In theorizing about perception, philosophers have often multiplied qualities. To perceptible qualities of external objects, like colors and shapes (‘sensible’ qualities), have been added qualities of experiences (‘sensory’ qualities) or of sense-data (‘sensational’ qualities). Start with sensory qualities. The phrase ‘sensory quality’ is not much in use these days, having lost out to ‘phenomena...

The framework of first-, second-, and third-order embodiment (1-3E; Metzinger, 2014) was developed for exploring how phenomenal properties are physically and computationally grounded. Metzinger’s goal for 1-3E is to show how the experience of being a self (i.e., phenomenal selfhood) is generated within an embodied system and thus to embed his self-model theory (Metzinger, 2004) in the context o...

According to intentionalism the phenomenal character (“what it’s like”) of a conscious experience is determined wholly by its representational content. In its strongest forms intentionalism offers the tantalizing prospect of a reduction of phenomenal character to representational content. Arguments based on Twin Earth-like scenarios have shown, however, that if phenomenal character supervenes o...

It is one thing to have phenomenal states and another thing to think about phenomenal states. Thinking about phenomenal states gives us knowledge that we have them and knowledge of what they are like. But how do we think about phenomenal states? These days, the most popular answer is that we use phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts are presumed to be concepts that represent phenomenal state...

It has often been thought that our knowledge of ourselves is different from, perhaps in some sense better than, our knowledge of things other than ourselves. Indeed, there is a thriving research area in epistemology dedicated to seeking an account of self-knowledge that would articulate and explain its difference from, and superiority over, other knowledge. Such an account would thus illuminate...