Abstract

A conscious occurrent propositional attitude contributes to the content of consciousness by occupying attention, rather than by being its object. Externally individuated concepts contribute to the nature of this conscious occupation of attention. Those same externally individuated concepts are redeployed when the occurrence of these conscious states gives a subject a reason for self‐ascribing a propositional attitude. This account, involving both conscious states and conceptual redeployment, steers a middle course between accounts of self‐ascription that involve introspection and those accounts under which a subject does not have reasons when she makes such a self‐ascription.