The idea of representation has been central in discussions ofintentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begunplaying a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly intheories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiplerepresentational theories of consciousness, corresponding to differentuses of the term “conscious,” each attempting to explainthe corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. Morecautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon interms ofintentionality, and assumes that intentionality isrepresentation.

An intentional state represents an object, real or unreal (say, Mageor Pegasus), and typically represents a whole state of affairs, onewhich may or may not actually obtain (say, that Mage wins the KentuckyDerby again in 2024). Like public, social cases of representation suchas writing or mapmaking, intentional states such as beliefs havetruth-value; they entail or imply other beliefs; they are (it seems)composed of concepts and depend for their truth on a match betweentheir internal structures and the way the world is; and so it isnatural to regard their aboutness as a matter of mental referring ordesignation. Sellars (1956, 1967) and Fodor (1975) argue thatintentional states are states of a subject that have semanticalproperties, and the existent-or-nonexistent states of affairs that aretheir objects are just representational contents.

So much is familiar and not very controversial. But problems ofconsciousness are generally felt to be less tractable than matters ofintentionality. The aim of a representationalist theory ofconsciousness is to extend the treatment of intentionality to that ofconsciousness, showing that if intentionality is well understood inrepresentational terms, then so can be the phenomena of consciousnessin whichever sense of that fraught term.

The notions of consciousness most commonly addressed by philosophersare the following: (1) “Conscious states” in the veryspecific sense of: states whose subjects are directly, internallyaware of them. (2) Introspection and one’s privileged access tothe internal character of one’s experience itself. (3) Being ina sensory state that has a distinctive qualitative property, such asthe color one experiences in having a visual experience, or the timbreof a heard sound. (4) The phenomenal matter of “what it’slike” for the subject to be in a particular mental state,especially what it is like for that subject to experience a particularqualitative property as in (3). Block (1995) and others have used“phenomenal consciousness” for sense (4), withoutdistinguishing it from sense (3). (A further terminologicalcomplication is that some theorists, such as Dretske (1995) and Tye(1995), have used the expression “what it’s like” tomean the qualitative property itself, rather than the presenthigher-order property of that property. This entry will mainly use“qualitative” to allude to sensory qualities of the sortthat figure in (3), and “phenomenal” as applying to“what it’s like.”)

For each of the four foregoing notions of consciousness, somephilosophers have claimed that that type of consciousness is entirelyor largely explicable as a kind of representing. This entry will dealmainly with representational theories of consciousness in senses (3)and (4). The leading representational approaches to (1) and (2) are“higher-order representation” theories, which divide into“inner sense” or “higher-order perception”views, “acquaintance” accounts, and “higher-orderthought” theories. For discussion of those, see the entry onhigher-order theories of consciousness.

• 1. Qualitative Character as Representation
• 2. Varieties of Representationalism
  • 2.1 Pure, Strong, and Weak Representationalism
  • 2.2 Narrow and Wide Representationalism
  • 2.3 Representational Contents
  • 2.4 Reductive vs. Nonreductive
• 3. Arguments in Favor of the Representational Theory of Sensory Qualities
  • 3.1 The Argument from Materialism
  • 3.2. The Argument from Veridicality
  • 3.3 The Argument from Transparency
  • 3.4 The Argument from Seeming
  • 3.5 The Argument from Hallucination
  • 3.6 Awareness of sensory qualities
• 4. Objections to the Representational Theory
  • 4.1 Objections to the Nonactual
  • 4.2 Unconscious Representation
  • 4.3 “Phenomenal Intentionality”
  • 4.4 “Laws of appearance”
  • 4.5 Counterexamples
  • 4.6 Arguments against Wide Representationalism
• 5. What It’s Like
  • 5.1 Higher-order “What It’s Like,” Distinct from Sensory Qualities
  • 5.2 Arguments against Materialism Based on “What It’s Like”
  • 5.3 “Illusionism”
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Qualitative Character as Representation

Qualitative properties and phenomenal features of mental states areeach often called “qualia” (singular,“quale”). In recent philosophy of mind that term has beenused in a number of confusingly different ways. There is a specific,fairly strict sense that comes to us from C.I. Lewis (1929) by way ofGoodman (1951) (though there is plenty of room for exegeticaldisagreement about Lewis’ own usage). A quale in this sense is aqualitative property inhering in a sensory state: the color of anafter-image, or that of a more ordinary patch in one’s visualfield; the pitch or volume or timbre of a subjectively heard sound;the smell of an odor; a particular taste; the perceived texture of anobject encountered by touch. (The term “inhering in” inthe preceding sentence is deliberately vague, and neutral on as manymetaphysical issues as possible. In particular, qualia may bepropertiesof the experiences in which they inhere, or theymay be related to those experiences in some other way.) For reasonsthat will become clear, we may call this sense of “qualia”the “first-order” sense. Notice that it differs from thebroader and vaguer sense defined in the entry onqualia (“the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of ourmental lives”),and from the much more heavily ladensense of Block (1990, 1995, 1996), according to which“qualia” are by stipulative definition neither functionalnor intentional properties. To avoid further confusion, let us speakofsensory qualities.

A sensory quality can be thought of as the distinctive property of anapparent phenomenal individual. An “apparent phenomenalindividual” is anything of the sort that Bertrand Russell wouldhave taken to be a “sense-datum,” such as (again) acolored region of one’s visual field, or a heard sound or anexperienced smell. But it is important to see that qualities of thiskind do not presuppose the existence of sense-data or other exotica.Sensory fields are pervaded by such qualities both in everydayveridical experience and in less usual cases. In our first-order senseof the “q”-word, the latter point is the merest commonsense, and to deny it would be to take a very radical position. Ofcourse philosophers will immediately debate the nature of thesecommonsensical qualities and further claims about them, but it isgenerally agreed that that they are introspectible,apparently monadic or nonrelational, and describable inordinary English words such as “green,”“loud,” and “sweet” (though it may bequestioned whether those words have just the same senses as when theyare applied to physical objects and events).

Sensory qualities pose a serious problem for materialist theories ofthe mind. For where, ontologically speaking, are they located? SupposeBertie is experiencing a green after-image as a result of seeing a redflash bulb go off; the greenness of the after-image is the quality.Actual Russellian sense-data are immaterial individuals; so thematerialist cannot admit that the greenness of the after-image is aproperty of an actual sense-datum. Nor is it plausible to suggest thatthe greenness is exemplified by anything physical in the brain (ifthere is some green physical thing in your brain, you are probably inbig trouble). To sharpen the problem:

1. Bertie is experiencing a green thing.
2. Suppose that there is no physical green thing outsideBertie’s head. But
3. There is no physical green thing inside Bertie’s headeither.
4. If it is physical, the green thing is either outsideBertie’s head or inside it. Thus,
5. The green thing is not physical. [1,2,3,4] Thus,
6. Bertie’s experience contains a nonphysical thing. [1,5]Thus,
7. Bertie’s experience is not, or not entirely, physical.[6]

This is a valid deductive argument against materialism, and itspremises are hard to deny.

The modern representational theory of sensory qualities originateswith Hall (1961), Anscombe(1965) and Hintikka (1969); early adherentsinclude Kraut (1982), Lewis (1983), Lycan (1987, 1996), Harman (1990),Shoemaker (1994), Tye (1994, 1995, 2003a), Dretske (1995), Clark(2000), Byrne (2001), Crane (2001, 2003), and Thau (2002). Therepresentational theory is usually (though not always) an attempt toresolve the foregoing dilemma compatibly with materialism. Accordingto the theory, sensory qualities are actually intentional contents,represented properties of represented objects. Suppose Ludwig isseeing a real tomato in good light, and naturally it looks red to him;there is a corresponding red patch in his visual field. He is visuallyrepresenting the actual redness of the tomato, and the redness of the“patch” is just the redness of the tomato itself. Butsuppose George Edward is hallucinating a similar tomato, and there isa tomato-shaped red patch in his visual field just as there is inLudwig’s. George Edward too is representing the redness of anexternal, physical tomato. It is just that in his case the tomato isnot real; it and its redness are nonactual intentional contents. Butthe redness is still the redness of the illusory tomato. (Note thatthe representation going on here is good old first-orderrepresentation of environmental features, not higher-order as in the“higher-order representation” theories of awareness.)

What about Bertie’s green after-image? On therepresentationalist (sometimes “intentionalist”) analysis,for Bertie to experience the green after-image is for Bertie to bevisually representing a green blob located at such-and-such a spot inthe room. Since in reality there is no green blob in the room withBertie, his visual experience is unveridical; after-images areillusions. The sensory quality, the greenness of the blob, is (likethe blob itself) a nonactual intentional content. Of course, in casesof veridical perception, the color and the colored object are notmerely intentional contents, because they actually exist, butthey are still intentional objects, representata.

And that is how the representationalist resolves our dilemma. As P1has it, there is a green thing that Bertie is experiencing, but it isnot an actual thing. That “there is” is the same lenientnon-actualist “there is” that occurs in “There issomething that Bertie believes in but that doesn’t exist”and in “There is at least one mythical god that the Greeksworshipped but that no one worships anymore.” (In defending hissense-data, Russell mistook a nonactual material thing for an actualimmaterial thing.) Thus, P5, understood as delivering anactual green entity, does not follow.

