---
title: "Qualia · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/qualia
description: "Qualia are the felt qualities of experience that you can notice in yourself: the redness of red, the painfulness of pain."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Philosophy of mind

# Qualia

Definition

Qualia are the felt qualities of experience that you can notice in yourself: the redness of red, the painfulness of pain.

On this site

The Suffering dial assumes simulated pain might really feel like pain. The sandbox can’t settle that. It only measures the computing for the behaviour that goes with it.

Role in the model

The Suffering dial changes the ethics meters and not a single FLOP, and qualia are the reason. Simulating the body’s side of pain is cheap. Whether that comes with the felt quality of pain is something the computing figure can’t show. The sandbox doesn’t pretend it can.

Related

[Consciousness](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/consciousness)[The hard problem](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/hard-problem)[Sentience](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/sentience)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)