What is the strongest example that we can be mistaken about the experience of our qualia?
The reasoning for the infallibility of the experience of qualia is based on the immediateness of qualia. There is nothing between the subject and qualia, because qualia are part of subjective experience. This experience is direct, there is no interpretation involved. So how can we possibly be wrong about what qualia we experience?
Example:
An optical illusion, but nothing fancy, so that the argument works:
The left red disk has objectively exactly the same color as right red disk (HTML color #FF0000
). But the left one seems brighter than the red one.
And another one:
The lower spot seems brighter than the upper spot, but they have objectively exactly the same color (HTML color #D38402
).
The obvious analysis would be that we are mistaken about the objective colors, because we experience different qualia. But we are not mistaken, that we experience different qualia.
Still, might it not be a possibility that we experience the same qualia, but we are indeed mistaken about it? What would it even mean to be "mistaken" about the qualia we experience? How can this be reconciled with the immediateness of qualia? If qualia immediately present themselves to me, without any mediating step, what I experiencing simply are the qualia. How can the notion of a mistaken quale be made coherent?
"Sadly", in most people these examples do not induce doubt, often for the above reasons. They dismiss the latter possibility (that we experience the same red, but are mistaken about it) out of hand.
Is there a stronger example? One that makes clearer how we can be mistaken about qualia?