ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author wants to qualify thick experiences by introducing the notion of meta-evaluative phenomenal properties. These are properties that help determine the phenomenal character of an experience. The reason people want to experience tragedy is because they take pleasure in the experience, or more exactly, they take pleasure in the reactions they have to such fictions. The pleasure is in the meta-response, the response we have to our direct responses to the fiction. One reason to discuss the role of meta-evaluative properties in consciousness is simply to chart one interesting feature of our experiences in virtue of which they bear non-derivative value. One might insist nonetheless that an experience bears value only in virtue of its evaluative and meta-evaluative properties. Meta-evaluative properties depend essentially on the more determinate properties of the experience, as well as an experience's place in an implicitly understood map of surrounding experiences.
