1.5.0-1 We do not know what consciousness is. But we know it anyway, because we all have consciousness. Being aware is a fact. Consciousness consists in experiencing. We have given the content of the experience a name; qualia.
1.5.0-2 So what is qualia? Everything. We have already said that, consciousness is everything. Everything that exists must be qualia. Yes, we go in a circle. Awareness is to experience. What is experienced is everything.
1.5.0-3 We must not wallow in insoluble logic. We experience, that's what we do. What are we experiencing?
1.5.0-4 We experience: Light, colors, smells, tastes, sounds, pressure on the skin, heat, cold and the like. This is what we perceive through the five senses: to see, hear, smell, taste and feel touch.
1.5.0-5 Then there is the whole spectrum of emotions that arise within us: Anger, joy, sorrow, euphoria, infatuation, desperation, desire, etc. For a long time we have thought that emotions work quite equally for all people. Recent research has shown that emotions are
learned and far from universal.
1.5.0-6 Then we have to add a series of abstract experiences where emotions are often involved, but where there is also something more: music, language, logic, ethics, aesthetics. These experiences come - perhaps - not alone from chemistry in the body. They may be caused by external stimuli, but not necessarily. We can imagine music, language, etc. without having sounds, notes or text in front of us. With logic, mathematics and ethics, this is even more clear. There is something going on inside us that does not come from something external alone and perhaps not just from chemistry in the body and activity in the brain.
1.5.0-7 Then there is another level, thinking. We think all the time. We think about the past and the future, process impressions and make plans. We try to understand surroundings and events. We judge ourselves against everything around us. We try to understand right, act smart, gain benefits for ourselves, survive and develop ourselves and everything that affects us.
1.5.0-8 You do it all the time. To think is to take the sum of all qualia and interpret them, understand them, experience what they are and what they mean. The thought interprets, and you - whoever you may be in this - experience what the thought interprets up to. The thought is also an experience. Also the thought is qualia.
1.5.0-9 The idea is a designer who both builds, imagines a structure and a world, and experiences what it builds. The thought can be abstract or it can think about something concrete.
1.5.0-10 Do you agree? Isn't that so, then?
1.5.0-11 Is this concrete? When the thought thinks that the tram is coming, is there a tram or is it just a construction in the mind?
1.5.0-12 You would probably say that the tram actually exists. If you go out into the aisle in front of it, you'll probably be killed.
1.5.0-13 But what if both yourself and the tram are just conceptions? You experience a tram and you experience yourself and you experience being hit and killed - but everything is just ideas in thought ... can it be possible?