ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that if reductive materialism is true, this gives us reason to doubt that consciousness is unique in having these special epistemic properties. Reductive materialism is the view that consciousness is identical to a high-level functional or physical property of the brain or some larger system. The chapter also argues that however we develop the view, it is either incompatible with reductive materialism or otherwise problematic. It focuses on doxastic significance, arguing that if materialism is true, consciousness is not unique in its ability to have this kind of significance: there is a family of states that an unconscious being could enjoy, which have the same doxastic significance as if they were conscious. Thus, consciousness and its determinates have "real definitions" in terms of more basic physical and functional properties, implying that facts about consciousness hold wholly in virtue of facts about the physical and functional properties of conscious systems.