A slightly surprising but harmless consequence of the representationalview as formulated here is that sensory qualities(“qualia” in our strict first-order sense) are notthemselves propertiesof the experiences that present them:Sensory qualities are represented properties of represented objects,and so they are only intentionally present in experiences. Therelevant propertiesof the experiences are, representing thisquality or that. Of course, one could shift the meaning slightly andspeak of “qualia” as properties of experiences,identifying them with representational features, such as the featureof representing this strict-sense sensory quality or that; nothingmuch hangs on this terminological choice. (As before, “whatit’s like” properties are something else again.)

Most representationalists agree that the perceptual representation ofcolor and other sensible properties is “nonconceptual” insome sense—at least in that the qualitative representations neednot be easily translatable into the subject’s natural language.Of course, some psychosemantics would be needed to explain what it isin virtue of which a brain item represents greenness in particular.Dretske (1995) offers one, as does Tye (1995); both accounts areteleologized versions of “indicator” semantics.

2. Varieties of Representationalism

The mere representation of redness does not suffice forsomething’s looking red to a subject, much less for a sensoryquality of red and still less for a phenomenal “something it islike” to experience that quality. One could say the word“red” aloud, or semaphore it from a cliff, or send it inMorse code, or write the French word “rouge” on ablackboard, or point to a color chip. The representation must bespecifically a visual representation, produced by either a normalhuman visual system or by something functionally like one. Similarpoints would be made for nonvisual qualities, such as subjectivebitterness, which would require alluding to the gustatory system.

Thus, the representational theory of sensory qualities cannot bepurely representational, but must appeal to some further factor, todistinguish visual representations from other sorts of representationsof redness. Dretske (1995) cites only the fact that visualrepresentation is sensory and what he calls “systemic.”Tye (1995) requires that the representation be nonconceptual and“poised,” though he also argues that visualrepresentations of color would differ from other sorts ofrepresentations in being accompanied by further representationaldifferences. Lycan (1996) appeals to functional role.

2.1 Pure, Strong, and Weak Representationalism

Thus we may distinguish different grades of representationalism aboutsensory qualities.

Pure representationalism would be the view thatrepresentation alone suffices for a sensory quality. But no one holdsthat view, for the reason just given: representation alone is cheapand ubiquitous. (Lloyd (1991) and Thau (2002) perhaps come close; Thausuggests that representing a certain special sort of content doessuffice for a sensory quality.)

Strong representationalism (defended by Dretske, Tye andLycan) is the view that representationof a certain kindsuffices for a sensory quality, where the kind can be specified infunctionalist or other familiar materialist terms, without recourse toproperties of any ontologically “new” sort. (A mixedrepresentational-functional view is what Block (1996) calls“quasi-representationism.”) We might further contrast (a)theories that appeal to functional considerations only to separatesensory qualities from other represented properties with (b) theoriesthat use functional considerations more ambitiously, to distinguishqualitatively different experiences that have the same intentionalcontent.

Weak representationalism says only that qualitative statesnecessarily have representational content, which admission iscompatible with sensory qualities also necessarily involving featuresthat are ontologically “new” (Block (1990, 1996), Chalmers(1996)). Weak representationalism has been fairly uncontroversial(though it would have been denied by Russell, who showed no sign ofthinking that his sense-data represented anything, and by behavioristsand Wittgensteinians who are hostile to the whole idea of mentalrepresentation). At the very least, one who rejects it must try toexplain why we distinguish between veridical and unveridicalexperiences; but more recently new opponents such as Campbell (2002),Travis (2004), Noë (2005), Brewer (2006), and Fish (2009) haveattempted just that.

Throughout the rest of this entry, unless otherwise noted,“representationalism” shall mean the strongrepresentationalist view. The mixed sort of account that Block calls“quasi-representationism” is a version of strongrepresentationalism, since it does rule out qualitative features thatare both nonintentional and nonfunctional.

Also, we shall consider strong representationalism as applying to allsensory states, including bodily sensations as well as visual andother perceptions. Weak representationalism is somewhat controversialfor pains, itches and other sensations, since it is not obvious thatsuch sensations represent anything at all. Accordingly, strongrepresentationalism will be all the less defensible for them.

There are further issues that divide strong representationalists,generating different versions of the view. One is the question, ofwhether sensory qualities themselves, in our very specific sense,exhaust all of what has usually been thought of as a sensorystate’s overall phenomenal character. Dretske and Tye maintainthat they do; Lycan (1998) and others argue that they do not. Thismatter will be discussed below, in the context of what is called the“transparency” thesis.

2.2 Narrow and Wide Representationalism

A more important division is that of “narrow” vs.“wide.” In the literature on propositional attitudesbeginning with Putnam (1975), the representational content of anattitude is generally thought to be “wide” in that it doesnot supervene on the contents of the subject’s head; on thisview, two molecularly indistinguishable people could have differentbelief or desire contents, determined in part by objects in theirrespective environments. Since according to the representationaltheory, sensory qualities themselves are real or unreal environmentalproperties, the theory suggests that the qualities too are wide, andmolecularly identical subjects could experience different qualities.Dretske (1996) and Lycan (1996, 2001) have explicitly defended this“phenomenal externalism,” though in our presentterminology it should be called “qualitative” externalism.Some other representationalists reject this idea and believe sensoryqualities to be narrow, necessarily shared by molecular duplicates.Shoemaker (1994), Horgan (2000), Kriegel (2002b), Levine (2003) andChalmers (2004) defend narrow representationalism. (Rey (1998) callshis view “a narrow representationalist account of qualitativeexperience,” but it is not an account of sensory qualities inthe present sense; if anything Rey favors the elimination of thosequalities.) For some arguments on each side, see Section 4.6.

2.3 Representational Contents

Within wide representationalism or within narrow, there may bedisagreement about what kinds of properties are represented. In theprevious section, it was assumed that the putative representata areenvironmental features such as the colors of physical objects. Butothers have been suggested (Byrne (2001), Levine (2003)): e.g.,perceptual experience might instead represent sense-data, ornonexistent colorish properties that physical objects do not reallyhave. Shoemaker (1994) defends the view that a color experiencerepresents a dispositional property, viz., the disposition to cause anexperience of just that type. (Kriegel (2002b) and Levine (2003)defend versions of Shoemaker’s view in order to keep sensoryqualities narrow and to handle various inversion cases.) On oneinterpretation at least, Thau (2002) posits a special sort ofquasi-color property, distinct from but related to actual colors.

Notice that even on the straightforward view that the representata arethe ostensible colors of physical objects, the representational theorydoes not presuppose color realism. It is true that we have been usingcolor words such as “green” to mean public properties ofphysical objects, and one could not (without circularity) explicatephenomenal greenness in terms of represented real-world public colorand then turn around and construe the latter real physical greennessas a mere disposition to produce sensations of phenomenal greenness,or in any other way that presupposed phenomenal greenness. But one mayhold an error theory of physical color, taking the colors of physicalobjects to be ultimately illusory, and yet maintain that physicalcolor concepts are explanatorily and/or conceptually prior tophenomenal ones.

(There can be more general issues, in other sense modalities, ofidentifying the relevant worldly representata. E.g., Gray (2003)argues that sensations of heat represent neither heat, nortemperature, nor conductivity, nor energy.)

Chalmers (2004) calls attention to the distinction between Russelliancontents and Fregean contents. The former can be a singularproposition or a configuration of objects and their properties. Thoughthe proposition may be believed (etc.) under a mode of presentation,the mode of presentation is not part of the content itself. Bycontrast, a Fregean content includes the mode of presentation, anddoes not include individual objects themselves. Representationalistshave most often thought in Russellian terms about perceptual contents,but Chalmers argues that the content of a perceptual experience isFregean. Because it neglects the objects themselves, the Fregeanoption would lend itself to a narrow representationalist account, ifsuch is wanted; also, it helps to accommodate inversion examples(Section 4.4).

2.4 Reductive vs. Nonreductive

As Crane (2003) and Chalmers (2004) have pointed out,representationalism need not be reductive. One might agree with thestrong representationalist that sensory qualities are identical withintentional contents, but also contend that the latter intentionalcontent properties cannot be characterized without reference tosensory qualities, so despite the identity there cannot be reductionwithout circularity. Maintaining in this vein that“qualia” require a special phenomenal manner ofrepresentation and holding that that manner cannot be reduced to thefunctional, Chalmers defends a nonreductive representationalism.Representationalists who sympathize with the view (of, e.g., Searle(1990) and Siewert (1998)) that intentionality requires consciousnesswould also be motivated to remain nonreductive. Levine (2003) arguesthat Shoemaker’s (1994) view is nonreductive, on the groundsthat it explicates the qualitative character of an experience in termsof representing a property that is in turn characterized in terms ofexperiences having that qualitative character (Levine does notconsider the apparent circularity vicious). But many otherrepresentationalists are motivated by materialism and by the desire toreduce sensory qualities to intentionality, holding thatintentionality is the more materialistically tractable of the two.

3. Arguments in Favor of the Representational Theory of Sensory Qualities

There are at least four direct arguments in favor of therepresentational theory.

3.1 The Argument from Materialism

Many representationalists hold that the theory not only preservesmaterialism while accommodating sensory qualities, but is the onlyvery promising way of doing so. For the only viable alternativeresolution of our Bertie dilemma seems to be belief in actualRussellian sense-data or at least in immaterial properties. Theanti-materialist may not mind sense-data ontologically, but s/he willalso inherit the nasty epistemological problems that Russell neversucceeded in overcoming: If sensory experience presents us withsense-data and nothing but, the sense-data wall us off from whatevermay be the rest of reality, and we are left with a justificatory gapbetween our beliefs about sense-data and our beliefs about theexternal world.

