Qualia

The felt, subjective qualities of experience, such as the redness of seeing red or the hurt of pain.

Also: quale, phenomenal character, what it is like, raw feels

What it means

Qualia are what it is like, from the inside, to have an experience: the taste of liquorice, the sound of a trumpet, the sting of grief. They are central to the 'hard problem' of consciousness, which asks why physical processes are accompanied by experience at all. Thought experiments press the point: Frank Jackson's Mary knows every physical fact about colour yet seems to learn something new when she first sees red, and some argue that a 'zombie' physical duplicate lacking experience is conceivable. Thomas Nagel argued that facts about experience are inherently subjective. Physicalists reply with accounts of phenomenal concepts, while illusionists such as Daniel Dennett deny that qualia, as usually understood, exist at all.

The questions it belongs to

• 1.3.4 Qualia and the Hard ProblemWhy isn't it all dark inside?
• 1.3.1 The Mind–Body ProblemHow can a thought move an arm?

Thinkers

• Thomas Nagel
• Frank Jackson
• David Chalmers
• Daniel Dennett

Traditions

• Analytic

To read

• Consciousness Explained — Daniel C. Dennett
• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea — Daniel C. Dennett
• Freedom Evolves — Daniel C. Dennett

Sources and further reading

• Qualia (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Hard Problem of Consciousness (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Written by the Coordinates of Thought editors and checked against the sources above on 29 October 2026. Not peer-reviewed. How we write and check.

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