Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

I argue that phenomenal character is the product of a mental activity. The mental activity in question is the activity of employing perceptual capacities, such as discriminatory, selective capacities. This is a radical view, but I hope to make it plausible. In arguing for this mental activist view, I reject orthodox views on which phenomenal character is analyzed in terms of peculiar entities or relations to peculiar entities—be they phenomenal properties, external mind-independent properties, propositions, sense-data, qualia, or intentional objects.