Philosophers who insist that something both essential and ineffable is missing from the predominant philosophical accounts of the mind—those that take as their starting place a rejection of Cartesian dualism and attempt to find a place for the mental in the physical world—have their work cut out.

On the one hand, they must convince us that something that should be accommodated has indeed been omitted; on the other hand, and by their own insistence, just what has been left out cannot be articulated, even, evidently, by means of first-person narrative. So they are faced with the conundrum of convincing us of the existence of something—and the need to accommodate it within a workable theory of mind—that is by its very nature inaccessible and indescribable.

The strategy, thus, is to gesture at what is missing with efforts that always—and as we shall see, necessarily—fall short of a successful depiction, as the target remains just beyond reach. Conscious experience is characteristically introduced by asking us to concentrate on particularly striking smells, tastes, or visions and to remind ourselves of their differences. The scent of an orange is distinct from that of a strawberry, just as being immersed in purple is unlike how it feels to be swathed in pink.

Natural language fails us here, we are told, since “the language we have for describing experiences is largely derivative on the language we have for describing the external world.” We are thus obliged to allude to the characteristic bearers of scent (such as oranges or strawberries) or employ normal color words (such as purple and pink) as an approximation. Nonetheless, each of us is (almost certainly) aware from his or her own case of the striking experiences brought about by—or what it is like for us when—smelling an orange or being engrossed in purple. If we cannot understand what we are supposed to apprehend, we are compared, dismissively, to those who have to ask what jazz is or encouraged to pinch ourselves or risk being pinched by another.

Perhaps a reminder is in order, then, that questions such as “What was it like (for you)?” call for rather special circumstances and constitute, in the main, an invitation for personal reflection and expression.