More likely, an opponent will hold the line at property dualism, as doJackson (1982) and Chalmers (1996). That is quite bad enough for thematerialist, but of course one who holds no brief for materialism inthe first place will not be convinced by the present argument.

There are still nonrepresentationalist alternatives. For example, amaterialist might suggest a type-identity of Bertie’s phenomenalgreenness with something neurophysiological, but it is not plausibleto think that a smoothly and monadically green patch in one’svisual fieldjust is a neural state or event in one’sbrain. At best, the type-identity theorist would have to do away withthe important claim that greenness itself, rather than some surrogateproperty, figures in Bertie’s experience; the suggestion wouldbe an error theory, and would have to explain away the intuition that,whatever the ultimate ontology, Bertie really is experiencing aninstance of greenness.

Two further alternate materialist treatments of sensory qualities arean “adverbial” theory of the sort recommended by Chisholm(1957) and Sellars (1967), and outright eliminativism.

According to the adverbial theory, Bertie’s experience involvesno thing, either actual or nonactual, that is green. Rather, Bertiesenses greenly, greenly-sensing being just a type of visualsensing. Our main question, “Where, ontologically, is the greenthing?,” thus has a false presupposition and there is noproblem. Adverbialism dominated materialists’ thinking for solong that the latter question was hardly ever raised. But (as was notoften noticed), adverbialism is a semantical thesis about the logicalforms of sensation statements, and as such it has been severely andtellingly criticized, e.g., by Jackson (1977), Butchvarov (1980) andLycan (1987).

Eliminativism about sensory qualities is suggested if not championedby Dennett (1991) and by Rey (1983, 1998). But if Bertie or anyoneelse says, “I am visually experiencing greenness,” it ishard either to call that person a liar or to explain how s/he could besubject to so massive a delusion. (Levine (2001) discusseseliminativism at more length.)

Dretske (1996) maintains that there is nothing intrinsic to the brainthat constitutes the difference between a red quality and a green one.Unless there are Russellian sense-data or at least immaterialproperties, what distinguishes the two qualities must be relational,and the only obvious candidate is,representing red or green.But as before, if one has no objection to sense-data or immaterialproperties, one will be unmoved. The neurophysiological type-identitytheorist would protest here too, though the same rejoinders apply. Aless commissive objection is that, contra Dretske, there are candidaterelations besides that of representing: some wide functional relation,perhaps, or a typical-cause relation (where neither of these is itselftaken to constitute representing).

3.2. The Argument from Veridicality

We distinguish between veridical and nonveridical visual experiences.How so? It is fairly uncontentious that Bertie’s experience isas of a green blob and has greenness as an intentional object, andthat what the experience reports is false. That is hard to dispute. Ifone instead accepts Russellian sense-data, and thinks of theafter-image itself as an actually and independently existingindividual—indeed one of the world’s basic buildingblocks—one then need not also think of it as representational.But one will then have to give an oblique account of the notion ofveridicality. If one joins Campbell (2002) et al. in rejectingperceptual representation entirely, one will still have to reconstructveridicality in some ad hoc way.

The representationalist further argues that the experience’sveridicality condition, i.e., there being a green blob where thereseems to Bertie to be one, seems to exhaust not only itsrepresentational content but its qualitative content. Once thegreenness has already been accounted for, what qualitativecontent is left?

Since weak representationalism does not entail strong, opponents mayoffer serious nonrhetorical answers to the argument’s concludingrhetorical question. For example, Block (1996) maintains that Bertiecould introspect a certain qualitative property in addition to thegreenness of the after-image. And we shall definitely encounter afurther kind of content in Section 4.5 below, that may or may not bethe same sort of property Block has in mind.

3.3 The Argument from Transparency

Harman (1990) offers the transparency argument: We normally “seeright through” perceptual states to external objects and do noteven notice that we arein perceptual states; the propertieswe are aware of in perception are attributed to the objects perceived.“Look at a tree and try to turn your attention to intrinsicfeatures of your visual experience. I predict you will find that theonly features there to turn your attention to will be features of thepresented tree, including relational features of the tree ‘fromhere’” (p. 39). Tye (1995) and Crane (2003) extend thisargument to bodily sensations such as pain.

The transparency argument can be extended also to the purelyhallucinatory case. Suppose you are looking at a real, richly redtomato in good light. Suppose also that you then hallucinate a second,identical tomato to the right of the real one. (You may be aware thatthe second tomato is not real.) Phenomenally, the relevant two sectorsof your visual field are just the same; the appearances are just thesame in structure. The redness involved in the second-tomatoappearance is exactly the same property as is involved in the first.But if we agree that the redness perceived in the real tomato is justthe redness of the tomato itself, then the redness perceived in thehallucinated tomato—the red quality involved in thesecond-tomato appearance—is just the redness of the hallucinatedtomato itself.

The appeal to transparency makes it immensely plausible that visualexperience represents external objects and their apparent properties.But as noted above, that weak representationalist thesis is notterribly controversial. What the transparency argument as it standsdoes not show, but only claims, is that experience has no otherproperties that pose problems for materialism. The argument needs tobe filled out, and typically is filled out by a further appeal tointrospection. The obvious additional premises are: (i) If aperceptual state has relevant mental properties in addition to itsrepresentational properties, they are introspectible. But (ii) noteven the most determined introspection ever reveals any suchadditional properties.

(ii) is the transparency thesis proper. (Kind (2003) calls it“strong transparency” and usefully distinguishes it fromweaker claims, such as that we are very hard put to introspectadditional properties or that we only rarely or abnormally do.)Transparency is vigorously defended by Tye (1995, 2002) and by Crane(2003). Dretske (2003) endorses a radical version of it: that wecannot introspect anything about a perceptual experience, if“introspect” has its usual meaning of internally attendingto the experience.

Objections to the transparency thesis typically take the form ofcounterexamples, mental features of our experiences that can beintrospected but allegedly are nonrepresentational. Harman (1990) andBlock (1996) speak of “mental paint,” alluding tointrospectible intrinsic features of a perceptual representation invirtue of which it represents what it does. Harman precisely deniesthe existence of mental paint, but Block holds that, in particular, hecan introspect the nonintentional, nonfunctional items that he calls“qualia” in a sense quite different from that of sensoryqualities. Loar (2003) grants that vision is normally transparent, butargues that we can therapeutically adopt what he calls the“perspective of oblique reflection,” perform a certainimaginative exercise, and thereby come to detect “qualia”in something like Block’s heavily laden sense of that term.

Block further mentions bodily sensations and moods whoserepresentational contents are minimal but which are vividlyintrospectible. Lycan (1998) argues on similar grounds that thequalities inhering in a sensory experience are only part of thatexperience’s “overall feel” or phenomenal characterin sense (4). Kriegel (2017) adds that, in particular, sensoryexperiences have affective components that are part of the mode ormanner of representing rather than of the representatum.

Turning back to perception, Block notes that if one’s vision isblurry, one can introspect the blurriness as well as the visualrepresentata. (More on blurriness in Section 4.5.2 below.) The pointmay also be made that the vividness of a perception, say of color, canbe introspected over and above the sensed content, but Bourget (2017b)offers to explain vividness in terms of representata.

A more straightforward objection to transparency is that in perceptualexperience, we can introspect the relevant sense modality in additionto the content, i.e., whether the representatum is sensed visually,aurally, olfactorily, or whatever. It may be claimed, as by Lycan(1996), that those differences are functional only. However, Tye(2002) has maintained that they can be captured in terms ofrepresentational contents. Moreover, Bourget (2017a) argues in somedetail that only by individuating the sense modalities in terms ofcontents can we give the best account of “multimodal” ormulti-sensory experiences, ones which unify distinct sub-experiencesoccurring in different modalities, such as those of drinking a cup ofcoffee or encountering a barking dog. (Related arguments had been madeby Tye (2007) and Speaks (2015).)

Finally, it would seem that for any sensory quality, one canintrospect the higher-order property of what it is like to experiencethat quality (cf. notion (4) listed in the fourth paragraph of thisentry). Indeed, doing that seems to be one of introspection’sstandard tasks.

These apparent counterexamples take a lot of overcoming. Tye (2003a)addresses some of them, arguing in each case that what appears to be anonrepresentational difference between two experiences is actually adifference in representata.

As representationalism has been defined here, it does not require thetransparency thesis. Representationalism itself is a claim only aboutsensory qualities, while transparency is about features of experiencemore generally. Even if transparency fails and there areintrospectible nonrepresentational features of experiences, thosefeatures are presumably not sensory qualities. (Though some of theforegoing examples have also been used against representationalism;see Section 4.) Of course, if representationalism should be construedas applying to features of experience more broadly, then the existenceof some such features may be troublesome for the view so construed;but they may be acceptable to the materialist, e.g., because they arefunctional.

3.4 The Argument from Seeming

Byrne (2001) and Thau (2002) appeal to the notion of the way the worldseems to a subject. Very briefly, as Byrne puts it: “if the waythe world seems to him hasn’t changed, then it can’t bethat the phenomenal character of his experiencehaschanged” (p. 207), where by “phenomenal character”in the context Byrne means sensory qualities. Suppose a subject hastwo consecutive experiences that differ in qualitative character. Ifshe is “competent” in the sense of having no cognitiveshortcomings (in particular, her memory is in good working order) andis slightly idealized in one or two other ways, she will notice thechange in qualitative character. If so, Byrne argues, the way thingsseems to her when she has the second experience must differ from theway they seemed to her while she was having the first. For supposethat consecutive experiences are the same in content. Then the worldseems exactly the same to the subject during both. She “has nobasis for” noticing a change in qualitative character either,and by the previous premise it follows that there was no change inqualitative character (p. 211). The argument generalizes in each ofseveral natural ways, and Byrne concludes that experiences cannotdiffer in qualitative character without differing in representationalcontent.

