosopher of perception at the University of Western Australia, draws attention to a key distinction of qualia. Qualia are open to being described on two levels, a fact that he refers to as "dual coding". Using the Television Analogy (which, as the non-epistemic argument shows, can be shorn of its objectionable aspects), he points out that, if asked what we see on a television screen there are two answers that we might give:


title: Qualia

text: The states of the screen during a football match are unquestionably different from those of the screen during a chess game, but there is no way available to us of describing the ways in which they are different except by reference to the play, moves and pieces in each game.


title: Qualia

text: He has refined the explanation by shifting to the example of a "Movitype" screen, often used for advertisements and announcements in public places. A Movitype screen consists of a matrix – or "raster" as the neuroscientists prefer to call it (from the Latin "rastrum", a "rake"; think of the lines on a TV screen as "raked" across) – that is made up of an array of tiny light-sources. A computer-led input can excite these lights so as to give the impression of letters passing from right to left, or even, on the more advanced forms now commonly used in advertisements, to show moving pictures. Maund's point is as follows. It is obvious that there are two ways of describing what you are seeing. We could either adopt the everyday public language and say "I saw some sentences, followed by a picture of a 7-Up can." Although that is a perfectly adequate way of describing the sight, nevertheless, there is a scientific way of describing it which bears no relation whatsoever to this commonsense description. One could ask the electronics engineer to provide us with a computer print-out staged across the seconds that you were watching it of the point-states of the raster of lights. This would no doubt be a long and complex document, with the state of each tiny light-source given its place in the sequence. The interesting aspect of this list is that, although it would give a comprehensive and point-by-point-detailed description of the state of the screen, nowhere in that list would there be a mention of "English sentences" or "a 7-Up can".


title: Qualia

text: What this makes clear is that there are two ways to describe such a screen, (1) the "commonsense" one, in which publicly recognizable objects are mentioned, and (2) an accurate point-by-point account of the actual state of the field, but makes no mention of what any passer-by would or would not make of it. This second description would be non-epistemic from the common sense point of view, since no objects are mentioned in the print-out, but perfectly acceptable from the engineer's point of view. Note that, if one carries this analysis across to human sensing and perceiving, this rules out Dennett's claim that all qualiaphiles must regard qualia as "ineffable", for at this second level they are in principle quite "effable" – indeed, it is not ruled out that some neurophysiologist of the future might be able to describe the neural detail of qualia at this level.


title: Qualia

text: Maund has also extended his argument particularly with reference of color. Color he sees as a dispositional property, not an objective one, an approach which allows for the facts of difference between person and person, and also leaves aside the claim that external objects are colored. Colors are therefore "virtual properties", in that it is as if things possessed them; although the naïve view attributes them to objects, they are intrinsic, non-relational inner experiences.


title: Qualia

text: In his book "Sensing the World", Moreland Perkins argues that qualia need not be identified with their objective sources: a smell, for instance, bears no direct resemblance to the molecular shape that gives rise to it, nor is a toothache actually in the tooth. He is also like Hobbes in being able to view the process of sensing as being something complete in itself; as he puts it, it is not like "kicking a football" where an external object is required – it is more like "kicking a kick", an explanation which entirely avoids the familiar Homunculus Objection, as adhered to, for example, by Gilbert Ryle. Ryle was quite unable even to entertain this possibility, protesting that "in effect it explained the having of sensations as the not having of sensations." However, A.J. Ayer in a rejoinder identified this objection as "very weak" as it betrayed an inability to detach the notion of eyes, indeed any sensory organ, from the neural sensory experience.


title: Qualia

text: Howard Robinson is a philosopher who has concentrated his research within the philosophy of mind. Taking what has been through the latter part of the last century an unfashionable stance, he has consistently argued against those explanations of sensory experience that would reduce them to physical origins. He has never regarded the theory of sense-data as refuted, but has set out to refute in turn the objections which so many have considered to be conclusive. The version of the theory of sense-data he defends takes what is before consciousness in perception to be qualia as mental presentations that are causally linked to external entities, but which are not physical in themselves. Unlike the philosophers so far mentioned, he is therefore a dualist, one who takes both matter and mind to have real and metaphysically distinct natures. In one of his articles he takes the physicalist to task for ignoring the fact that sensory experience can be entirely free of representational character. He cites phosphenes as a stubborn example (phosphenes are flashes of neural light that result either from sudden pressure in the brain – as induced, for example, by intense coughing, or through direct physical pressure on the retina), and points out that it is grossly counter-intuitive to argue that these are not visual experiences on a par with open-eye seeing.


