 Ayers (2011: 151–57) observes that Locke has more than one account of what ideas are. According to a Cartesian view, ideas are intentional mental acts by which their objects are presented and represented to the mind (e.g., Essay 1.1.8; 4.1.2)). On this view, it is not difficult to understand what it is for an idea to resemble, or not to resemble, its object: it presents the object as having a feature that resembles (does not resemble) a feature the object has. But Essay 2.8 introduces a different notion of ideas: simple ideas of sensation are effects of the operations of bodies on our sensory organs. They are non-intentional sensations akin to raw pains. They acquire a representative function in virtue of their contingent causal connections to the constitutions of bodies around us. In Ayer’s view, this makes the claim that ideas of PQs resemble qualities existing in bodies “problematic, if not absurd” (Ayers 2011: 154). Here it seems “resembles” must mean “shares a property with”, not “depicts a thing as having a property it has”. Problems with the former include that essentially mind-dependent ideas cannot be like anything that can exist without a mind, as Berkeley says. Also, how can we know what the qualities of bodies are like in themselves given that we know the qualities only by means of the ideas they cause in us? Also, it is difficult to understand how an idea can share with a body the quality being 10 feet long, or moving away from the perceiver at 20 miles per hour, or being solid, and so on. Most scholars are resigned to saying or tacitly allowing that if simple ideas are taken to be non-intentional qualia, the positive resemblance thesis is deeply problematic.