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This chapter provides a bird's‐eye view of the book's central thesis and the case for it. It distinguishes different aspects of consciousness, and focuses on subjective character as the central aspects. Then the master argument for a self‐representational account of subjective character is sketched.

This chapter develops and defends an account of subjective character, according to which a mental state has its subjective character in virtue of representing itself in the appropriate way. First Kriegel argues that a mental state has subjective character because its subject is aware of it, then that the subject is aware of it in virtue of representing it, and finally that the subject represents its conscious state in virtue of being in that very conscious state, which is thus self‐representing.

This chapter explores the phenomenological merits and demerits of the self‐representational account of consciousness. It argues that the phenomenology of an ordinary conscious experience involves centrally a phenomenal component Kriegel calls “peripheral inner awareness,” and that, if this is so, self‐representationalism follows. In addition, Kriegel argues that self‐representationalism is consistent with the transparency of experience.

This chapter develops an account of the ontological structure of an ordinary conscious experience. After ruling out a straightforward representational account and a functionalist account, this chapter considers a number of options for understanding the structure of consciousness in mereological terms, finally settling on one specific option.

There are two major scientific questions surrounding consciousness: the neural correlate of consciousness and the function of consciousness. This chapter derives specific hypotheses about the neural correlate and function of consciousness from the self‐representational theory of consciousness.

This chapter argues that the self‐representational theory accounts for the sense that there is an explanatory gap between physical facts and the facts of consciousness. Kriegel suggests that that sense is due to the fact that, unlike all other properties, consciousness appears to resist functionalization, even though it does not actually resist functionalization. The appearance of resisting functionalization, in turn, is ultimately due to the self‐representational nature of conscious experiences.

This is the first and introductory chapter to the volume entitled Disturbed Consciousness: New Essays on Psychopathology and Theories of Consciousness. Rocco J. Gennaro presents an overview of philosophical psychopathology, specific disorders of consciousness, and philosophical theories of consciousness. Some background on key terminology and a summary of the essays to follow is also included. Some of the theories of consciousness described are the higher-order thought theory, self-representationalism, and the global workspace theory. A fairly lengthy list of disorders, along with their definitions, is also provided.

Alexandre Billon and Uriah Kriegel, the chapter authors, hold that our conscious states often have a distinctive subjective character, or “mine-ness,” in virtue of which they appear to us to be ours. According to what they call “subjectivity theories,” the connection between phenomenal consciousness and subjective character is necessary: all phenomenally conscious states must exhibit this mine-ness. Such theories include higher-order and self-representational theories. Billon and Kriegel consider a prima facie threat to subjectivity theories from cases of patients suffering from thought insertion, delusions of alien control, somatoparaphrenia, and depersonalization who would seem to have conscious thoughts, intentions, or bodily sensations that lack subjective character. They argue that at least some subjectivity theories can accommodate these pathologies.

Timothy Lane offers a wide ranging commentary where he responds to Billon and Kriegel, Mylopoulos, and Gennaro. He also clarifies and further develops some of his influential previous work in this area. Subjectivity theories of consciousness take self-reference as essential to having conscious experience but they differ with respect to how many levels they posit and to whether self-reference is conscious or not. But all treat self-referencing as a process that transpires at the personal, rather than at the subpersonal, level. Working with conceptual resources afforded by subjectivity theories, several attempts have been made to explain seemingly anomalous cases, especially instances of alien experience. These experiences are distinctive precisely because self-referencing is explicitly denied by the only person able to report them: those who experience them deny that certain actions, mental states, or body parts belong to self. The relevant actions, mental states, or body parts are sometimes attributed to someone or something other than self, and sometimes they are just described as not belonging to self. The cases under discussion here include somatoparaphrenia, schizophrenia, depersonalization, anarchic hand syndrome, and utilization behavior. The theories discussed include Higher-Order Thought and Self-Representational. He argues that each of these attempts at explaining or explaining away the anomalies fails.

Developing a philosophical account of experiential intentionality requires answering the following question: For any mental state x and property F, what would make it the case that F figures in the experiential-intentional content of x? This chapters discuss tracking accounts of experiential intentionality (Section 2.1), goes on to argue against such accounts (Section 2.2), and then formulates and defends a higher-order tracking theory (Section 2.3), before closing with some objections and replies (Section 2.4). According to the higher-order tracking theory, a property F figures in the experiential-intentional content of a state x just in case x is suitably higher-order tracked to track F. What this exactly means becomes clearer in the course of the chapter. The overall thesis of this chapter is that although the standard tracking theory is rather implausible, the higher-order tracking theory is quite plausible.

This chapter contrasts self-representationalist and non-self-representationalist (or “no-self”) approaches to self-consciousness. It discusses arguments in favour of the view that the self is represented in the nonconceptual content of perception and bodily experience, in particular those presented by Bermúdez. It argues that these are misguided and that, while perception and bodily experience contain implicitly self-related information, the self is not part of the explicit representational content of experience. Finally, the chapter briefly considers the relevance of recent neuroscientific studies dealing with self-consciousness.

This chapter discusses in more detail the non-self-representationalist approach, according to which the self is part of the mode rather than the content of perception and bodily experience, and argues for its superiority. It shows how this approach can account for the phenomenon of immunity to error through misidentification and help us to elucidate the notion of prereflective self-consciousness, or the sense of “mineness”. The chapter also discusses how the view defended here relates to similar views put forward by Recanati, Peacocke and O'Brien.