> What in the blazes is a "qualia"?
qualia
The intrinsic phenomenal features of subjective consciousness, or sense data. Thus, qualia include what it is like to see green grass, to taste salt, to hear birds sing, to have a headache, to feel pain, etc. Providing an adequate account of qualia is sometimes held to be a difficult problem for functionalist explanations of mental states.
Also see , Daniel Dennett, David J. Chalmers, and Eric Lormand.