Moral realists maintain that morality has a distinctive subject matter. Specifically, realists maintain that moral discourse is representational, that moral sentences express moral propositions — propositions that attribute moral properties to things. Noncognitivists, in contrast, maintain that the realist imagery associated with morality is a fiction, a reification of our noncognitive attitudes. The thought that there is a distinctively moral subject matter is regarded as something to be debunked by philosophical reflection on the way moral discourse mediates and makes public our noncognitive attitudes. The realist fiction might be understood as a philosophical misconception of a discourse that is not fundamentally representational but whose intent is rather practical. There is, however, another way to understand the realist fiction. Perhaps the subject matter of morality is a fiction that stands in no need of debunking, but is rather the means by which our attitudes are conveyed. Perhaps moral sentences express moral propositions, just as the realist maintains, but in accepting a moral sentence competent speakers do not believe the moral proposition expressed but rather adopt the relevant non-cognitive attitudes. Noncognitivism, in its primary sense, is a claim about moral acceptance: the acceptance of a moral sentence is not moral belief but is some other attitude. Standardly, non-cognitivism has been linked to non-factualism — the claim that the content of a moral sentence does not consist in its expressing a moral proposition. Indeed, the terms ‘noncognitivism’ and ‘nonfactualism’ have been used interchangeably. But this misses an important possibility, since moral content may be representational but the acceptance of moral sentences might not be belief in the moral proposition expressed. This possibility constitutes a novel form of noncognitivism: moral fictionalism. Whereas nonfactualists seek to debunk the realist fiction of a moral subject matter, the moral fictionalist claims that that fiction stands in no need of debunking but is the means by which the noncognitive attitudes involved in moral acceptance are conveyed by moral utterance. Moral fictionalism is noncognitivism without a non-representational semantics.

Colors are sensible qualities. They are qualities that objects are perceived to have. Thus, when Norm, a normal perceiver, perceives a blue bead, the bead is perceived to have a certain quality, perceived blueness. 'Quality', here, is no mere synonym for property; rather, a quality is a kind of property-a qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, property. (The quantitative is a way of contrasting with the qualitative-perhaps not the only way.)Not only does perception present objects as colored, but perception also presents what these colors are like. When Norm perceives a blue bead, not only does he perceive the bead to be blue, but he perceives what blue is like. The qualitative nature of the colors is manifest to us in our perception of them. Objects are perceived to instantiate color properties, and these color properties are perceived to instantiate higher-order properties that constitute their qualitative character. So, not only does color perception present the existence and distribution of the colors, but it also presents their nature.The qualitative nature of the colors is both important and a problem.

As standardly conceived, an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.

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