Tim O’Donnell, one of my professors, once pointed out the problem of trying to describe subjective experience in objective terms. He followed this by asking a student to describe what it’s like to be them.

The perplexed student probably had a good idea what it was like to be them because they had been that way for a long time. The loss for words came from the inability to transmit that to another person. To such a simple question it follows that there is no language to answer it.

For further reading on the topic, it was suggested to read Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” The 1974 article takes these ideas and applies them to nonhuman proportions. It’s a short read and available online:

Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” [online text]