Experience reduction: Answering Crick's question

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of the possibility or reducing the qualitative properties of experience (qualia) to properties of the nervous system. In order to do so, the author focused on one of the most important attempts to that effect: the redutive model proposed by P.M. Churchland, with the purpose of evaluating its applicability to the case of qualia. The author concludes that this model proves inapplicable  to qualitative properties of experience, for such properties are to be construed in an intrinsic, non-relational manner, while the reduction proposed by Churchland necessarily requires relational properties. Thus, this basic incompatibility renders the attempted reduction unattainable. As a result, taken Churchland's model and similar ones as typical models of reduction, it is concluded that qualia are irreducible to neurological properties.