Qualitative relationships between two instances of conscious experiences can be quantified through the perceived similarity. Previously, we proposed that by defining similarity relationships as arrows and conscious experiences as objects, we can define a category of qualia in the context of category theory. However, the example qualia categories we proposed were highly idealized and limited to cases where perceived similarity is binary: either present or absent without any gradation. When similarity is graded, a situation can arise where A0 is similar to A1, A1 is similar to A2, and so on, yet A0 is not similar to An, which is called the Sorites paradox. Here, we introduce enriched category theory to address this situation. Enriched categories generalize the concept of a relation between objects as a directed arrow (or morphism) in ordinary category theory to a more flexible notion, such as a measure of distance. As an alternative relation, here we propose a graded measure of perceived dissimilarity between the two objects. These measures combine in a way that addresses the Sorites paradox; even if the dissimilarity between Ai and Ai+1 is small for i = 0 … n, hence perceived as similar, the dissimilarity between A0 and An can be large, hence perceived as different. In this way, we show how dissimilarity-enriched categories of qualia resolve the Sorites paradox. We claim that enriched categories accommodate various types of conscious experiences. An important extension of this claim is the application of the Yoneda lemma in enriched category; we can characterize a quale through a collection of relationships between the quale and the other qualia up to an (enriched) isomorphism.
Basic Concepts of Enriched Category
Theory
