A New Theory of the Representational Base of Consciousness

Though we take mainly a philosophical approach, we hope that the results of our work will be useful to researchers on consciousness who take other approaches. Everyone agrees, no matter what their point of view on consciousness, that consciousness has a representational base. However, there have been relatively few well-worked-out attempts to say what this base might be like. The two best developed are perhaps the higher-order thought (HOT) and the transparency approaches. Both are lacking. Starting from the notion of a self-presenting representation, we develop an alternative view. In our view, a representation, a completely normal representation, is the representational base for not just for consciousness of its object (if it has one), but also itself and oneself as its subject. The unified picture of consciousness that results should assist research on consciousness.