title: Qualia

text: William Robinson (no relation) takes a very similar view to that of his namesake. In his book, "Understanding Phenomenal Consciousness", he is unusual as a dualist in calling for research programs that investigate the relation of qualia to the brain. The problem is so stubborn, he says, that too many philosophers would prefer "to explain it away", but he would rather have it explained and does not see why the effort should not be made. However, he does not expect there to be a straightforward scientific reduction of phenomenal experience to neural architecture; on the contrary he regards this as a forlorn hope. The "Qualitative Event Realism" that Robinson espouses sees phenomenal consciousness as caused by brain events but not identical with them, being non-material events.


title: Qualia

text: It is noteworthy that he refuses to set aside the vividness – and commonness – of mental images, both visual and aural, standing here in direct opposition to Daniel Dennett, who has difficulty in crediting the experience in others. He is similar to Moreland Perkins in keeping his investigation wide enough to apply to all the senses.


title: Qualia

text: Edmond Wright is a philosopher who considers the inter-subjective aspect of perception. From Locke onwards it had been normal to frame perception problems in terms of a single subject S looking at a single entity E with a property p. However, if we begin with the facts of the differences in sensory registration from person to person, coupled with the differences in the criteria we have learned for distinguishing what we together call "the same" things, then a problem arises of how two persons align their differences on these two levels so that they can still get a practical overlap on parts of the real about them – and, in particular, update each other about them.


title: Qualia

text: Wright mentions being struck with the hearing difference between himself and his son, discovering that his son could hear sounds up to nearly 20 kilohertz while his range only reached to 14 kHz or so. This implies that a difference in qualia could emerge in human action (for example, the son could warn the father of a high-pitched escape of a dangerous gas kept under pressure, the sound-waves of which would be producing no qualia evidence at all for the father). The relevance for language thus becomes critical, for an informative statement can best be understood as an updating of a perception – and this may involve a radical re-selection from the qualia fields viewed as non-epistemic, even perhaps of the presumed singularity of "the" referent, a fortiori if that "referent" is the self. Here he distinguishes his view from that of Revonsuo, who too readily makes his "virtual space" "egocentric".


title: Qualia

text: Wright's particular emphasis has been on what he asserts is a core feature of communication, that, in order for an updating to be set up and made possible, both speaker and hearer have to behave as if they have identified "the same singular thing", which, he notes, partakes of the structure of a joke or a story. Wright says that this systematic ambiguity seems to opponents of qualia to be a sign of fallacy in the argument (as ambiguity is in pure logic) whereas, on the contrary, it is sign – in talk about "what" is perceived – of something those speaking to each other have to learn to take advantage of. In extending this analysis, he has been led to argue for an important feature of human communication being the degree and character of the faith maintained by the participants in the dialogue, a faith that has priority over what has before been taken to be the key virtues of language, such as "sincerity", "truth", and "objectivity". Indeed, he considers that to prioritize them over faith is to move into superstition.


title: Qualia

text: Erwin Schrödinger, a theoretical physicist and one of the leading pioneers of quantum mechanics, also published in the areas of colorimetry and color perception. In several of his philosophical writings, he defends the notion that qualia are not physical.


title: Qualia

text: He continues on to remark that subjective experiences do not form a one-to-one correspondence with stimuli. For example, light of wavelength in the neighborhood of 590 nm produces the sensation of yellow, whereas exactly the same sensation is produced by mixing red light, with wavelength 760 nm, with green light, at 535 nm. From this he concludes that there is no "numerical connection with these physical, objective characteristics of the waves" and the sensations they produce.