If this sounds too close to being another simple appeal totransparency—and/or to beg the question against mentalpaint—Byrne hastens to add that his argument does not requiretransparency and is compatible with the existence of mental paint (pp.212–13). So far as a subject is aware of mental paint, herexperience is “partly reflexive” and represents its ownpaint. Therefore, a difference in paint would be another difference inrepresentatum, not a qualitative difference unaccompanied by a contentdifference.

From the orthodox representationalist point of view, that may seem adangerous concession. Byrne does hew to therepresentationalist’s line of supervenience (no qualitativedifference without an intentional difference), but if his argumentdoes not rule out mental paint, an anti-representationalist mayconstruct inversion cases such as that of Block’s (1990)“Inverted Earth” (see Section 4.4 below), and argue thatthe paint is a nonfunctional intrinsic mental feature of theexperience given in introspection, which is close enough to a“quale” in Block’s special sense, even if thefeature does happen to be reflexively represented by the experienceitself.

An anti-representationalist might also complain that Byrne hasequivocated on “seems.” Block (1996) argued that“looks” (as in “That thing looks red to me”)is ambiguous, as between an intentional or representational sense anda separable phenomenal sense, and he believes inversion cases showthat the two sorts of looking can come apart. No doubt he would holdthe same of “seems.” Whether or not one is persuaded ofthat claim, Byrne’s argument presupposes that it is false. Whiledoing that does not strictly beg the question, the argument does helpitself to an assumption that is unlikely to be granted by theanti-representationalist.

3.5 The Argument from Hallucination

Pautz (2007, 2010) appeals to hallucinatory experience. Suppose youhallucinate (simultaneously) a red ellipse, an orange circle, and agreen square, without ever previously having encountered any of thosecolors or shapes. That experience directly gives you the capacity toform beliefs about the external world, e.g., that there is a redellipse, that red is more like orange than like green, and thatellipses are more like circles than like squares. This“grounding property” of the experience motivates a“relational” view of it, according to which having theexperience puts the subject in a relation to “items involvingproperties which, if they are properties of anything at all, areproperties of extended objects” (2007, p. 524). Pautz offers twofurther arguments for relationality, based respectively on the“matching property” and the “characterizationproperty.”

Given relationality, representationalism still has three rivals:sense-data, Peacocke’s (2008) “sensationalist”theory, and Alston’s (1999) “theory of appearing.”But each of the rivals succumbs to objections; so representationalismis true of hallucinatory experience. Now, why not extendrepresentationalism to experience across the board? At this pointthere is just one still unrefuted opponent: the “positive”disjunctivist who maintains that veridical experience differsradically in kind from hallucination. Pautz argues that that view isnot worth the complications it enforces.

It remains to show that an experience’s characteristicqualitative properties can be identified with its representationalproperties. At this point Pautz appeals to the assumption that for anyqualitative difference between two visual experiences, the differencehas a spatial component, either in distinguishing two subregions ofone’s visual field or in attending to one rather than another.In no case, Pautz maintains, is there going to be an experientialdifference without a representational difference.

Since Pautz has proceeded by objecting to various competing views, wemust hear what their respective proponents will say in rebuttal.

3.6 Awareness of sensory qualities

The discussion in this past section and in the next focus on thenature of sensory qualities themselves. According to therepresentationalist, the qualities are not mental; the correspondingmental property of a sensory state is that ofrepresentingthe relevant quality. Of course, it is sensory states and experiencesthemselves that interest philosophers of mind, and some critics ofrepresentationalism will protest that merely representing a qualitycannot be all there is to having the qualitative character that needsexplaining; we shall return to that complaint in section 4.2below.

As yet we have said nothing about what it is to beaware of aquality.

If a sensory quality is an intentional object of a mental state, thenpresumably the state’s owner is aware of the quality in whateverway a person is aware of the intentional contents of her/his mentalstates generally, including those of nonsensory propositionalattitudes. The general issue is problematic and is much discussed inthe “self-knowledge” literature. There are variousoptions: higher-order representation; self-representation; attentionalmodulation; “acquaintance” of some sort more intimate thanany of the foregoing; or the automatic replication of a first-orderstate’s content in any other state directed upon the first. Inany case, however, the problems of awareness of content are alreadywith us, and do not afflict the representational theory of sensoryqualities in particular.

4. Objections to the Representational Theory

The (strong) representational theory entails the obvious supervenienceclaim: that there can be no difference in sensory qualities without arepresentational difference. Objections to the theory have most oftencome in the form of counterexamples to that thesis. But we shall beginwith four more general complaints.

4.1 Objections to the Nonactual

Some philosophers are squeamish about the representationalist’scommitment to nonactual objects in cases of hallucination orperceptual illusion. For example, Loar (2003) imagines comparing theexperience of seeing a lemon and a subjectively indistinguishable caseof hallucinating an exactly similar lemon. “A way of puttingthis is representational: the two experiences present the real lemonand a merely intentional object as exactly similar, and that is whatmakes the experiences indistinguishable…. At the same time, onehas a good sense of reality, and so wants to hold that the merelyintentional lemon is nothing at all, and so not something that canresemble something else” (p. 84). A similar sentiment issympathetically attributed to Fred Dretske by Levine (2003, p. 59n).The representational theory is sometimes assimilated to AlexiusMeinong’s fanciful view that along with the many things thatactually exist, there are plenty of other things that are like thethings that exist except for happening to lack the property ofexisting. (Thus, Mage exists but does not have wings; Pegasus lackedexistence but had wings.)

But it is important to see that the metaphysics of nonexistence iseveryone’s problem, not peculiarly that of therepresentationalist (or of one’s current opponent on whateverissue in the philosophy of mind). There are things that do not exist,such as a hallucinated pink rat or a hallucinated lemon. Howevertroublesome it is for fundamental ontology, that fact does not entailMeinong’s exegesis of it, or David Lewis’ concretistinterpretation, or any other particular metaphysical account of it.The representational theory of sensory qualities is neutral on suchunderlying issues; it says only that when you hallucinate a lemon, theyellowness you experience is that of the lemon. Of course, neither thelemon nor its color actually exists, but as before, there are plentyof things that do not exist. (And one should question whether, as Loarmaintains, nonactual things and people cannot resemble actualones.)

4.2 Unconscious Representation

Sturgeon (2000), Kriegel (2002a) and Chalmers (2004) argue thatrepresentation cannot suffice for a sensory quality (or for therebeing something it is like for the subject to do the representing, butthat is not our topic for now), because representation can occurunconsciously. This appears to refute pure representationalism, sinceaccording to that view representation of the relevant sort of propertydoes necessarily constitute a sensory quality. The point is not highlysignificant, since as before, pure representationalism is anunoccupied position. The real question is, whether the concern behindthis objection carries over to “quasi-” or other strongrepresentationalism.

Sturgeon does seem to hold the stronger view that not evenrepresentation of whatever special sort is appealed to by thequasi-representationalist can suffice for a sensory quality, becauseany such representation can occur unconsciously. Since thequasi-representationalist maintains precisely that a sensory qualityis simply a representatum of the relevant sort, this would be anoutright refutation.

This objection rests on the crucial assumption that sensory qualitiescan occur only consciously. That assumption shares the usual multipleambiguity of “conscious.” The interpretation on which theobjection’s premise is most obviously true is that of sense (1)or sense (2) above: Representation can occur without itssubject’s being aware of it, and/or without the subject’sintrospecting it. But if we then understand the tacit assumption inthe same way, it would be independently rejected by mostrepresentationalists, who already hold that a sensory quality canoccur without being noticed by its host. (Consider the driver driving“on autopilot” who obviously saw the red light, and sawits redness in particular, but who was daydreaming and quite unawareof the redness, or even of applying the brake.) If, rather, sense (3)is intended, the assumption would be fine, because tautologous (aquality cannot occur without a quality occurring); but theobjection’s premise would be, in effect, a flat andquestion-begging denial of strong representationalism, saying that therelevant representation can occur without a sensory qualityoccurring.

What of sense (4)? Here the objection gets a slightly better foothold.The premise is true; representation can occur without there beingsomething that representing is like for the subject. And there is atleast a sense of the phrase “what it’s like” inwhich the tacit assumption is true also: Recall that some theoristshave used that phrase simply to mean a sensory quality (in sense (3));so again the assumption would be tautologous. But the present concernis for sense (4), and at this point the objection breaks down. For sofar as has been shown, a (first-order) quality can occur without therebeing anything it is like for the subject to experience that qualityon that occasion; the subject may be entirely unaware of it.

In virtue of what, then, does an experience contain, or have inheringwithin it, a sensory quality? The representationalist’s answeris, in virtue of representing that quality in a distinctive way. Whatare distinctive about that mode of representation are (a) thefunctional considerations needed to specify the relevant sensemodality, and (b) assuming “experience” impliesawareness of the sensory quality, whatever is called for byone’s account of awareness-of.

