Word of the Day for Monday, January 11, 2016

qualia \KWAH-lee-uh\, noun:

1. A quality, as bitterness, regarded as an independent object.
2. A sense-datum or feeling having a distinctive quality.

He points out that our subjective experiences — our qualia — are the only thing each of us is really sure of, that all else is speculation.
-- Jenny McPhee, "The Center of Things"

Which in itself is quite strange, the idea that one could have an identical experience, down to the last detail, down to the internal qualia, the exact interior frame of mind, emotions, a frame of consciousness duplicated with startling exactitude, that would be unsettling enough.
-- Charles Yu, "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe"

Qualia comes from the Latin word quālis meaning "of what sort."

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