Consciousness as Representing One’s Mind

The science of consciousness is now at the point where we need to evaluate the theories of consciousness currently on offer. Higher-order theories of consciousness, having originated in philosophy rather than science, are at this point not well understood. Even worse, it is often not clear what would or would not count as an empirical test of these kinds of theories. Richard Brown here carefully presents and defends a novel higher-order theory of consciousness, and compares it to the existing theories with an emphasis on empirical falsification. Brown affectionately calls his novel theory the HOROR-Higher-Order Representation of a Representation-theory. After presenting and defending the HOROR theory, he turns to situating this theory in the contemporary landscape of higher-order theories. Throughout, he emphasizes the extent to which empirical results would constitute a challenge to higher-order theories. Along the way, he develops a new taxonomy for higher-order theories, and uses it to classify the existing varieties of higher-order theories.