Data, Datum, and Qualia in Philosophy and First-Order Logic

🧠 In Philosophy

Datum

• Meaning: A singular piece of information or experience; Latin for “something given.”
• Use: Refers to a basic unit of sensory input or perception.
• Example: Seeing a red apple gives you a datum of redness.

Data

• Meaning: The plural of datum; a collection of sensory inputs or empirical facts.
• Use: Raw observations from which theories are built.
• Example: A scientist collects data from multiple experiments to support a hypothesis.

Qualia

• Meaning: The subjective, first-person qualities of experience.
• Use: Central to philosophy of mind; challenges physicalist accounts of consciousness.
• Example: The qualia of seeing red is the ineffable “redness” you experience.

Philosophical tension: Qualia are often contrasted with data in debates about whether consciousness can be explained purely in physical terms.

📐 In First-Order Logic

Datum

• Meaning: Rarely used; might refer to an initial assumption or given value.
• Use: More common in informal modeling contexts.

Data

• Meaning: A set of values or facts encoded as logical predicates or constants.
• Use: Used to populate models or databases.
• Example: Likes(Alice, IceCream) could be a piece of data.

Qualia

• Meaning: Not a standard term in first-order logic.
• Use: Logic doesn’t deal with subjective experience; qualia are outside its scope.
• Example: You can represent that someone says they feel pain, but not the pain itself.

Logic vs. Mind: First-order logic is objective, while qualia are subjective—making them philosophically incompatible.

🧩 Summary Table

Term	Philosophy	First-Order Logic
Datum	Singular sensory input or fact	Rarely used; possibly a given value
Data	Collection of empirical observations	Set of facts or predicates
Qualia	Subjective qualities of experience	Not represented; outside scope