4.3 “Phenomenal Intentionality”

Terry Horgan and co-authors, beginning with Horgan (2000) and Horganand Tienson (2002), inaugurated the “Phenomenal IntentionalityResearch Program.” (The view was anticipated by Siewert (1998),and see, e.g., the essays collected in Kriegel (2013), as well asMendelovici (2018).) It was inspired in part by an idea ofLoar’s (1987, 2003), but its approach is different and itsclaims are much more ambitious. Its proponents defend an internal,narrow type of intentionality that (Horgan and Tienson say) is notonly determined by phenomenology but isconstituted by it(pp. 520, 524); indeed, they contend (p. 529) that their internalintentionality is “thefundamental kind ofintentionality: the narrow, phenomenal kind that is a prerequisite forwide content and wide truth conditions.” And by“phenomenal,” they seem to mean “what it’slike” properties in the higher-order sense.

This would imply that “what it’s like” propertiesare conceptually or at least metaphysically prior to intentionality.Put together with representationalism about sensory qualities, itwould follow that “what it’s like” properties areprior to those, which is quite contrary to the spirit of (though notflatly incompatible with) representationalism, and certainly it posesa general threat of circularity. Moreover, some proponents concedethat it is anti-naturalistic and may require a departure frommaterialism; but Mendelovici and Bourget (2014) argue thatnaturalistic considerations actuallyfavor phenomenalintentionality.

An obvious objection is that many perceptual states and other clearlyintentional occurrent states are not conscious in sense (1) above;their subjects are entirely unaware of them, and they have nophenomenology at all. Kriegel (2011) replies, contending that theintentionality of such states is not “intrinsic” but“interpretivist,” merely charitable interpretationà la Donald Davidson and D.C. Dennett. Mendelovici (2018, Ch.8) reviews several further strategies and proposes a combination ofthose.

A further objection is that since phenomenal intentionality is narrow,the view cannot account for the wide intentionality of everyday mentalstates. Proponents reply either that wide “contents” arenot really contents (e.g., Horgan and Tienson, Bourget (2010)), orthat they are derived in a deflationary way from the narrow phenomenalcontents (e.g., Siewert, Kriegel, Farkas (2008)).

The “phenomenal intentionality” view will have to beconsidered on its merits, and after we have seen what account itaffords of the sensory qualities. (However, it blocks any directargument for representationalism based on transparency. Indeed,Kriegel (2007, p. 321) appeals to transparency in support ofphenomenal intentionality.) For further discussion, see the entry onphenomenal intentionality.

4.4 “Laws of appearance”

Pautz (2017) points out that there are restrictions on sensoryappearances that have no parallel for other intentional states such asbeliefs. For example, a surface cannot appear both round and square,or both pure red and pure yellow at the same place at the same time;nor can anything seem round or red but not extended. Pautz contendsthat such impossibilities are metaphysical in strength. In contrast,there is nothing metaphysically or even nomologically impossible, butonly irrational, about contradictory or otherwise anomalous beliefs ordesires. How is a representationalist to explain the existence of suchlaws?

Speaks (2017) responds by questioning whether the laws aremetaphysically necessary. Perhaps they arise simply from how we arebuilt. We might have had sense modalities that worked differently, insuch a way as to allow representation of the anomalous states ofaffairs.

Further, even if the impossibilities are metaphysical, they may arisefrom the metaphysics of functional roles of sensory states rather thanfrom the sense modalities’ representational capacities.

4.5 Counterexamples

Now we come to the cases in which, allegedly, either two experiencesdiffer in their sensory qualities without differing in intentionalcontent or they differ entirely in their intentional content but sharesensory qualities. Let us start with the degenerate case in which(supposedly) there is no intentional content to begin with.

4.5.1 Nonintentional mental states

If every sensory quality is a represented property, then phenomenalcharacter in sense (3) is exhausted by the intentionality of therelevant experience. Since vision is pretty plainly representational,it is no surprise that representationalists have talked mainly aboutcolor qualities. But many other mental states that have phenomenalcharacter are not intentional and do not represent anything: bodilysensations, and especially moods. Rey (1998): “Many have notedthat states like that of elation, depression, anxiety, pleasure,orgasm seem to be just overall states ofoneself, and notfeatures of presented objects” (p. 441, italics original). Forthat matter, it is hardly obvious that every specifically perceptualexperience represents—smell, for example, does not clearly doso.

The representationalist has several options here. First, s/he couldrestrict the thesis to perceptual experiences, or to states that areadmitted to be intentional. But that would be ad hoc, and would leavethe phenomenal character of the excluded mental states entirelyunexplained.

Second, representationalists such as Lycan (1996, 2001) and Tye (1995,2003b) have, in some detail, defended Brentano’s thesis that infact every mental state is intentional, including bodily sensationsand moods. It is easy enough to argue that pains and tickles and evenorgasms have some representational features (see Tye (1995) and Lycan(1996)). For example, a pain is felt as being in a certain part ofone’s body,as if that part is disordered in a certainway; that is why pains are described as “burning,”“stabbing,” “throbbing” and the like. Thoughit is harder to maintain that a mood has intentional content, it isplausible to say that a state of elation, for example, representsone’s surroundings as being beautiful and exciting, andfree-floating anxiety represents that something bad is about tohappen. However, this does not answer the previous objection that evenwhen it is admitted that a pain, a tickle, or a general depressiondoes represent something, that representational content does not loomvery large in the overall phenomenal character of the mental state inquestion.

Third, if transparency is rejected, other introspectible features ofan experience can be allowed to count as part of its phenomenalcharacter. Lycan (1998) argues that for some mental states, sensoryqualities do not exhaust their “overall feel.” Considerpains. Armstrong (1968) and Pitcher (1970) argued convincingly thatpains are representational and have intentional objects, real orunreal as usual, which objects are unsalutary conditions of bodyparts; pain is a kind of proprioception. But those intentional objectsare not all I can introspect about a pain. I can also introspect itsawfulness, its urgency. We should distinguish the pain’s sensoryquality, its specifically sensory core (say, the throbbing characterof a headache) from the pain’s affective and conative aspectthat constitutes its awfulness. Those are not normally felt asdistinct, but two different neurological subsystems are responsiblefor the overall experience, and they can come apart. The quality iswhat remains under morphine; what morphine blocks is the affectiveaspect—the desire that the pain stop, the distraction, the urgeto pain-behave. It is then open to the materialist to treat theaffective components as functional rather than representational, andthat is not ad hoc.

Fourth, recall the distinction between senses (3) and (4) of thetricky term “phenomenal character.” As always, therepresentational theory addresses only sense (3). But sense (4), thatof “what it’s like” to entertain a given sensoryquality, can be generalized: It is not only qualities that have thehigher-order what-it’s-like property; arguably propositionalattitudes and other states that do not involve qualities in sense (3),such as occurrent thoughts, have it too (Siewert (1998), Pitt (2004)).So the representationalist can accuse the present objection ofconfusing (4) with (3). It remains to be argued how plausible thataccusation would be.

4.5.2 Same intentional contents, different sensory qualities

Peacocke (1983) gave three examples of this kind, Block (1995, 1996) afew others; for discussion of those, see Lycan (1996). Tye (2003a)provides an extensive catalogue of further cases, and rebuts them onthe representationalist’s behalf. In each case, therepresentationalist tries to show that there are after all intentionaldifferences underlying the qualitative differences in question.

Trees. In Peacocke’s leading example, your experiencerepresents two (actual) trees, at different distances from you but asbeing of the same physical height and other dimensions; “[y]etthere is also some sense in which the nearest tree occupies more ofyour visual field than the more distant tree” (p. 12). Thatsense is a qualitative sense, and Peacocke maintains that thequalitative difference is unmatched by any representationaldifference.

Tye (1995) and others have rejoined that there are after allidentifiable representational differences constituting the qualitativedifferences in the trees example. Tye points to the fact that one ofthe trees subtends a larger visual angle from the subject’spoint of view, and he argues that this fact is itself(nonconceptually) represented by the visual experience. Lycan contendsthat perceptual representation is layered, and vision in particularrepresents physical objects such as treesby representingitems called “shapes,” most of which are nonactual; in thetrees case differing shapes are represented. Much more promisingly,Schellenberg (2008) appeals to “situation-dependent”properties of external objects, by perceiving which we also perceivethe high-level properties of the same objects. Byrne (2001) merelyobserves that one of the trees is represented as being farther fromthe subject than the other. Bourget (2015) even less commissivelypoints out that your experience represents fewer small features of thefarther tree. For further discussion, see Millar (2010).

Peacocke’s second and third examples concern, respectively,binocular vision and the Necker reversible-cube illusion. On theformer, see Tye (1992) and Lycan (1996). The latter has given rise toa distinctive literature.

Aspect-perception and attention. The Necker cube is one of agrowing family of alleged counterexamples involving aspect-perceptionor selective attention. Others include ambiguous pictures such as thefamous duck-rabbit; arrays of dots or geometric figures which can be“grouped” by vision in alternate ways; or other displayswhich can be attended to in multiple ways. In each case, a single andunchanging figure that seems to be univocally represented by visionnonetheless gives rise to differing visual experiences.

Representationalists of course respond by trying to specify distinctproperties as characteristic representata in the differingexperiences. For example, a “duck” experience of theduck-rabbit will represent the property of being a bill withoutrepresenting that of being an ear; the “rabbit” experiencewill do the opposite. One way of grouping dots will mobilize theconcept of a row but not that of a column, etc. Macpherson (2006)offers a rich survey of such examples and rebuts representationalistreplies both existing and anticipated.

One of the most interesting recent examples (not discussed byMacpherson) is offered by Nickel (2007):

Nickel says we can see an arbitrarily chosen set of constituentsquares “as prominent.” For example, in Figure 1 we cansee the squares corresponding to 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 as prominent, oralternately see 2, 4, 6, and 8 as prominent, without changing where welook and, it seems, while representing just the same figure and itselements all the while. In particular, we need not change the focus ofour vision, but leave it on the center of Figure 1, yet have differentexperiences.

