I ntrospecting in the th century of what is presented in phenomenal consciousness and what kinds of objects we are immediately phenomenally conscious of, which are the bearers of such qualities In particular, opponents of sense-datum theorists maintained that experiential character is as of ordinary objects and properties, rather than as of special sensory objects and their relatively sparse properties (e.g (Barnes 1944–1945; Reichenbach 1938, 163–169) These disputes put participating philosophers under pressure concerning their shared assumption about the appropriateness of the introspective method Many felt the need to balance the claim that the kind of supporting evidence delivered by introspection is tremendously forceful with acknowledgement that there is a genuine debate about the phenomenal character of experience What had to be reconciled was that certain aspects of experience are ‘quite plain’, ‘indubitable’, ‘obvious’ on the basis of introspection and yet that opponents could be so thoroughly introspectively misled The pressure typically was relieved in one of two ways Just as Moore did, some philosophers attempted to diagnose a problem on the part of the opponent which would explain their failure to introspect adequately, consistent with maintaining that conscious experience was properly introspectively available all along This style of explanation was preferred by opponents of sense-datum theory who held that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is as of ordinary objects and properties (as opposed to being as of sense-data with a sparser collection of sensory qualities) When Roderick Firth in 1949 reviews the debate between sense-datum theory and what he calls ‘percept theory’, he notes that sense-datum theorists seem entirely unresponsive to compelling phenomenological criticism from their opponents But, he adds, [i]f this indifference [to such criticism] is not to be attributed to ignorance or perversity, it is likely to suggest that there are certain fallacies or prejudices which prevent many people . . from examining perceptual consciousness with complete objectivity (Firth 1949, 452) For instance, philosophers might be prevented from introspecting properly if they are in the grip of a particular conception of perceptual experience which weakens their introspective capacity to judge the character of experience.4 The second style of explanation involved allowing that there are different ways to access experience via the first person This tack, which tended to be used by defenders of sense-datum theory, consisted in shifting the goal-posts from thinking of the debate as manifesting straightforwardly conflicting deliverances of introspection to manifesting different ways to introspect Lewis, Broad and Price, for instance, each concede that there is a sense in which the character of perceptual experience can be described in terms of presenting ordinary objects and properties Indeed, they all agree that it is how the character of experience would strike the naïve observer: on casual inspection, we encounter ‘the thick experience of 153