Q

QUALIA The experiential and phenomenal properties or characters of perceptual and/or internal bodily experience as well as feelings and, to some, also desires and thoughts. They are most often considered physically and informationally unexplainable. In Peirce’s semiotics they are signs: qualisigns, which are a part of firstness and need another sign in order to become manifest. As such they are a prerequisite for all cognition and communication and therefore the phenomenal mystery on which information, cognitive and communication sciences rest, including cybernetics of first and second order as well as Luhmann’s autopoietic

system theory and Spencer-Brown’s law of forms. (SB)

See also AUTOPOIESIS.