An epistemological theory of consciousness?

This article takes up the issue of the plausibility of epistemological theories of consciousness: accounts of the so-called " hard problem " of phenomenal consciousness (Chalmers 1996) that are rooted in physicalistic explanations of what we know and how we know it. Such accounts elaborate how physical systems come to (perceptually) know their physical environments and show how perceivers may come to find themselves positing and puzzling over the phenomenal aspects of experience: the qualia that have given physicalists so many headaches over the years. The main point of an epistemological theory of consciousness is to solve (or dissolve) apparent metaphysical issues concerning qualia in favor of epistemological explanations of why minds in the business of knowing about the physical world would ever come to think that there were qualia in the first place. In its most extreme form, for instance, as articulated by Daniel Dennett (1991), the point of an epistemological theory of consciousness is to show that once it is explained why we think that there are qualia, there is no further metaphysical work to be done in explaining qualia themselves. In other words, once the structure of our justified (and not so justified) beliefs concerning qualia is laid bare, no further work-only damage and confusion-is done by the supposition that these beliefs are true. A (perhaps derisive) description of such a project is as forgoing any explanation of qualia in favor of explaining them away. In less extreme forms of epistemological theories, as in the case of recent work by Andy Clark (2000a, 2000b), it is not denied that there are metaphysical facts about qualia. Instead, the point of less extreme epistemological theories is that certain facts about our epistemologies entail certain metaphysical facts about qualia. Even Chalmers himself flirts with such an epistemological account (1996: 287-92) but as Clark notes, Chalmers