Stoljar, Daniel2019-10-14Stoljar, D. Philos Stud (2019) 176: 2067. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1111-x0031-8116http://hdl.handle.net/1885/175911Gareth Evans famously observed that he can answer the question ‘Do you think there is going to be a third world war?’ by attending to “precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question ‘Will there be a third world war?’” (The varieties of reference, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 225, 1982). I argue that this observation follows from two independently plausible ideas in philosophy of mind. The first is about rationality and consciousness: it is that to be rational is in part to be required to believe that you are in a conscious state if you are in one, at least if various background conditions are met. The second is about consciousness and attention: it is that consciousness in a belief state consists in its subject engaging, to a sufficient extent, in a certain sort of world-directed attention. I also argue that this suggestion is superior to others that have been made in the literature regarding Evan’s observation.application/pdfen-AU© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media B. V.ConsciousnessRationalityIntrospectionSelf-knowledgeTransparencyAttentionAccessEvans2018-05-1110.1007/s11098-018-1111-x2022-08-28