title: Qualia

text: Schrödinger concludes with a proposal of how it is that we might arrive at the mistaken belief that a satisfactory theoretical account of qualitative experience has been – or might ever be – achieved:


title: Qualia

text: Neuroscientist and Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine Gerald Edelman in his book "Bright Air, Brilliant Fire" argues:


title: Qualia

text: Neurologist Rodolfo Llinás states in his book "I of the Vortex" that from a strictly neurological perspective, qualia exist and are very important to the organism's survival. He argues that qualia were important for the evolution of the nervous system of organisms, including simple organism such as insects:


title: Qualia

text: Llinás argues that qualia are ancient and necessary for an organism's survival "and" a product of neuronal oscillation. He gives the evidence of anesthesia of the brain and subsequent stimulation of limbs to demonstrate that qualia can be "turned off" with changing only the variable of neuronal oscillation (local brain electrical activity), while all other connections remain intact, arguing strongly for an oscillatory – electrical origin of qualia, or important aspects of them.


title: Qualia

text: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein proposed three laws of qualia (with a fourth later added), which are "functional criteria that need to be fulfilled in order for certain neural events to be associated with qualia" by philosophers of the mind:


title: Qualia

text: What these authors propose is to approach qualia from an empirical perspective and not as a logical or philosophical problem. On page 433, the authors wonder how qualia evolved. Then, they mention that it is possible to adopt a skeptical point of view and argue that, since the objective scientific description of the world is complete without qualia, it is nonsense to ask the question of why they evolved or what qualia are for. But the authors flatly rule out such an option. They mention that, in fact, based on the parsimony principle of Occam's razor, one could accept epiphenomenalism and deny qualia since they are not necessary for a description of the functioning of the brain.


title: Qualia

text: However, Ramachandran and Hirstein (1997) argue that Occam's razor is not useful for scientific discovery. They exemplify the above with the discovery of relativity in physics, which was not the product of accepting Occam's razor but rather of rejecting it and asking the question of whether it could be that a deeper generalization, not required by the currently available data, was true and allowed for unexpected predictions. Most scientific discoveries arise, these authors argue, from ontologically promiscuous conjectures that do not come from current data.


title: Qualia

text: The authors then point out that skepticism might be justified in the philosophical field, but that science is the wrong place for such skepticism. Skeptical questions that they give as examples are asking ourselves if "your red is not my green" or if we can be logically certain that we are not dreaming. Science, these authors assert, deals with what is probably true, beyond reasonable doubt, not with what can be known with complete and absolute certainty. At the beginning of page 430 of the same article, the authors mention that most neuroscientists and even most psychologists dispute the very existence of the “problem” of qualia (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1997).


title: Qualia

text: Roger Orpwood, an engineer with a strong background in studying neural mechanisms, proposed a neurobiological model that gives rise to qualia and ultimately, consciousness. As advancements in cognitive and computational neuroscience continue to grow, the need to study the mind, and qualia, from a scientific perspective follows. Orpwood does not deny the existence of qualia, nor does he intend to debate its physical or non-physical existence. Rather, he suggests that qualia are created through the neurobiological mechanism of re-entrant feedback in cortical systems.


title: Qualia

text: Orpwood develops his mechanism by first addressing the issue of information. One unsolved aspect of qualia is the concept of the fundamental information involved in creating the experience. He does not address a position on the metaphysics of the information underlying the experience of qualia, nor does he state what information actually is. However, Orpwood does suggest that information in general is of two types: the information structure and information message. Information structures are defined by the physical vehicles and structural, biological patterns encoding information. That encoded information is the information message; a source describing "what" that information is. The neural mechanism or network receives input information structures, completes a designated instructional task (firing of the neuron or network), and outputs a modified information structure to downstream regions. The information message is the purpose and meaning of the information structure and causally exists as a result of that particular information structure. Modification of the information structure changes the meaning of the information message, but the message itself cannot be directly altered.


