What is referred to as qualia if they mean anything at all are only in the immediate subjective present, are the root of the tree of everything understood as qualia. What is that root? It can't be a concept because the whole point was to empty out the conceptual contents, and it seems it cannot also be a quale because how is it then distinguished from the representatives of qualia which form the tree, or the essence of any particular quale. It's an old philosophical conundrum, distinguishing say essence from existence. Is there something in experience that irreducibly marks existence or being? It is in other words the question of being, the ontological distinction in fact, but wrapped up in all sorts of cognitivist blankets. It makes more sense to accept that the distinction itself, the very seed or root of that distinction contaminates all our thinking, and marks a wrong turning in the history of metaphysics, and so cannot be 'cured' by any further thinking along received lines.