quali

Queli? No, quali. The term quali can refer to several related but distinct concepts in philosophy and linguistics. In the philosophy of mind, the word qualia (singular quale) denotes the intrinsic, subjective aspects of sensory experiences. Qualia are what it feels like to see a particular shade of blue, taste a certain flavor, or feel a specific pain, properties that seem to be experienced from the first-person perspective and not reducible to objective measurements alone.

Qualia are central to debates about consciousness and the nature of experience. Proponents argue that they pose a challenge to purely physical or functional explanations of the mind, because they surround what it is like to have an experience. Critics, such as some defenders of physicalism or functionalism, contend that the intuition of inaccessible private qualities is misleading or that qualia can be explained in terms of brain processes without invoking mysterious “private” properties. Notable discussions include the knowledge argument (Mary’s room) and various inverted spectrum thought experiments, which have been used to test claims about the epistemic status and reality of qualia.

In Italian grammar, quali is the plural form of quale, meaning “which” or “what kind,” used in questions and relative clauses (for example, Quali libri hai? “Which books do you have?”). Outside philosophy, quali appears primarily in linguistic contexts as part of this grammar usage.