title: Qualia

text: Local cortical networks have the capacity to receive feedback from their own output information structures. This form of local feedback continuously cycles part of the networks output structures as its next input information structure. Since the output structure must represent the information message derived from the input structure, each consecutive cycle that is fed-back will represent the output structure the network just generated. As the network of mechanisms cannot recognize the information message, but only the input information structure, the network is unaware that it is representing its own previous outputs. The neural mechanisms are merely completing their instructional tasks and outputting any recognizable information structures. Orpwood proposes that these local networks come into an attractor state that consistently outputs exactly the same information structure as the input structure. Instead of only representing the information message derived from the input structure, the network will now represent its own output and thereby its own information message. As the input structures are fed-back, the network identifies the previous information structure as being a previous representation of the information message. As Orpwood writes:


title: Qualia

text: Representation of the networks own output structures, by which represents its own information message, is Orpwood's explanation that grounds the manifestation of qualia via neurobiological mechanisms. These mechanisms are particular to networks of pyramidal neurons. Although computational neuroscience still has much to investigate regarding pyramidal neurons, their complex circuitry is relatively unique. Research shows that the complexity of pyramidal neuron networks is directly related to the increase in the functional capabilities of a species. When human pyramidal networks are compared with other primate species and species with less intricate behavioral and social interactions, the complexity of these neural networks drastically decline. The complexity of these networks are also increased in frontal brain regions. These regions are often associated with conscious assessment and modification of one's immediate environment; often referred to as "executive functions".


title: Qualia

text: Sensory input is necessary to gain information from the environment, and perception of that input is necessary for navigating and modifying interactions with the environment. This suggests that frontal regions containing more complex pyramidal networks are associated with an increased perceptive capacity. As perception is necessary for conscious thought to occur, and since the experience of qualia is derived from consciously recognizing some perception, qualia may indeed be specific to the functional capacity of pyramidal networks. This derives Orpwood's notion that the mechanisms of re-entrant feedback may not only create qualia, but also be the foundation to consciousness.


title: Qualia

text: It is possible to apply a criticism similar to Nietzsche's criticism of Kant's "thing in itself" to qualia: Qualia are unobservable in others and unquantifiable in us. We cannot possibly be sure, when discussing individual qualia, that we are even discussing the same phenomena. Thus, any discussion of them is of indeterminate value, as descriptions of qualia are necessarily of indeterminate accuracy.


title: Qualia

text: Qualia can be compared to "things in themselves" in that they have no publicly demonstrable properties; this, along with the impossibility of being sure that we are communicating about the same qualia, makes them of indeterminate value and definition in any philosophy in which proof relies upon precise definition. On the other hand, qualia could be considered akin to Kantian phenomena since they are held to be seemings of appearances. Revonsuo, however, considers that, within neurophysiological inquiry, a definition at the level of the fields may become possible (just as we can define a television picture at the level of liquid crystal pixels).


title: Qualia

text: Whether or not qualia or consciousness can play any causal role in the physical world remains an open question, with epiphenomenalism acknowledging the existence of qualia while denying it any causal power. The position has been criticized by a number of philosophers, if only because our own consciousness seem to be causally active. In order to avoid epiphenomenalism, one who believes that qualia are nonphysical would need to embrace something like interactionist dualism; or perhaps emergentism, the claim that there are as yet unknown causal relations between the mental and physical. This in turn would imply that qualia can be detected by an external agency through their causal powers.


title: Qualia

text: To illustrate: one might be tempted to give as examples of qualia "the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the redness of an evening sky". But this list of examples already prejudges a central issue in the current debate on qualia. An analogy might make this clearer. Suppose someone wants to know the nature of the liquid crystal pixels on a television screen, those tiny elements that provide all the distributions of color that go to make up the picture. It would not suffice as an answer to say that they are the "redness of an evening sky" as it appears on the screen. We would protest that their real character was being ignored. One can see that relying on the list above assumes that we must tie sensations not only to the notion of given objects in the world (the "head", "wine", "an evening sky"), but also to the properties with which we characterize the experiences themselves ("redness", for example).


title: Qualia

text: Nor is it satisfactory to print a little red square as at the top of the article, for, since each person has a slightly different registration of the light-rays, it confusingly suggests that we all have the same response. Imagine in a television shop seeing "a red square" on twenty screens at once, each slightly different – something of vital importance would be overlooked if a single example were to be taken as defining them all.


title: Qualia

text: Yet it has been argued whether or not identification with the external object should still be the core of a correct approach to sensation, for there are many who state the definition thus because they regard the link with external reality as crucial. If sensations are defined as "raw feels", there arises a palpable threat to the reliability of knowledge. The reason has been given that, if one sees them as neurophysiological happenings in the brain, it is difficult to understand how they could have any connection to entities, whether in the body or the external world. It has been declared, by John McDowell for example, that to countenance qualia as a "bare presence" prevents us ever gaining a certain ground for our knowledge. The issue is thus fundamentally an epistemological one: it would appear that access to knowledge is blocked if one allows the existence of qualia as fields in which only virtual constructs are before the mind.


