What is Qualia?

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example when I sip a red wine, look at the blue ocean, feel a sharp pain, or even become emotional.

In each example, I’m the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, something it has as a phenomenon.

Philosophers often use the term qualia to refer to the introspectively accessible phenomenal aspects of our mental lives.

Broadly it’s difficult to deny that there are qualia. But there’s some disagreement on which mental states have qualia, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the brain and mind. The status of Qualia is hotly debated in philosophy and neuroscience because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness, at the heart of the body-mind ‘problem’.

I find this fascinating and use qualia as a tool with a model of holistic understanding to help integrate and regulate, as a whole.