From HOTs to Self-Representing States

According to David Rosenthal, a mental state is conscious just in case its subject suitably represents herself as being in that state, where this entails that the mental state " is accompanied by a noninferential, nondispositional, assertoric thought to the effect that one is in that very state " (2002a, p. 410; see also Rosenthal, 1997, p. 742). This assertoric thought, since it is about another mental state, is a higher-order thought (HOT). Let us use 'HOTm' for a HOT that is about mental state m (where m is, say, visually representing something as being blue). The claim is that m's being conscious consists in its being suitably represented by HOTm. Rosenthal requires that HOTm be a different state from m, so that m does not represent itself. This is because, he says, " Absent some reason to the contrary, distinct mental functions call for distinct states " 1997, p. 738). So the represented mental state, m, the one of which the subject is conscious, is not the representing state by means of which she is thus conscious. When a state is conscious, then, there are really two states: the consciousness-conferring state, HOTm, and the state on which consciousness is conferred, m. I will argue that there is a good " reason to the contrary " for saying that both the first-order and the higher-order contents are carried by the same state, a self-representing state. 1 This reason arises from the possibility that HOTm misrepresents m (a source of