Many forms of materialism can be regarded as accepting a substantial portion of what qualitative event realists say about phenomenal consciousness. In rejecting QER, they attempt to give an alternative account of something that is recognized on both sides. One version of materialism, however, rejects QER in a much more radical way: it regards the qualitative events of QER as illusions. What is to be accounted for is not those events, for there are none, but only the language of seeming (looking, appearing, etc.), and the tendency of philosophers to postulate seemings (appearances, phenomenal occurrences, qualia, etc.) as presuppositions of such language. This skeptical version of materialism is closely related to the view I called “Minimalism” in Chapter 1, and its answer to the question of how color comes into experience can be given as follows.

1. (S) When Eve sees a red apple in daylight, the apple's P-red surface reflects light with some set of wavelength intensities. This light impinges on Eve's retina, where it causes changes that initiate a number of processes in the brain. Some of these brain processes may lead to behavior appropriate to red things, including reports that something red is seen. Under other conditions, some of these processes may interact with other processes and result only in “proto-judgments”, which may (or may not) lead to statements to the effect that something seems to be red but isn't. Under still other conditions, some of these processes may be substantially inhibited by other processes and thus not lead to much of anything.

2. […]