Qualia and the subjective.

The word Qualia feels beautiful to say. Maybe because it leads with the letter Q. A letter-symbol not overly represented, yet, when spoken, words headed by Q are often said deeply, with command, strength, energy—the sound of capability.

Rarity has that effect.

It feels good around the back of the throat, as one mouths, quake, quiet, quince, queen, question, quillette—the feeling of the letter Q, perhaps, is Qualia itself.

Qualia—a philosophical concept rooted in psychology. There is much debate amongst scientists across disciplines about its nature, scope and implication.

It refers to the conscious, subjective, and first-person experience we have when we taste chocolate, watch a sunset, hear the ocean waves, or perhaps, in someone’s case, enunciate a Q-word. While it is said to be a unique and solitary experience, the free market industry may have found the code to shared Quale, given the marketing success of emotional-sales-strategies such as: chocolate for lovers, sunsets for escape, or music for the soul.

How do we come to understand the way in which we perceive the world around us? How do you explain the sense of touching someone you love so deeply, perhaps your child, that you feel the power of that love somewhere within your soul? And if souls do not exist then where is the place which these feelings go? What about the feeling you get when you read eloquent words strung together so poetically that it hits you differently than it may do for another?

Qualia is individual, raw, and intrinsically personal, and so, these types of feelings are often private, unable to be transferred to another. Therefore, given its subjective meaning, it is only able to be qualified by the human barometer of consciousness.

It cannot be imposed on another person to feel the same way.

It would be like saying, ‘“ love the way it makes me feel to listen to classical music, I demand you love the feeling too”.

Philosophically, it has been argued that Qualia is not able to be analysed scientifically, and that they must be considered different to physical objects and processes. Therefore, from a perspective of knowledge acquisition and enquiry, Qualia as subjective experience can only be understood by the person experiencing it - a phenomenological process. It cannot be quantified, which perhaps though, automatically or by default, could suggest it suits qualitative inquiry. Though there are seriously negative implications of qualifying subjective feelings. I mean, who should dare decide the meaning of subjective feeling? Who dares expect subjective feeling to be adopted by all?

How unnatural indeed.

Except, in saying all this, Qualia is specifically the feelings of the individual as opposed to patterns that connect a group or population. Therefore, perhaps they can not be qualified either.

While there are universal and uniting truths, we also have individual and subjective truths that are meaningful only to us. In order to find out truth, we have to think carefully and thoughtfully. We must use suitable methods to find answers that we can universally, in a general sense, agree on.

Otherwise, we just have subjective truths that are auto-ethnographies that are simply and only significant to us, and perhaps to those who may love us and care about our thoughts, our feelings and our ideas. We can not operate cohesively in a world, society, or community of anger against contradictory subjective truths and ideas, because, imagine that. Except we do not need to imagine the chaos of this, because this is now a new-era of reality.

Knowledge about the subjective human experience, physically, biologically, and cognitively gives us the ability to make sense of the way people operate and engage socially in society and of course, vice versa.

The existence and understanding of a philosophical phenomena such as Qualia is important as it provides us with knowledge as well as an important reminder, of the existence of the subjective experience of feeling and perception. It also leads us to address the largest global cultural dilemma we as a collective human group have ever faced - the expectation that we must think, and feel, and perceive issues in the same way despite living and experiencing the world in such unique ways.

We should not force others to think, or be the same as we are as it is not only unjust, it is knowledge and thought authoritarianism. The act of forcing others to think and feel the same has dire consequences for society, threatening the foundation of democracy which has empowered diversity in the first place.

A final reminder, that what diversifies us also unite us. Let us be different vocally, physically, and socially. This very ability to be, act, and vocalise difference is what we share as human beings.

Qualia, is a place of subjective perception. Our own perceptions do not have to be shared, understood, or even considered by others as they are private, powerful, and deeply personal. Perhaps to the many who want to shout wounds into the world, feel this is too much of a responsibility to bear. Ultimately, Qualia is ours and others get to have their Qualia too.

Esha.