title: Qualia

text: His reason is that it puts the entities about which we require knowledge behind a "veil of perception", an occult field of "appearance" which leaves us ignorant of the reality presumed to be beyond it. He is convinced that such uncertainty propels into the dangerous regions of relativism and solipsism: relativism sees all truth as determined by the single observer; solipsism, in which the single observer is the only creator of and legislator for his or her own universe, carries the assumption that no one else exists. These accusations constitute a powerful ethical argument against qualia being something going on in the brain, and these implications are probably largely responsible for the fact that in the 20th century it was regarded as not only freakish, but also dangerously misguided to uphold the notion of sensations as going on inside the head. The argument was usually strengthened with mockery at the very idea of "redness" being in the brain: the question was – and still is – "How can there be red neurons in the brain?" which strikes one as a justifiable appeal to common sense.


title: Qualia

text: To maintain a philosophical balance, the argument for "raw feels" needs to be set side by side with the claim above. Viewing sensations as "raw feels" implies that initially they have not yet – to carry on the metaphor – been "cooked", that is, unified into "things" and "persons", which is something the mind does after the sensation has responded to the blank input, that response driven by motivation, that is, initially by pain and pleasure, and subsequently, when memories have been implanted, by desire and fear. Such a "raw-feel" state has been more formally identified as "non-epistemic". In support of this view, the theorists cite a range of empirical facts. The following can be taken as representative.


title: Qualia

text: A German physicist of the 19th century, Hermann von Helmholtz, proposed a simple experiment to demonstrate the non-epistemic nature of qualia: His instructions were to stand in front of a familiar landscape, turn your back on it, bend down and look at the landscape between your legs – you will find it difficult in the upside-down view to recognize what you found familiar before.


title: Qualia

text: These examples suggest that a "bare presence" – that is, knowledgeless sensation that is no more than evidence – may really occur. Present supporters of the non-epistemic theory thus regard sensations as only data in the sense that they are "given" (Latin "datum", "given") and fundamentally involuntary, which is a good reason for not regarding them as basically mental. In the last century they were called "sense-data" by the proponents of qualia, but this led to the confusion that they carried with them reliable proofs of objective causal origins. For instance, one supporter of qualia was happy to speak of the redness and bulginess of a cricket ball as a typical "sense-datum", though not all of them were happy to define qualia by their relation to external entities (see R.W. Sellars (1922)). The modern argument, following Sellars' lead, centers on how we learn under the regime of motivation to interpret the sensory evidence in terms of "things", "persons", and "selves" through a continuing process of feedback.


title: Qualia

text: The definition of qualia thus is governed by one's point of view, and that inevitably brings with it philosophical and neurophysiological presuppositions. The question, therefore, of what qualia can be raises profound issues in the philosophy of mind, since some materialists want to deny their existence altogether: on the other hand, if they are accepted, they cannot be easily accounted for as they raise the difficult problem of consciousness. There are committed dualists such as Richard L. Amoroso or John Hagelin who believe that the mental and the material are two distinct aspects of physical reality like the distinction between the classical and quantum regimes. In contrast, there are direct realists for whom the thought of qualia is unscientific as there appears to be no way of making them fit within the modern scientific picture; and there are committed proselytizers for a final truth who reject them as forcing knowledge out of reach.


The All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is a group of autonomous government public medical universities of higher education under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare , Government of India. These institutes have been declared by an Act of Parliament as Institutes of National Importance. AIIMS New Delhi, the forerunner institute, was established in 1956. Since then, 24 more institutes were announced. , nineteen institutes are operating and five more are expected to become operational until 2025. Proposals were made for six more AIIMS.


