Presents arguments against both first order (FOR) theories and actualist higher-order thought (HOT) theory (of the sort espoused by Rosenthal), and argues for the superiority of higher-order perception (HOP) theories over each of them. But HOP theories come in two very different varieties. One is the ‘inner sense’ theory of Armstrong and Lycan, according to which we have a set of inner sense-organs charged with scanning the outputs of our first-order senses to produce higher-order perceptions of our own experiential states. The other is the author’s own dispositional form of HOT theory, according to which the availability of our first-order perceptions to a faculty of higher-order thought confers on those perceptual states a dual higher-order content. Argues that this latter form of HOP theory is superior to the inner-sense theory, and also defends it against the charge that it is vulnerable to the very same arguments that sink FOR theories and actualist HOT theory.
Keywords: actualist higher-order thought, Armstrong, dispositionalist higher-order thought, first-order representationalism, higher-order perception, inner sense, Lycan, Rosenthal