State Consciousness Revisited

Abstract

My goal in this paper is to defend the so-called “higher-order thought” theory of conscious mental states, which has been presented in various places by Rosenthal (1986, 1990, 1993, 1994), from a pair of objections recently advanced by Dretske (1993; 1995). According to the version of the “higherorder thought” (henceforth HOT) theory of conscious states which I have in mind, none of my mental states will be a conscious state unless I am conscious of it. The intuition behind this view— which I find appealing — is that a mental state of which a person is completely unaware counts as a non-conscious (or unconscious) mental state. I think that some of the intuitions underlying Dretske’s views can be reconciled with an amended version of the HOT theory. In particular, I will recommend the incorporation into the HOT theory of the concept of a state of consciousness intermediary between the concept of creature consciousness and the concept of state consciousness (or the notion of a conscious state).² Before, however, I defend the amended version of the HOT theory of conscious states against Dretske’ s attack, I want to say a word of the representationalist approach to consciousness according to which some of the mysteries of consciousness might be unraveled by a prior account of intentionality.

I am grateful to David Rosenthal for many informative discussions about the topic of this paper in Montreal, to Claude Panaccio for his illuminating comment on the paper as it was delivered at the Conference and to Ned Block for detailed and clarifying comments on this paper.