title: All India Institutes of Medical Sciences

text: The first AIIMS was established in 1956 under the "All India Institute of Medical Sciences Act, 1956". Originally proposed by the then Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru for establishment in Calcutta, it was established in New Delhi following the refusal of Chief Minister of West Bengal Bidhan Chandra Roy. The act established AIIMS New Delhi, which was then known simply as All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and gave it the Institutes of National Importance (INI) status. Amrit Kaur was India's first health minister. When the issue of funds for the setup of AIIMS, New Delhi initially came up, it was she who was instrumental in acquiring a huge amount from the New Zealand government. Over the years, she rallied around and was successful in getting donations from international bodies like the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, as well as from the government of Australia, West Germany and the Dutch government.


text: In 2003, the Government of India announced the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) initiative which aimed at "correcting regional imbalances in the availability of affordable/reliable tertiary healthcare services". This was to be done through two main channels: setting up AIIMS-like institutions and upgrading government medical colleges. Though the announcement was made in 2003 during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure, the project was delayed owing to the power shift at the centre. PMSSY was officially launched in March 2006 and six AIIMS-like medical institutes were announced. The six institutes become operational through an Ordinance from September 2012. The "All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Amendment) Bill, 2012" was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 27 August 2012 in order to replace that Ordinance. Lok Sabha passed the Bill on 30 August 2012, it was introduced in Rajya Sabha on 3 September 2012 and passed on 4 September 2012. The Act was published on 13 September 2012.


text: The act also allowed the institutes to operate more autonomously, and awarded them the INI status. In addition, also conferred the power to establish other AIIMS-like institutes by gazette notification and give them equal status.


text: PMSSY was officially launched in March 2006 and six AIIMS-like medical institutes were announced for under-served states in Patna, Bhopal, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur and Rishikesh. Theses were originally assigned per institution, a sum which was raised to in 2010. They were later retroactively denoted "Phase I institutes".


text: In 2013 a further gazette notification was made under the same Act, establishing AIIMS Raebareli. It was later denoted as "Phase-II" of PMSSY.


text: In July 2014, in the budget speech for 2014–15, the Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley announced a budget of for setting up four new AIIMS, in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and the Purvanchal region in Uttar Pradesh. These "Phase-IV" institutes, became AIIMS Mangalagiri in Andhra Pradesh and AIIMS Nagpur in Maharashtra, established in 2018 and later AIIMS Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and AIIMS Kalyani in West Bengal, which started operation in 2019.


text: On 28 February 2015, in the 2015–2016 budget speech, Jaitley announced five more AIIMS, in Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Assam and Tamil Nadu and an "AIIMS-like" institute in Bihar. On 7 November 2015, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi had announced development package for Jammu & Kashmir which includes the setting up of two AIIMS, in the capital cities of Jammu and Kashmir. Of these seven "Phase-V" institutes, sites have been assigned for at Changsari, near Guwahati, in Assam, Vijay Pur in the Jammu Division of Jammu and Kashmir, Awantipora in the Kashmir Division of Jammu and Kashmir, Bathinda in Punjab, Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh, Madurai in Tamil Nadu and the latest, Darbhanga in Bihar, which was finally approved in September 2020. In December 2018 the government has approved and assigned funds for the AIIMS in Madurai, and a foundation stone was set in January 2019. AIIMS Bathinda started operation in 2019. AIIMS Bilaspur, AIIMS Guwahati and AIIMS Vijaypur became operational in 2020.


text: On 1 February 2017, in the budget presentation for 2017–2018, Jaitley announced two more AIIMS, in Jharkhand and Gujarat. Of these "Phase-VI" institutes, sites were identified in Deoghar for the institute in Jharkhand and in Khandheri near Rajkot for Gujarat. AIIMS Deoghar started operation in 2019 and AIIMS Rajkot in 2020.


text: A week after the 2017–2018 budget presentation, on 9 February 2017, Jaitley announced an AIIMS in Telangana. On 17 December 2018, the cabinet approved the AIIMS, to be located in Bibinagar, near Hyderabad. This institute was later denoted as "Phase-VII". It started operation in August 2019.


text: On 1 February 2019, in the presentation of the interim budget for 2019–2020, Piyush Goyal, who was given temporary charge of the Minister of Finance a week earlier, announced an AIIMS in Haryana. This institute was later denoted as "Phase-VIII". In March, the cabinet approved the institute in Manethi, Rewari district.


text: On March 1, 2022 PM Narendra Modi announced an AIIMS for the state of Manipur under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Scheme.


