ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some present and past debunking theories, in order to arrive at conditions of adequacy for an optimistic account of how consciousness appears in first-person access. Recent views surveyed include the phenomenal concepts strategy, the epistemic approach, and Michael Graziano’s “attentional schema” theory. These approaches all fall short in explaining the apparent indescribable richness of conscious experience. Next, the chapter considers theoretical suggestions by David Armstrong, Daniel Dennett, and Frank Jackson on how to capture this richness. The chapter concludes that a satisfying easy explanation of phenomenal appearances must account not only for what’s left out about the nature of consciousness in first-person access but for the positive, manifest richness we experience as well.
