Perceptual consciousness and intensional transitive verbs

There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness-for instance, hallucinations-there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency-which we call the presentation problem-by (a) arguing that 'conscious of' and related expressions function as intensional transitive verbs and (b) defending a particular semantic approach to such verbs, on which they have readings that lack direct objects or themes. The paper further argues that this approach serves not only as a linguistic proposal about the semantics of 'conscious of', but also as a proposal about the metaphysics of conscious states.