REPRESENTATIONALIST THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS It is obvious that some mental states have representational content. Take the case of beliefs, for example. Beliefs are either true or false. They are true if the world is as their subjects believe it to be and false otherwise. Each belief, thus, has accuracy conditions— it is accurate in certain circumstances and inaccurate in others—and any state with accuracy conditions has representational content. It is also obvious that some mental states are conscious. Recent representationalist theories of consciousness hold that there is a deep and important connection between the sort of consciousness that has most puzzled philosophers—phenomenal consciousness, as it is often called—and representational content. This essay surveys representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness as well as the major arguments for them. It also takes up two major objections. The essay is divided into five sections. Section I offers some introductory remarks on phenomenal consciousness. Section II presents the classic view of phenomenal consciousness to which representationalists are opposed. Section III canvasses various versions of representationalism about consciousness. Section IV lays out the main arguments for the representationalist stance. The final section addresses the two objections. I: Phenomenal Consciousness Of our conscious mental states, some are inherently conscious. That is to say, some of our mental states cannot fail to be conscious. For each such mental state, there is a subjective perspective that goes along with it. This perspective is conferred upon the subject simply by his or her undergoing the mental state. It is captured in everyday language by talk of ‘what it is like’. There is something it is like subjectively to feel pain, to smell vomit, to taste chocolate, to feel elated. Furthermore, what it is like to undergo one inherently conscious mental state can be compared with what it is like to undergo another. For example, what it is like to experience bright red is subjectively more similar to what it is like to experience bright orange than to what it is like to experience dark green. Mental states that are inherently conscious are said to be ‘phenomenally conscious’ by philosophers. But just which mental states are these? One not very informative answer is that they are experiences. More helpfully, we can classify the relevant states into at least the following categories: (1) Perceptual experiences, for example, experiences of the sort involved in seeing green, hearing loud trumpets, tasting liquorice, smelling the sea air, running one's fingers over sandpaper. (2) Bodily sensations, for example, feeling a twinge of pain, feeling an itch, feeling hungry, having a stomach ache, feeling hot, feeling dizzy. Think here also of experiences such as those present during orgasm or while running flat-out. (3) Felt reactions or passions or emotions, for example, feeling delight, lust, fear, love, feeling grief, jealousy, regret. (4) Felt moods, for example, feeling happy, depressed, calm, bored, tense, miserable.