Reply to Leeds

Abstract

My current view about perceptual experience has the following in common with the view in PC. It holds that we perceive colors by perceiving other what I call properties, that are not colors, and that it is possible for the phenomenal properties that are associated with particular colors in the experience of one person to be different from those associated with those same colors in the experience of another person, without either person misperceiving. The perception of tastes, smells, and other qualities is likewise held to involve the perception of phenomenal properties in a similar way. So the view is designed to allow the possibility of spectrum inversion, and other sorts of qualia inversion. But it is also intended to be a version of the view that the phenomenal character of experiences is an aspect of their representational content; the phenomenal character of an experience is a matter of what phenomenal properties it represents. Indeed, I claim that it is the view one must hold if one wants to combine a representationalist view of phenomenal character with the view that the experiences different subjects have when viewing the same colors (or other secondary qualities) in the same objective circumstances can differ in phenomenal character without any of the subjects misperceiving. A representationalist will hold that the phenomenal character of experiences is fixed by how things appear to the subject; and if the phenomenal character can vary independently of how things appear with respect to their objective properties (where colors count as objective), then on a representationalist view this can only be because the experience represents proper-