A challenge is developed for Higher-Order Thought theories of consciousness: they fail to explain the presentational character of visual experience—the sense that objects are directly given to us. A novel alternative, the Map Theory of consciousness, is proposed, which holds that the higher-order representations responsible for conscious experience have a cartographic, map-like format, thereby accounting for presentational character.
The traditional view holds that qualities must inhere in substances to exist. Berkeley argues that sensible qualities are ideas that depend on minds for their existence, not by inhering in them but by being perceived. This alternative framework, once properly understood, provides a solution to a central problem in the philosophy of perception: how ordinary perception can acquaint us with a mind-independent world despite the mind's power to create phenomenally rich experiences.