Art and Experience, Utrecht, © 1996. All rights reserved

Response-dependence is the characteristic of certain properties of being unspecifyable without reference to some phenomenal response. Primary qualities supposedly can be specified without such reference, whereas secondary qualities cannot--due the unimodality of our access to them. I have argued contrary to this view that the phenomenality of both kinds of property is response-dependent, whereas the establishment of either kind's actuality is not. The existence of primary as much as secondary qualities can be proven polymodally. (II:3). Only tertiary qualities are truly response-dependent in this (double) sense: they can neither be characterized nor proven to exist beyond unimodal acquaintance. They are not polymodally accessible, because for their awareness empathetic imagination (either perceptual or pre-perceptual) is singularly responsible. Because empathetic imagination introduces personal elements from memory and anticipation the recognition of tertiary qualities is 'first person' only. Cf. indexicals;Wiggins, McDowell, Pettit.