Abstract

Sydney Shoemaker has reconciled a broadly functionalist and materialist conception of the mind with what he calls “the common-sense view” of the inverted spectrum. This paper explores Shoemaker’s articulation and defence of the common sense view, and the conception of the content of qualitative experience the lies behind it. It examines the Frege-Schlick view, and a counterargument that Shoemaker uses to raise a prima facie problem for the view he is defending. It is argued that when Shoemaker’s account of qualia is developed in response to the paradox, it loses its intuitive appeal and its claim on the label “common-sense view”.