Qualia are the phenomenal qualities of experiences—the raw felt qualities of sensations, emotions, thoughts, or anything else. They are experienced privately, subjectively, and directly; all the content of consciousness states is made of them.
How do you know that you’re conscious?
You probably answer, because you’re experiencing something—thoughts, feelings, sensations, sights, or sounds. But a camera can also have images. Does a photograph or computer screen experience the image? What’s the difference between your experience of an image and an image as an artifact? One answer is, there is something it is like to see an image. There is nothing it is like to be a photograph (as far as we can tell).
There is “something it is like” to hear a guitar, see a sunset, or feel someone’s arm brush against yours. There is something it is like to have a thought or feel an emotion. And this is what a computer doesn’t have. It may record a guitar, even identify the rhythm, timber, and pitches. It can know the shape of the sound-waves. But there is nothing it is like to be the computer experiencing those things (probably).
The qualities of experiences are called qualia – sometimes referred to as “raw feels”— such as the raw sensation of C-sharp, a flash of lightning, or someone’s skin against yours. Or what happiness feels like.
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