Some Thoughts on Rosenthal’s Theory of Consciousness

In “A Theory of Consciousness,” Rosenthal argues that some mental states can be non-conscious and that this poses a problem for most theories of consciousness which say that all mental states are conscious. Rosenthal begins by drawing a distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states. Rosenthal ultimately thinks that “intentional and sensory properties” are a better marker for mental states “than consciousness” (734). He uses the fact that we sometimes have desires before we are aware of those desires as his first indication that there is a distinction between these two kinds of states. Other examples Rosenthal provides include cases of emotion: “we will occasionally recognize  that we ourselves  are  sad or angry only  after somebody else points it out to us” (731). He also says that “subliminal  perception and peripheral vision  remind  us  that perceptual sensations can occur without our being aware of them” (731). Once he has argued that there is a distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states, he notes how this poses a problem for most theories of consciousness since they operate within a Cartesian framework where “all  mental  states  are conscious states” (731), a framework which he thinks renders consciousness inexplicable. So, he moves on to explicate his theory of consciousness. He thinks that “we must see consciousness as a property of only some  mental states, and as a relational  property of whatever states have it” (737). With this in place, he proposes his higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, which says that “a  mental state” is “conscious if it is accompanied by a thought about that” state (741). Rosenthal says that “the occurrence of such a  higher-order thought (HOT) makes us conscious of the mental state;  so the state we are conscious of is a conscious state” (741). This framework enables us to retain the distinction between conscious and non-conscious mental states as there could be mental states which bear the mark of intentionality, but of which we do not have thoughts and so those states would not be conscious. This theory also maintains that mental states are relational in nature since it is the relation a mental state bears to a thought about it which makes it conscious.


The HOT theory is an interesting proposal, and I think that it succeeds in maintaining the framework of consciousness that Rosenthal wants to hold to, but I am not fully convinced about his statement that some mental states are not conscious. Particularly, I think his statement that “intentional and sensory properties” are the mark of mental states conceptually includes consciousness (734). Indeed, if a certain state is intentional, it has certain directedness or aboutness, then it is hard to see how it is not a conscious state since intentional states are always directed towards something and this directedness seems to require conscious control. As for Rosenthal’s attempt to elucidate the distinction, it seems that one could plausibly deny that they are mental states until the subject is consciously aware of them. For example, if we only realize we are angry when someone tells us we are, we could simply say that we were physically exhibiting the emotion of anger, but we do not have the mental state of anger until we are consciously angry.

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