In his insightful commentary on my contribution to Open MIND, Tobias Schlicht argues for the following claims: (1) The subject of conscious episodes should be identified with the organism whose episodes they are (Schlicht this collection, pp. 2, 8-9). (2) Once we understand how non-conscious mental states (perceptions, thoughts, etc.) become conscious by being integrated into the underlying organismal creature-consciousness, we will have understood all that is important about how a conscious state is endowed with subjective character (Schlicht this collection, pp. 5-6). And, (3), such an account would obviate an account like mine, since there would be no need to imagine that individual episodes of consciousness have a sort of self-contained subjective character (which I construe in terms of “reflexivity” or self-acquaintance)—instead, their subjective character would just derive from their integration into the underlying creature-consciousness, which ipso facto makes the organism to be the subject-pole of the episode (Schlicht this collection, pp. 5-8).
Part of claim (3), as stated, (the part that begins with “since”) is my interpretation of Schlicht, since he does not spell out the claim in great detail, given limitations of space. So my arguments directed at that interpretation may not target exactly what Schlicht had in mind. But claims (1) and (2) are stated very clearly (Schlicht this collection, pp. 5-6, 8-9). In this reply, I will take issue with these three claims and discuss some of Schlicht’s other claims in relation to them.