text: , 5 AIIMS still are under development. In February 2022, the health ministry stated that all 24 new AIIMS will be functional by February 2025. There are also proposals for establishing AIIMS in Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Mizoram & Tripura.


text: AIIMS (New Delhi) was originally established as a super-specialty tertiary care centre with primary emphasis on research and specialized training facilities. MBBS is the basic medical course at bachelor's degree level. This is followed by master's degree level specialisation in general surgery, general internal medicine, pediatrics and other fields. Superspecialties are those healthcare fields whose practitioners need specialised certification after completing their postgraduation, examples being cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, rheumatology, neurology, and pediatric neurology. There are at least 45 superspecialties at AIIMS (New Delhi) at higher master's degree level. AIIMS also offers MSc and PhD level research courses.


text: There are about forty-two specialty post-graduate courses conducted at AIIMS (New Delhi). The entry is through a nationwide competitive examination, AIIMS PG, held every six months. Each year nearly 50 thousand medical graduates and 25 thousand dental graduates across the country compete for the limited number of positions, approximately <1% of the candidates are admitted through the process. AIIMS publishes "The National Medical Journal of India".


text: As per the latest official notification released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, AIIMS, JIPMER -Puducherry, PGIMER -Chandigarh & all INIs (Institutes of National Importance) were directed to not to conduct any Undergraduate entrance exams from 2020 onwards. Government has said that from 2020 session onwards, all such undergraduate admissions would be taken up only through a single national level examination NEET-UG conducted by NTA (National Testing Agency). Many field experts however criticized this exam unification, specifically with respect to AIIMS (New Delhi), citing the reason that the level of questions in AIIMS-UG entrance exams (for both MBBS & BSc Nursing courses separately) used to be of such a higher & deep logical-conceptual thinking capabilities, that they eventually served a greater advantage for selecting the most desirable students for such scientific courses. And that was something really crucial for the main objectives for which AIIMS (New Delhi) was established, which are cutting-edge research, medical innovations and to demonstrate high standards of medical education to all medical colleges and allied institutions in India.


title: Speed Racer

text: Speed Racer, also known as , is a Japanese media franchise about automobile racing. "Mach GoGoGo" was originally serialized in print in Shueisha's 1966 "Shōnen Book". It was released in tankōbon book form by Sun Wide Comics and later re-released in Japan by Fusosha. Adapted into anime by Tatsunoko Productions, its 52 episodes aired on Fuji TV from April 1967 to March 1968. In the US, the show aired in syndication at approximately the same time. The anime was later re-broadcast on Tokyo MX from July 1 to September 25, 2008.


title: Speed Racer

text: Selected chapters of the manga were released by NOW Comics in the 1990s under the title "Speed Racer Classics". These were later released by Wildstorm Productions, a division of DC Comics, as "Speed Racer: The Original Manga". In 2008, under its Americanized title, "Speed Racer", "Mach GoGoGo" was republished in its entirety in the United States by Digital Manga Publishing and was released as a box set to commemorate the franchise's 40th anniversary, as well as serving as a tie-in with the 2008 film. The television series was very successful in the United States and is said to have defined anime in that country until the 1990s, being watched by a total estimated audience of viewers during the 1960s1970s.


title: Speed Racer

text: "Mach GoGoGo" was first created and designed by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida (1932–1977) as a manga series in the 1960s and made the jump to TV as an anime series in 1967. The actual manga was inspired by Yoshida's earlier and more popular automobile racing comics, Pilot Ace. Pilot Ace's main storyline formed the structure for Mach GoGoGo, which followed the adventures of an ambitious young man, who soon became a professional racer.


title: Speed Racer

text: The characters’ designs in "Pilot Ace" set the main ground for the character design in "Mach GoGoGo". Yoshida got his idea for the story after seeing two films that were very popular in Japan at the time, "Viva Las Vegas" and "Goldfinger." By combining the look of Elvis Presley's race-car driving image, complete with neckerchief and black pompadour, and James Bond's gadget-filled Aston Martin DB5, Yoshida had the inspiration for his creation. Soon enough, "Mach GoGoGo" hit shelves in the early 1960s. The central character in the anime and manga was a young race car driver named Gō Mifune ("Mifune Gō").


