Phenomenal Intentionality and Secondary Qualities

Abstract

This chapter sets forth and defends a position concerning the content of visual color-experiences, the content of color-attributing judgments, and the metaphysics of color. Color experiences have systematically non-veridical content: they present external objects as instantiating properties that those objects never instantiate. Color-attributing judgments, however, are often veridical: they attribute to external objects not the properties that are presented in visual color experiences, but rather certain Lockean dispositions to produce such colof-experiences—and these dispositional properties are often instantiated by the objects to which they are attributed. On the basis of this account, the chapter proposes a general distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities. Presentational primary qualities are often instantiated and are identical to the corresponding judgmental primary qualities. Presentational secondary qualities, however, are never instantiated; nonetheless, judgmental secondary properties often are instantiated, and they are Lockean dispositions to produce experiences as-of the instantiation of those presentational secondary properties.