Is Your Green the Same as My Green?

Qualia (in English, qualia, pronounced "kwoa-lee-ah"), is perhaps the most fascinating concept in the realm of psychology/philosophy of the mind. It describes every experience that the consciousness undergoes, which no microscope can capture; not just emotional experiences of sorrow and joy, but also the very experience of sensory realities like sight, sound, taste, smell, pain, touch, etc.

On a physical level, music is just a collection of sounds, information about sound frequencies at different heights that can be defined, created, recorded, reproduced, and programmed. Yet, they accompany an enjoyable listening experience that cannot be scientifically defined.

A person doesn't just hear sounds but experiences the sounds.
A person doesn’t just know they are hungry and full, they feel the experience of hunger and fullness.
A person doesn’t just know their body hurts physically, but feels the experience of physical pain in their body.

Sounds, pain, hunger, fullness, etc. — are nothing more than physical data, information reaching the brain. Qualia do not describe this information, but rather the sensory experience accompanying this information. This experience is what is called qualia.

For example, we all know what the color red is and can agree that "this apple is red." But this knowledge is accompanied by the visual experience of seeing the color red.

To explain the wonder of this internal experience, an analytical philosopher named Frank Jackson proposed a thought experiment called "Mary's Room," which describes a scientist named Mary who spends her entire life in a black-and-white room. There, she learns all possible scientific knowledge about colors and lacks no knowledge about the phenomenon of color and the process of vision that creates it in the brain. Yet, when Mary sees colors for the first time in her life, she will undoubtedly have an entirely new experience, and a new knowledge will be added to her, not knowledge about the existence of colors she didn't know before, but the experience of seeing these colors.

(Photo: shutterstock)

Science can excellently explain the world of observable phenomena, and how the brain acquires information about them, but it cannot address at all the observer within the brain who experiences these phenomena. No type of material information about the world and brain activities can add any information about qualia. Hence, qualia is not a physical notion!

For this reason, we can never explain to a blind person from birth the qualia of seeing colors, or to a deaf person from birth the qualia of hearing music. Even if this blind and deaf person were scientists who studied all the possible data about vision and hearing, this knowledge would never reveal to them the knowledge of the experience.

Furthermore, each qualia is unique. That is: the red we both see is indeed identical, and the dog we both see is identical, but since we differ in our experiences, characteristics, and memories - our qualia will differ from each other, and we won’t experience the color red and the dog in the same way. Qualia is what creates human uniqueness, a special inner world for each individual, and because of that, no two people can be identical in their internal experience. From here comes the expression "There's no arguing taste and smell." We see the same colors and hear the same sounds, yet experience the world in individually different ways, so one person might prefer green while their friend prefers yellow. Because to the sights, sounds, and smells reaching our brains as information - a deep inner feeling of the experience is attached. Qualia.

The concept of qualia is so interesting precisely because science cannot define it, and yet everyone understands exactly what it is.

Let's take the color as an example again.
Technically, science can define light waves well and explain that the long wavelength is expressed as the color red. With science, it is possible to program the numbers that create the color red on the pixels of a digital screen and also analyze how the wave falls on the retina of an eye, is translated into an electrical current that the brain can recognize. Every component of the physical process is known to science, and they can be reproduced, and even computers can be made to recognize long wavelengths through a camera and point to any red color automatically. A computer can point to the red color but does not know the qualia of seeing red.

(Photo: shutterstock)

Science can describe any experience as chemical-biological data with all its scientific details, without ever having succeeded in explaining what the person is experiencing. Thus, science can explain how the process of sight is formed in the brain, or how sounds are interpreted there as electrical signals, but not the feeling of the person experiencing different sights and sounds. Any explanation of the networks of billions of neurons does not add any information about the experience of consciousness, and as such, denies the very existence of an internal reality known with certainty to each one of us.

Erwin Schrödinger, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and known for his contributions to quantum mechanics (and the famous parable of "Schrödinger's cat"), opposed materialism based on this understanding. He said:

"The sensation of color cannot be explained by the physicist's objective wave picture. Would the physiologist be able to explain it, if he had more knowledge about the processes in the retina and the neural processes triggered by it in the optic nerves and brain? I do not think so" (Wikipedia, Qualia).
If a robot could ask us what the qualia of thirst is, we would not be able to explain this feeling to it. We could only say that thirst comes from dryness and a drive for fluids missing in our body, but this technical fact alone does not succeed in explaining to the robot what the experience we undergo when thirsty is, and why it is so bothersome to us.

Hunger and thirst are not just brain commands to fill up on liquids and substances, much like seeing color is not just obtaining physical data about various light wavelengths in the world, but an internal experience that we undergo. Qualia.

The sages defined every person as a world unto itself. So says the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5): "Therefore man was created alone, to teach that whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved an entire world; and whoever destroys one life, it is as if he has destroyed an entire world."

A person is called a "complete world," because every person experiences the entire world in a way special only to them. No two people experience the world identically or have the same role in their descent into this world.

The sages also said there:
"The holy King of all kings seals each person with the stamp of the first man, and none of them is similar to his fellow. Hence, each one must say, 'For my sake, the world was created.'"

Due to this individuality, the sages ruled in 'halacha' that during a danger, one must not save their life at the expense of another's life, therefore even the life of a simple person should not be outweighed by the life of a scholar. Thus they said: "What makes you think your blood is redder — perhaps your fellow's blood is redder?" (Pesachim 25b).
This law was expressed throughout history, when there was an opportunity for scholars to be saved at the expense of their brothers, and they were not willing to do so.

Tyrants like Hitler and Stalin allowed themselves to slaughter millions with shocking ease out of the atheistic ideology that humans are essentially no different from bacteria. For example, Hitler wrote: "Man is nothing but a cosmic bacterium to be ridiculed" (from "Hitler - Nemesis" by Prof. Ian Kershaw, p. 436).

While the holy Torah taught us 3,300 years ago: "Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed, for in the image of G-d has G-d made humanity" (Genesis 9:6).
Recognizing the reality of each individual's unique consciousness, created in the image of Hashem, is what allows acknowledgment of the value of life and human dignity.

Qualia is also the reason for compassion. The sages said: "Do not judge your fellow until you reach their place" (Avot 2:4). The phrase could be interpreted more profoundly than just life circumstances, suggesting that since we do not stand in the other person's position, namely in their unique inner world of experiences molded by their character and trials, it is fitting to judge every person favorably and not harshly. For who knows if, in their mental state ("place"), we would withstand their trials as they themselves experience them? Therefore, only Hashem can truly judge a person: "Humans see with eyes, but Hashem sees into the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7).

Science is capable of explaining matter, and everything as matter, but it cannot explain in any way the existence of an observer in the matter. In the next article, we will continue to delve into this matter, proving the soul's existence in humans.