The representationalist has several options here. First, focusing onNickel’s phrase “see as prominent,” s/he could claimthat a distance illusion is created, so that the “fartheraway” relation is represented; or, noting that the preposition“as” seems already to be representational language, s/hecould appropriate Nickel’s own term “prominent” asdesignating a property and just leave it unexplicated. Second, therepresentationalist could insist that the figure is pictorial, andthen invoke some version of figure-ground, or assimilate the case toseeing-as of some other sort (assuming s/he had already provided arepresentational account of seeing-as more generally). Third, s/hemight reject Nickel’s assumption that the whole figure isactually seen at one time, writing off the contrary impression as whatNoë (2004) calls “presence as absence.” And there areother possibilities, though each is bound to be contentious.

Block (2010) offers cases in which shifts of attention seem to changesensory qualities (Carrasco (2006)). “The effect of attention isexperienced in terms of appearance of contrast, speed, size, colorsaturation, etc. Attended things look bigger, faster, more saturated,and higher in contrast” (p. 44). Realism about contrast, speedand the rest being assumed, it would seem clear that if an attendedthing looks (e.g.) bigger than its actual size, that is just a falseor inaccurate representation. But Block takes pains to forestall thatinference.

Blurry vision. We must revisit that case (which actually wasintroduced as a problem for representationalism by Boghossian andVelleman (1989)), because it requires a wrinkle in therepresentationalist strategy. The normal representationalist movewould be to say that the visual experience represents the relevantpart of the world as being blurry, but here we want to concede thatthere is a phenomenal difference between seeing an object as beingblurry and blurrily seeing a nonblurry object. Tye (2003a) points outthat that difference can be characterized informationally: In theformer case, as when looking at a blurry painting, vision representsthe blurred edges as such, and just where they lie. But in the latter,vision provides less information, and fails to represent the sharpedges. Tye distinguishes similarly between nonveridically seeing asharp object as blurry, which experience incorrectly represents theboundaries as fuzzy, and seeing the same object blurrily, which doesnot represent them, except to place them within broad limits. Allen(2013) contends, to the contrary, that a blurry visual experiencerepresents objects as having multiple boundaries. Bourget (2015)argues that, whatever the positive details, a blurry experienceloses some of the content that would be represented by asharper experience of the exact same scene.

4.5.3 Inversions

Inversion examples in the tradition of Locke’s “invertedspectrum” form a special category of alleged counterexamples torepresentationalism. Some fit the foregoing model (same intentionalcontents, different sensory qualities), some do not. Lockean inversionwas that of color qualities with respect to behavioral dispositions,which is regarded as possible by everyone except behaviorists andWittgensteinians. To find an inversion counterexample to therepresentational theory, the objector would have to posit qualitiesinverted with respect to all representational contents, or, in thecase of “mixed” or “quasi-”representationalism, qualities inverted with respect to allrepresentational contentsand all the relevant functionaletc. properties. (It is important to see that the latter inversionhypothesis is much more ambitious and should be much morecontroversial than the original Lockean idea.)

Shoemaker (1991) contends that this strong sort of inversion ispossible, i.e., that sensory qualities could invert with respect torepresentational contents. But his only argument seems to be that suchan inversion is imaginable, or conceivable in a thin sense. Since therepresentationalist’s claim is precisely that sensory qualitiesjust are representational contents of a certain kind, but not thatthis is analytically or conceptually true, Shoemaker has given her/himno reason to think that the inversion is really, metaphysically,possible. (Also, it is too easy to think of color looks inverting withrespect tomere representation; cf. the opening paragraph ofSection 2. One has to try to imagine their inverting with respect tovisual representation of the appropriate type.) Yet there arefurther inversion scenarios, supported by argument, that therepresentationalist must take seriously.

Fish-heads. Building on an example of Byrne’s (2001),Levine (2003) supposes that there are creatures whose eyes are onopposite sides of their heads and whose heads are fixed, so that theynever look at an object with both eyes. Now, imagine one such creaturewhose eyes’ lenses are color-inverted with respect to eachother. (It is not that one lens has been inverted; the creatures areborn thus mismatched.) It seems that identically colored objectssimultaneously presented will look, say, green to one eye but red tothe other. Yet the same worldly color property (i.e., a reflectanceproperty of whatever sort) is being represented by each eye. Now,every eye is normal within the population, so neither can easily bedescribed asmisrepresenting the colors of red objects. Eacheye just sees the colors differently, and so the difference is notexhausted by the common representatum.

The first point to be made on the representationalist’s behalfis that, as Levine goes on to admit (p. 71), the eyes seem to berepresenting the world differently; “space appears differentlyfilled on the two sides of the head.” Also, if the fish-headwere able to turn and look at the same object first with one eye andthen with the other and back again, the object would successivelyappear to itto be different colors. So we do not here have acase of phenomenal difference without representational difference.

But there is still a puzzle. If the two eyes are representingdifferent properties and neither is misrepresenting, and only the onesurface reflectance property is involved, what are the two distinctrepresentata? Several options are available. (i) One could try to finda basis for saying that one of the eyes is (after all)misrepresenting, though it is hard to imagine what basis that mightbe. (ii) As Levine points out, one could fall in with the view ofShoemaker (1994) mentioned in Section 2, that the eyes arerepresenting distinctdispositions even though thedispositions are realized by the same physical properties. (iii) Ifthe eyes are mutually color-inverted, then they differ functionally. Apsychosemantics such as Dretske’s (1986) that makes essentialreference to function might therefore distinguish representata here.(iv) To the extent that each creature’s two eyes differfunctionally from each other, the creature has two different andnonequivalent visual systems. Perhaps, then, we cannot say that eithereye represents its red object as red, or as green; the samereflectance property is one color for one of the visual systems and adifferent color for the other, as it might be between two differentspecies of organism, and we do not know what those colors are. Thatthe realizing reflectance property is the same in each case does notestablish sameness of representatum, because that property may be acommon disjunct of each of two distinct disjunctive properties thatare respectively colors for the two types of visual system.

Inverted Earth. Block (1990) appeals to an “InvertedEarth,” a planet exactly like Earth except that its realphysical colors are (somehow) inverted with respect to ours. TheInverted Earthlings’ speech sounds just like English, but theirintentional contents in regard to color are inverted relative to ours:When they say “red,” they mean green (if it is greenInverted objects that correspond to red Earthly objects under theinversion in question), and green thingslook green to themeven though they call those things “red.” Now, anEarthling victim is chosen by the customary mad scientists, knockedout, fitted with color inverting lenses, transported to InvertedEarth, and repainted to match that planet’s human skin and haircoloring. Block contends that after some length of time—a fewdays or a few millennia—the victim’s word meanings andpropositional-attitude contents and all other intentional contentswill shift to match the Inverted Earthlings’ contents, but,intuitively, the victim’s color qualities will remain the same.Thus, sensory qualities are not intentional contents.

A natural representationalist reply is to insist that if theintentional contents would change, so too would the qualitativecontents. Block’s nearly explicit argument for denying this isthat “qualia” (he fails to distinguish sensory qualities,sense (3), from their higher-order “what it’s like”properties, sense (4)) are narrow, while the intentional contentsshift under environmental pressure precisely because they are wide. Ifsensory qualities are indeed narrow, and all the intentional contentsare wide and would shift, then Block’s argument succeeds.(Stalnaker (1996) gives a version of Block’s argument that doesnot depend on the assumption that the qualities are narrow; Lycan(1996) rebuts it.)

Three replies are available, then: (i) To insist that the visualintentional contents would not shift. Word meanings would shift, butit does not follow that visual contents ever would. (ii) To hold thatalthough all the ordinary intentional contents would shift, there is aspecial class of narrow though still representational contentsunderlying the wide contents; sensory qualities can be identified withthe special narrow contents. (iii) To deny that qualitative content isnarrow and argue that it is wide, i.e., that two molecularlyindistinguishable people could indeed experience different qualities.This last is the position that Dretske (1996) has labelled“phenomenal externalism,” though (again) in ourterminology that would have been “qualitative”externalism.

Reply (i) has not been much pursued. (ii) has, a bit, by Tye (1994)and especially Rey (1998). Rey argues vigorously that“qualia” are narrow, and then offers a narrowrepresentational theory. (But as previously mentioned, it turns outthat Rey’s theory is not a theory of sensory qualities; seeSection 4.5.) Note that Fregean as opposed to Russellianrepresentationalism is well suited to (ii); even if the Russelliancontents shift, the Fregean contents need not. Chalmers (2004)advocates such a view. (Papineau (2014) offers a fourth alternative:to say that although sensory states do represent worldly propertiessuch as color and shape, the sensory qualities themselves are simplynot representata and do not shift when the environment is inverted;rather, they are just narrow properties of subjects. He tries toexplain away our feeling that sensory qualities are presented to themind as worldly.)

Reply (iii) has been defended by Dretske (1995, 1996), Tye (1995) andLycan (1996, 2001). A number of people (even Tye himself (1998)) havesince called the original contrary assumption that sensory qualitiesare narrow a “deep / powerful / compelling” intuition, butit proves to be highly disputable. Here are two arguments, though notvery strong arguments, for the claim that the qualities are wide.

