1. Recognizable qualitative characters of the given.--
C. I.
Lewis (1929)
2. Parts of experiential knowledge, i.e., that which can only be known through experience.
3. The introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives.--Stanford
Internet Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy
4. Simplest forms of experience.
5. Outlets of the
flow of experience (from consciousness).
6. Finest levels of (mental) qualities.
7. Finest levels of feeling.
8. Junction points between being and experiencing.
9. Starting points of becoming.
10. Introspectible and seemingly monadic properties of sense datum, but universal, not particular.
11. 'Quale' is to 'quality' as 'quantum' is to 'quantity'. (Etymologically)
12. Subjective qualities of conscious experience.
13. Subjective sensations. --Ramachandran & Blakeslee (1998)
14. Orderly modes of consciousness.
1. Philosophers and scientists alike have pondered qualia for a long time without resolution.
2.
AI researchers wonder whether machines that pass the Turing
Test would experience qualia, and whether they would
even need to do so.
3. It is difficult to deny the existence of qualia.
4. Our
failure to
define qualia also makes people wonder if color are experienced differently by each person--how can we tell if some people see colors inverted, since they would still call roses red and
grass green?
5. Qualia could occur only in the presence, interfacing the future and the past. You can remember the information about events, but not the actual feeling you had at that time. You could remember, for example, having been angry at receiving a parking ticket--but this is information not actually the feeling, since the police officer also remembers you being angry. If the memory makes you angry, then your present anger is a new experience--not the original experience. But this is
good; otherwise, we could recall qualia such as pain--and headaches might never end.
