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It might be thought that my account is in danger of, problematically, makes appearances into properties rather than things. However, I don’t think that the fact that we can characterize things as they appear to us only in terms of mind-dependent properties makes these things properties. We characterize objects by characterizing their properties; Locke, for example, characterizes objects as having primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities (which he holds to have different metaphysical statuses, as secondary qualities are mind-dependent). This does not mean that Locke turns objects into properties, and we could express Lockean realism by describing the mind-independent nature of primary qualities, in his account. In giving an account of the metaphysical status of the properties of spatio-temporal objects, Kant gives an account of the metaphysical status of such objects.
They could not, of course, be aware of them as representations, since this is a higher order thought which requires concepts. An animal could not, in my view, be aware of an object as an object, since this requires the concept ‘object’, much less have the kind of thought involved in thinking of its experiences as representations. This does not, however, undermine the idea that it has representations, and that it can aware of them.
They are not, in my view, merely psychologically necessary.
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Allais, L. Replies. Philos Stud 174, 1699–1712 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0823-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0823-z