ABSTRACT
Locke's theory of knowledge ascribes a central role to consciousness, but his causal theory of signification or representation tends, as we have seen, to evacuate experience and thought of the intrinsic intentional content traditionally ascribed to it. Very many modern philosophers would be inclined to deplore the former tendency and approve the latter, whereas I have done the reverse. Even those philosophers who have found it too difficult to pretend that they are not conscious have often taken their stand on the awfulness of pain, the subjective quality of colour and the like, rather than on the intrinsic intentionality of experience. The chief, and for some the only, argument for accepting the phenomenon of consciousness has been its obvious existence, rather than its indispensability for explaining the possibility of knowledge.