title: Speed Racer

text: The name of the series, "Mach GoGoGo" has a triple meaning: is the name of the car; the name of the main character is Gō Mifune; and finally, it contains the English word "go". In the American adaptation, the Mach 5 stems from the number 5 on the door. Although, in Japanese, is the word for the number 5, the Kanji character which is used in the car name actually means "item number" (i.e. it is an ordinal suffix). In addition, gogogo, is used as a general Japanese sound effect for rumble. Taken together, the program's title means, "Mach-gō Gō Mifune Go!"


title: Speed Racer

text: The manga (compiled into two deluxe volumes for Fusosha's re-release) has several storylines, such as "The Great Plan," "Challenge of the Masked Racer," "The Fire Race," "The Secret Engine" and "Race for Revenge", that were adapted to the anime. However, minor changes occur between both the original manga and the anime series, such as differences between back stories of several characters and places.


title: Speed Racer

text: A few years after the volumes were released, Yoshida decided to release his manga series as an anime program, adding additional plots. 52 episodes aired in Japan, each one emulating the fast-paced action of the manga.


title: Speed Racer

text: Selected chapters of the original "Mach GoGoGo" manga series were reprinted by NOW Comics as two volumes of "Speed Racer Classics" (1988–1989), and by DC Comics/Wildstorm Productions as "Speed Racer: The Original Manga" (2000). In 2008, a hardcover box set of the complete manga series was released by Digital Manga Publishing as the two volume "Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go".


title: Speed Racer

text: The manga spawned an anime adaptation which actually became a bigger success. 52 episodes were produced from 1967 to 1968. In 1997, Tatsunoko produced a modernized version of "Mach GoGoGo" which aired on TV Tokyo, ABC lasting for 34 episodes. An English adaptation of this remake was produced by DiC titled Speed Racer X, which aired in 2002 on Nickelodeon. Only the first 13 episodes were adapted due to licensing disputes between DiC and Speed Racer Enterprises. "Mach Girl" was a web-based series by Tatsunoko Productions, created by Tatsuo Yoshida's daughter, Suzuka.


title: Speed Racer

text: The English rights to "Mach GoGoGo" were acquired by syndicator Trans-Lux (which originally was, and still exists as, an electronics manufacturer), and "Speed Racer" premiered on American television in the summer of 1967. In the series, Speed's full name was Go Mifune, in homage to Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune. His name, Americanized, became Speed Racer. His adventures centered on his powerful Mach 5 car, his girlfriend Trixie, his little brother Spritle, Spritle's pet chimpanzee Chim-Chim, and his mysterious older brother, Racer X, whose real name was Rex Racer.


title: Speed Racer

text: For American consumption, major editing and dubbing efforts were undertaken by producer Peter Fernandez, who likewise not only wrote and directed the English-language dialogue but also provided the voices of many of the characters, most notably Racer X and Speed Racer himself. Fernandez was also responsible for a rearrangement of the theme song's melody, written and composed by Nobuyoshi Koshibe, and he subsequently also wrote its English lyrics.


title: Speed Racer

text: A "Speed Racer" daily comic strip written and drawn by Mort Todd ran in the "New York Post" from 2000–2001. IGN ranked the original Speed Racer series at #29 on its "Best 100 Animated Series" list.


title: Speed Racer

text: At Otakon 2015, Funimation announced that it had acquired the license to "Speed Racer" from Tatsunoko and would release it on Blu-ray for the first time. Funimation gave "Speed Racer" two separate home video releases: a standard release for the English version on May 30, 2017, and a collector's edition for the Japanese version with English subtitles on November 7, 2017, the first such North American release.


title: Speed Racer

text: The large red M on the hood of the Mach 5, as well as on Gō's helmet, is the emblem of Mifune Motors, the family business, and an homage to Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune. In North America it was assumed to stand for Mach 5 and in the Latin American version for Meteoro. His given name, Gō, is a Japanese homophone for the number 5 (the number on his race car) which is also represented by the yellow letter G embroidered on his short-sleeve blue shirt. The tradition of symbolism on characters' shirts was also used on Michi (Trixie) and Sabu (Sparky), who had the letter "M" and "S" on their shirts, respectively.