First, if the representational theory is correct, then sensoryqualities are determined by whatever determines a psychologicalstate’s intentional content; in particular, the color propertiesrepresented are taken to be physical properties instanced in thesubject’s environment. What determines a psychologicalstate’s intentional content is given by apsychosemantics, in Fodor’s (1987) sense. But everyknown plausible psychosemantics makes intentional contents wide. Ofcourse, the representational theory is just what is in question; butif one grants that it is independently plausible or at leastdefensible, the further step to externalism is not a giant step.

Second, suppose sensory qualities are narrow. Then Block’sInverted Earth argument is plausible, and it would show that eitherthe qualities are narrow functional properties or they are propertiesof a very weird kind whose existence is suggested by nothing else weknow (see Ch. 6 of Lycan (1996)). But sensory qualities are notfunctional properties, at least not narrow ones: recall the Bertiedilemma. Also, they are ostensibly monadic properties, whilefunctional properties are all relational; and see furtherBlock’s anti-functionalist arguments in Block (1978). So, eithersensory qualities are wide or weirdness is multiplied beyondnecessity. Of course, that dichotomy will be resisted by anyone whooffers a narrow representationalist theory as in (ii) above.

The Scrambler. Biggs (2009) constructs a complicated examplein which a human-like species has evolved in such a way that thesensory qualities inhering in its members’ perceptual states areentirely disconnected both functionally and causal-historically fromtheir worldly environments. Biggs argues that those states simply lackrepresentational content, and he anticipates and rebuts the mostlikely replies.

4.6 Arguments against Wide Representationalism

Although until the mid-1990s the assumption that sensory qualities arenarrow had been tacit and undefended, opponents of widerepresentationalism have since defended the assumption with vigor.Here are (only) some of their arguments, with sample replies. (For afuller discussion, see Lycan (2001).)

Introspection. Block’s Earthling suddenly transportedto Inverted Earth or some other relevant sort of Twin Earth wouldnotice nothing introspectively, despite a change in representationalcontent; so the sensory quality must remain unchanged and so isnarrow.

Reply: The same goes for propositional attitudes, i.e., thetransported Earthling would notice nothing introspectively. Yet theattitude contents are still wide. Wideness does not entailintrospective change under transportation.

Narrow content. In the propositional-attitude literature, thecorresponding transportation argument has been taken as the basis ofan argument for “narrow content,” viz., for something thatis intentional content within the meaning of the act but is narrowrather than, as usual, wide. The self-knowledge problemaforementioned, and the problem of “wide causation” (Fodor(1987), Kim (1995)), have also been used to motivate narrow content.And, indeed, any general argument for narrow content will presumablyapply to sensory representation as well as to propositional attitudes.If there is narrow content at all, and sensory content isrepresentational, then probably sensory states have narrow contenttoo. Thus, sensory qualities can and should be taken to be the narrowcontents of such states.

Replies: First, this begs the question against the claim that thequalities are wide. Even if there are indeed narrow contents impactedwithin sensory states, independent argument is needed for theidentification of sensory qualities with those contents rather thanwith wide contents. Second and more strongly, narrow sensory contentsstill would not correspond to sensory qualities in our sense. So faras has been shown, the redness of a patch in my visual field is stilla wide property, even if some other, narrow property underlies it inthe same way that (mysterious, ineffable) narrow contents are supposedto underlie beliefs and desires.

Modelling a shift of qualities. If perceptual contents arewide and the environment is subject to change, we should expect ashift, even if the perceptual contents would not shift as readily asattitude contents would. Perhaps they would eventually shift afterseveral centuries on Inverted Earth, if a subject could stay alivethat long. But how would a distinctive quality even imaginably undergosuch a shift? For example, suppose that a quality is supposed to shiftfrom blue to yellow. A shift from blue to yellow might reasonably besupposed to be a smooth and gradual shift along the spectrum thatpasses through green. But it is hardly plausible that one wouldexperience such a shift, or a period of unmistakable greenness inparticular.

Reply: We have no plausible model for a shift of everyday attitudecontent either. How would a type of belief state smoothly go frombeing about blue to being about yellow? Presumably not by being aboutgreen in between. So our presumed quality shift is no worse off thanthe attitudinal shift in this regard; if the present argument worksfor the former case, it also works for the latter, contrary tohypothesis.

To this it may be rejoined that attitude contents are more tractable,in that they may yield to some view of aboutness according to whichreference candivide for a time between contents such as blueand yellow. (E.g., Field’s (1973) theory of “partialreference.”) It is harder to imagine “divided”phenomenology.

Modes of presentation (Rey (1998); Chalmers (2004) defends asimilar view). There is no such thing as representation without a modeof presentation. If a sensory quality is a representatum, then it isrepresented under a mode of presentation, and modes of presentationmay be narrow even when the representational content itself is wide.Indeed, many philosophers of mind take modes of presentation to beinternal causal or functional roles played by the representations inquestion. Surely they are strong candidates for qualitative content.Are they not narrow qualitative features?

Reply: Remember, the sensory qualities themselves are properties likesubjective greenness and redness, which according to therepresentational theory are representata. The modes or guisesunder which greenness and redness are represented in visionare something else again.

But it can plausibly be argued that such modes and guises arequalitative or phenomenal properties of some sort, perhapshigher-order properties. See the next section.

Memory (Block (1996)). “[Y]ou remember the color of thesky on your birthday last year, the year before that, ten years beforethat, and so on, and your long-term memory gives you good reason tothink that the phenomenal character of the experience has notchanged…. Of course, memorycan go wrong, but whyshould we suppose that itmust go wrong here?”(pp. 43–44, italics and boldface original). The idea is thatmemory acts as a check on the sensory qualities, and can be used tosupport the claim that the qualities have remained unchanged despitethe wholesale shift in representational contents.

Reply: Memory contents are wide, and so by Block’s own reasoningthey will themselves undergo the representational shift to theInverted-Earth complementary color. Thus, your post-shift memories ofgood old Earth are false. When you say or think to yourself,“Yes, the sky looks as blue as it did thirty years ago,”you are not expressing the same memory content as you would have whenyou had just arrived on Inverted Earth. You are now remembering orseeming to remember that the sky looked yellow, since for you“blue” now means yellow. And that memory is false, sinceon the long-ago occasion the sky looked blue to you, not yellow;memory is not after all a reliable check on the sensory qualities.(Lycan (1996) takes this line; Tye (1998) expands it in moredetail.)

Structural mismatch. Following Hardin (1988) and others,Pautz (2014, 2019) argues that the structural properties of a sensoryfield, paradigmatically resemblance relations, match the neuralsubstrates of the relevant experiences rather than the chemical orphysical properties of the representata. For example, the sensoryquality blue resembles purple more strongly than it resembles green,but the reflectances underlying worldly objects are the other wayaround: the blue reflectance type resembles the green reflectance typemore than it does the purple. Even more dramatic mismatches obtain inthe case of smell. Therefore, it seems that a sensory quality is anarrow property rather than the wide worldly one predicted by standardexternalist psychosemantics.

Reply: First, that a sense modality represents two worldly propertiesas being similar to degreen does not entail that they arethus similar; there may be illusion regarding resemblance. Second,there will be room for debate regarding exactly what chemical orphysical properties do constitute the representata, and regarding whatpsychosemantics connects those properties to the sensoryexperience.

Hardly anyone will accept all of the foregoing replies. But no oneshould now find it uncontestable either that sensory qualities arenarrow or that they are wide. The matter is likely to remaincontroversial for some time to come.

5. What It’s Like

Some philosophers (e.g., Dretske (1995), Tye (1995)) use thistroublesome expression simply to mean a sensory quality, and this isone of the two meanings it has had in recent philosophy of mind. Butin the fourth paragraph of this entry, the phrase was introduced inthe context, “‘what it’s like’ for the subjectto be in a particular mental state, especially what it is like forthat subject to experience a particular qualitative property,”which indicates that there is another sense (4) in which (when themental state does involve a sensory quality) the “whatit’s like” is something over and above the quality itself.In fact, since this second “what it’s like” isitself a property of the quality, it cannot very well be identicalwith the quality. It is the property of what it is liketoexperience that quality; alternately, the relevant introspectibleproperty of the experience itself. Let us now just speak of“what it’s like” (WIL) properties, meaning just thishigher-order phenomenal sort.

5.1 Higher-order “What It’s Like,” Distinct from Sensory Qualities

Block (1995), like many other writers, fails to distinguish WILproperties from sensory qualities. But Carruthers (2000) elaboratesnicely on the distinction: A quality in the first-order sense presentsitself as part of the world, not as part of one’s mind. It is,e.g., the apparent color of an apparently physical object (or, if youare a Russellian, the color of a sense-datum that you happen to haveencountered as an object of consciousness). A sensory quality is whatthe world is or seems like. But what it is like to experiencethat color is what your first-order perceptual state is like,intrinsically mental and experienced as such.

Here are two further reasons for maintaining such a distinct sense ofthe phrase. First, a sensory quality can be described in one’spublic natural language, while what it is like to experience thequality seems to be ineffable. Suppose Ludwig asks Bertie, “How,exactly, does the after-image look to you as regards color?”Bertie replies, “I told you, it looks green.”“Yes,” says Ludwig, “but can you tell me whatit’s like to experience that ‘green’ look?”“Well, the image looks the same color as that,” saysBertie, pointing to George Edward’s cloth coat. “No, Imean, can you tell me what it’s like intrinsically, notcomparatively?” “Um,….” —In one way,Bertie can describe the phenomenal color, paradigmatically as“green.” But when asked what it is like to experience thatgreen, he goes mute. So there is a difference between (a) “whatit’s like” in the bare sense of the quality, thephenomenal color that can be described using ordinary color words, and(b) “what it’s like” to experience that phenomenalcolor, the WIL property, which cannot easily be described in publicnatural language at all.

