XIV—Existence ‘in’ the Mind

Abstract We often speak of an entity existing only in the mind, but what exactly do we mean when we speak this way? In this paper, I look at different accounts of what it is for something to exist in the mind. I argue that none of these accounts do justice to a specific set of cases involving sensory phenomena like after-images, phosphenes and hallucinations. When a subject experiences a green after-image, we may say that the greenness that the subject sees exists only in her mind, but if I am right, we have no good account of what this amounts to. I then offer a diagnosis for why standard accounts fail in the case of sensory experience, and outline a more promising approach.