ABSTRACT
We have seen that there is currently a desire amongst philosophers to deal with consciousness through some kind of appeal to the notion of representation or intentionality (an appeal that can ultimately be traced all the way back to Descartes). The HOT theory wants to claim that consciousness is somehow constituted out of belief states (of the appropriate sort); Dennett wishes to replace qualitative consciousness with judgements about an ultimately fictitious phenomenality. Even the vectorspace identity theory wants to link consciousness to the neural properties of the brain systems that represent the world and the self (it is, after all, a theory of
vector coding). As we have seen, all these approaches face severe difficulties getting to grips with consciousness and, in particular, have a hard time dealing with the generation problem. Yet another approach is possible; one that makes a more direct appeal to the notion of representation. Crudely speaking, one might attempt to identify consciousness not with the neural substrate of representation but with representation itself. On this view, conscious states are not conscious because of some mysterious intrinsic causal power of the brain or via a special relation to other representational states; they are conscious because they are themselves representational states. Qualitative consciousness is quite real on this view and does not stand in need of any judgements about it in order to exist, or to appear to exist.
