'Consciousness,' Consciousness, and Self-Conciousness

My dissertation advances three primary theses. The first two concern the Transitivity Principle, the claim that conscious mental states are mental states we are aware of in some way. The Transitivity Principle is the core of ‘Higher-Order’ approaches to consciousness. My first thesis is that the dispute between ‘Higher-Order’ theorists and ‘First-Order’ theorists (those who reject the Transitivity Principle) is verbal. My second thesis is that, contra the suggestion of some Higher-Order theorists, the Transitivity Principle cannot be precisified such that it is consistent with the popular claim that experience is transparent. My third thesis concerns the relationship between consciousness and self-consciousness. A central challenge to those who would argue that all consciousness involves self-consciousness is Hume’s well-known claim that the self is in some sense phenomenologically elusive. I articulate and defend a novel theory—neutral between First-Order and Higher-Order approaches—according to which all consciousness involves self-consciousness, but one that nonetheless accepts, rather than rejects, Hume’s claim.