# Rosenthal on Mental Qualities **Opening (not a real abstract):** Rosenthal couples his higher-order thought theory of consciousness with a theory of “mental qualities”, properties of mental states. The first thesis of this paper is that there are no mental qualities as Rosenthal conceives of them. The second thesis is that Rosenthal’s residual insights are significant. They naturally lead to a simple first-order theory of consciousness. 1: What are mental qualities? ‘Mental quality’ is Rosenthal’s term. Here is what he means by it: … a visual experience of the redness of a tomato is not red in the way the tomato is. But that does not preclude its having some mental quality, distinct from the red of the tomato but characteristic of the visual sensations we have when we see red objects in standard conditions of illumination. Mental qualities are unlike the perceptible qualities of **Authors:** [[Alex Byrne]]