For all the mysteries of the cosmos, above us in the stars, it’s clear the greatest mystery of all - was standing there, looking back up at them.
Qualia are the subjective experience that cannot be explained through any objective means. They are not copyable, meaning they cannot be communicated or confirmed between subjective observers.
How can you describe the experience of the color blue? Or the taste of a strawberry? Is it possible to confirm that everyone experiences them in the same way?
Example
My blue could be perceived as your green, and there is no way to ever find that out, since we both agree on what we call blue. Qualia is private to the conscious observer, and unable to be shared.
Point of View
I sometimes like to think that qualia accounts for every disagreement in opinion. Like when two people have different favorite colors, they actually perceive the same color, but call it a different name. Or everyone’s favorite food might taste exactly the same.
We could all potentially like the exactly the same basic things, but can never communicate or know that.
Notice that I put red, objectively the best color, as the favorite.
I don’t know what you call it, but we all agree it’s the best.
We can do a quick thought experiment to understand that qualia exists.
Imagine a scientist who learns everything there is to learn about the physics of light. Day and night, they spend their time in the lab, running all sorts of tests, and being able to perfectly describe what light is in terms of electromagnetics waves and wavelengths and all that. However, they have been doing this in a black and white room.
If, we then bring in colorful items that the scientist had never seen, will they experience something new? This gap is the qualia. And the qualia, is everything.
Semantics
Semantics is the flip side of qualia, how we agree on what to call the same objective things. We can assign each color to it’s specific frequency in the spectrum, and we can all agree that “blue” is the color we see when light has a wavelength of 450nm.
Qualia takes over when we experience how blue makes us feel, or how we interpret it.
The Hard problem of Consciousness
We simply don’t know how physical electric signals in your brain turn into the taste of chocolate. Like everything we don’t know these days, physicists chalk it up to some quantum state collapse and call it a day.
This conversion, from physical reality to a seemingly completely subjective one, can be considered the biggest mystery.. in history.
There is no blue. There is no cold. There is no smells or tastes. If you could experience “objective” reality (whatever that means), you would just find various molecules vibrating.
The Mind-Body Problem
Probably one of the most debated philosophical topics of all time, the mind-body question explores the fundamental duality humans see in the universe:
How can we be a mind, made up of experiences and qualia, if we are made out of dead stuff? Why are we alive, and everything else dead?
The materialists tell you it’s emergent from objectively described systems. But we know by now that dualities always end up being illusions.
Thought
“Objective” reality itself, in the biggest plot twist of all time, may itself be qualia. Try getting outside of the subjective reality. You’ll find it can not be experienced. This means it can not exist.
Music & Art
We have all listened to music that resonates with us. It’s important to understand that music, and art as a whole, is the most advanced communication method we have been able to figure out for transmitting qualia.
Music makes our hairs stand up when the artist has communicated their qualia to you.
Note: It can never be a full communication, but it’s as close as we can get. You can never fully know how the artist felt making it, and they can never know how you experienced it.
Art speaks to something deeper about how you experience the world. You can sense that maybe, just maybe, someone else also sees the “same blue” as you.
Quote
“For all that we could explain sound, we had no idea how it became music in our ears”