Explaining Consciousness

scious, though if ordinary dreams are ever conscious states they are counterexamples to this generalization.3 Whatever the case about that, the property of creature consciousness is relatively unproblematic. We can see this by considering creatures mentally less well-endowed than we are whose mental states are never conscious, even·when they are awake.4 Their mental states are all like the nonconscious mental states we are in when we are awake. Doubtless some creatures are actually like this, say, frogs or turtles. And it's plain that when none of a creature's mental states is conscious, there is nothing puzzling about what it is for the creature to be conscious. Some theorists might deny that such a case is possible, urging that no creature counts as conscions unless some of the mental states it is in are conscious states. But this seems little more than an unwarranted extrapolation of the nortnal human waking state to the case of all creatures. Even if their view were correct, moreover, it would be state consciousness that introduces the apparent mystery. What is puzzling about consciousness must therefore be a matter not of creature consciousness, but of the consciousness of a creature's mental states. Because creature consciousness involves being responsive to sensory stimuli, if sensory states were all conscious, every conscious creature would perforce be in some conscious states. But it would still, then, be the consciousness of the states, not of the creature, which seems to induce some mystery. For this reason, I shall focus here on state consciousness. After laying some groundwork in section I, I go on in section IT to develop a hypothesis about what it is for a mental state to be conscious. On this hypothesis, a mental state is conscious if it is accompanied by a specific type Explaining Consciousness