Second, Armstrong (1968), Nelkin (1989), Rosenthal (1991), and Lycan(1996) have argued that sensory qualities can fail to be conscious inthe earlier sense of awareness; a quality can occur without its beingeven slightly noticed by its subject. But in such a case, there is agood sense in which it would not be like anything for the subject toexperience that quality. (Of course, in the first, Dretske-Tye sensethere would be something it was like, since the quality itself isthat. But in another sense, if the subject isentirelyunaware of the quality, it is odd even to speak of the subject as“experiencing” it, much less of there being something itis like for the subject to experience it.) So even in the case inwhich one is aware of one’s quality, the second type of“what it’s like,” the WIL property, requiresawareness and so is something distinct from the quality itself.

5.2 Arguments against Materialism Based on “What It’s Like”

It is the second sense of “what it’s like” thatfigures in anti-materialist arguments from subjects’“knowing what it’s like,” primarily Nagel’s(1974) “Bat” argument and Jackson’s (1982)“Knowledge” argument, Chalmers’ (1996, 2003)Conceivability argument, and Levine’s (1983, 2001) ExplanatoryGap arguments. To begin with the first of those: Jackson’scharacter Mary, a brilliant color scientist trapped in an entirelyblack-and-white laboratory, nonetheless becomes omniscient as regardsthe physics and chemistry of color, the neurophysiology of colorvision, and every other public, objective fact conceivably relevant tohuman color experience. Yet when she is finally released from hercaptivity and ventures into the outside world, she sees colors for thefirst time, and learns something: namely, she learns what it is liketo see red and the other colors. Thus she seems to have learned a newfact, one that by hypothesis is not a public, objective fact. It is anintrinsically perspectival fact. This is what threatens materialism,since according to that doctrine, every fact about every human mind isultimately a public, objective fact.

Upon her release, Mary has done two things: She has at last hosted ared sensory quality, and she has learned what it is like to experiencea red quality. In experiencing it she has experienced a “whatit’s like” in the first of our two senses. But the factshe has learned has the ineffability characteristic of our secondsense of “what it’s like”; were Mary to try to passon her new knowledge of a WIL property to a still color-deprivedcolleague, she would not be able to express it in English.

We have already surveyed the representational theory of sensoryqualities. But there are also representational theories of “whatit’s like” in the second sense (4). A common reply to thearguments of Nagel and Jackson (Horgan (1984), Van Gulick (1985),Churchland (1985), Tye (1986), Lycan (1987, 1990, 1996, 2003), Loar(1990), Rey (1991), Leeds (1993)) is to note that a knowledgedifference does not entail a difference in fact known, for one canknow a fact under one representation or mode of presentation but failto know one and the same fact under a different mode of presentation.Someone might know that water is splashing but not know thatH₂O molecules are moving, and vice versa; someone mightknow that person X is underpaid without knowing that she herself isunderpaid, even if she herself is in fact person X. Thus, fromMary’s before-and-after knowledge difference, Jackson is notentitled to infer the existence of a new, weird fact, but at most thatof a new way of representing. Mary has not learned a new fact, but hasonly acquired a new, introspective or first-person way of representingone that she already knew in its neurophysiological guise.

(As noted above, the posited introspective modes of presentation forsensory qualities in the first-order sense are strong candidates forthe title of “qualia” in a distinct, higher-order sense ofthe term, and they may well be narrow rather than wide. This is whatRey (1998) seems to be talking about.)

This attractive response to Nagel and Jackson—call it the“perspectivalist” response—requires that thefirst-order qualitative state itself be represented (else how could itbe newly known under Mary’s new mode of presentation?). And thathypothesis in turn encourages a representational theory ofhigher-order conscious awareness and introspection. However,representational theories of awareness face powerful objections, theperspectivalist must either buy into such a theory despite itsliabilities, or find some other way of explicating the idea of anintrospective or first-person perspective without appealing tohigher-order representation. The latter option does not seempromising. And a further question raised by the perspectivalistresponse concerns the nature of the alleged first-personrepresentation itself.

It has become popular, especially among materialists, to speak of“phenomenal concepts,”and to suppose that Mary hasacquired one which she can now apply to her first-order qualitativestate; it is in that way that she is able to represent the old fact ina new way. Phenomenal concepts figure also in responses to theConceivability and Explanatory Gap arguments.

The Conceivability argument (Chalmers 1996, 2003) has it that“zombies” are conceivable—physical duplicates ofordinary human beings, that share all the human physical andfunctional states but lack phenomenal consciousness in sense (4);there is nothing it is like to be a zombie. The argument then movesfrom bare conceivability to genuine metaphysical possibility, whichwould refute materialism. According to the Explanatory Gap argument(Levine 1983, 2001), no amount of physical, functional or otherobjective information could explain why a given sensory state feels toits subject in the way it does, and the best explanation of this inturn is that the feel is an extra fact that does not supervene on thephysical.

Lormand (2004) offers a very detailed linguistic analysis of theformula “There is something it is like for [creature]cto have [mental state] M,” and on its basis defends the claimthat instances of that formula as well as more specific attributionsof WIL properties can in fact be conceptually deduced at least from“nonphenomenal” facts about subjects.

What the Knowledge, Conceivability and Explanatory Gap arguments havein common is that they move from an alleged epistemic gap to awould-be materialism-refuting metaphysical one. Though somematerialists balk at once and refuse to admit the epistemic gap, moregrant the epistemic gap and resist the move to the metaphysical one.The epistemic gap, on this view, is created by the “conceptualisolation” of phenomenal concepts from all others, and it isconceptual only rather than metaphysical. Stoljar (2005) calls thisthe “phenomenal concept strategy”. There are a number ofdistinct positive accounts of phenomenal concepts and how they work;such concepts are: “recognitional” (Loar (1990),Carruthers (2000), Tye (2003c)); proprietary lexemes of an internalmonitoring system (Lycan (1996)); indexical (Perry (2001), O’Dea(2002), Schellenberg (2013)); demonstrative (Levin (2007), Stalnaker(2008), Schroer (2010)); “quotational” or“constitutive” (Papineau (2002), Balog (2012));“unimodal” (Dove and Elpidorou (2016)). Some of thoseaccounts are minimal, aspiring only to block the key inferences in theanti-materialist arguments aforementioned. Others, particularly theconstitutive account, are more detailed and offer to explain morespecific features of WIL properties. For example, Papineau points outthat the constitutive account explains the odd persistentattractiveness of some of the obviously fallacious antimaterialistarguments. He and Balog each argue that the account, according towhich a phenomenal concept token is at least partly constituted by thevery mental state-token that is its referent, explains the specialdirectness of the reference: no feature of the state is appealed to(anda fortiori no neural, functional, causal etc. feature);Balog adds that since the referent is literally contained and presentin the concept token, “there will always be something it islike” to do the tokening (p. 7).

The phenomenal concept strategy is criticized by Raffman (1995),Stoljar (2005), Prinz (2007), Chalmers (2007), Ball (2009), Tye(2009), Demircioglu (2013), and Shea (2014). For further works andreferences see Alter and Walter (2007), Sundström (2011) andElpidorou (2015). Chalmers offers a “Master Argument”meant to refute any version of the strategy: it is a dilemma based onwhether it is conceivable that the complete fundamental physical truthholds yet we possess no phenomenal concepts (having whicheverfeatures). The argument is criticized by Papineau (2007), Carruthersand Veillet (2007), and Balog (2012).

5.3 “Illusionism”

It is possible simply to deny the existence of WIL properties, as doDennett (1991) and Dretske (1995); see also Humphrey (1992, 2011),Hall (2007), Pereboom (2011) and Tartaglia (2013). To do that is ofcourse not to defend a representational theory or any other theory ofthem. But it would be good to explain away the majority belief in suchproperties, and some theorists do that in representational terms,arguing that other, real properties are misrepresented inintrospection as WIL properties; Frankish (2016) calls this strategy“illusionism.” An obvious instance of such amisrepresentation would be to mistake a sensory quality for a WILproperty; since the conflation of the two is already rife even amongsophisticated philosophers, WIL deniers may suggest that what wasintrospected was only a sensory quality. (That is one way ofunderstanding Dretske’s position, bar his resistance to the verynotion of introspection as in Dretske (2003).) And as before, thephrase “what it’s like” has nontendentiously beenused as referring to a sensory quality rather than to a property of awhole experience. Several authors point out that to reject WILproperties is not to grant Chalmers’ (1996) claim that for azombie lacking WIL properties, “all is dark inside” (pp.95–6).

Rey (1992) suggests that introspection mistakes the lack of detail itdelivers for the accurate representation of a simple ineffableproperty. Alternately or in addition (1995), having detected stableand identifiable complexes of involuntary responses to states ofourselves and to living creatures who look and behave like us, forexample the commonsense causal, representational, conative andaffective syndrome we lump together using the word ‘pain’,we project a simple quality onto the others and into ourselves. Reyand Pereboom each compare the projection of WIL properties into themind by introspection to vision’s projection of simplehomogeneous color properties onto environmental objects.

Illusionism is criticized by Strawson (2006), Prinz (2016), Balog(2016), Nida-Rümelin (2016), Schwitzgebel (2016), and Chalmers(2018). Though highly sympathetic to illusionism, Kammerer (2018)argues that no previously existing account can explain the strength ofthe illusion. For general discussion, see the essays collected inFrankish (2017), and for further defense, see Shabasson (2022).

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