This concluding chapter is concerned with phenomenal consciousness, perceptual consciousness of, and the future of philosophical and scientific work on consciousness. The story of phenomenal consciousness that I have told is spread over several chapters. I will begin by drawing the various components of that story together. Once they are assembled, I will go on, in Section 9.2, to discuss their implications for metaphysical questions about the simplicity and unity of the universe. I will then turn to consider perceptual consciousness. I argued at some length in Chapter 5 that experiential awareness of A-properties constitutes the ground floor of conscious perceptual awareness, and that this ground floor enables perceptual awareness of properties of other kinds. But nothing has been said thus far about perceptual consciousness of objects. Any work aiming at broad coverage of consciousness must address this topic, for consciousness of is one of the six fundamental forms of consciousness. I will say something about it in Section 9.3. Finally, I will call attention to some important questions about consciousness that the present work does not address. They are quite difficult. I wish I knew how to answer them, but I fear that it will be some time until they are resolved.

PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The foregoing theory of phenomenal consciousness has three main components.

First, there is a preliminary analysis of phenomenal consciousness in Chapter 1.