Intentionality and consciousness are the fundamental kinds of mental phenomena. Although they are widely regarded as being entirely distinct some philosophers conjecture that they are intimately related. Prominently it has been claimed that consciousness can be best understood in terms of representational facts or properties. Representationalist theories vary in strength. At their core they seek to establish that subjective, phenomenal consciousness (of the kind that involves the having of first-personal points of view or perspectives on the world – perspectives that incorporate experiences with specific phenomenal characters) is either exhausted by, or supervenes on, capacities for mental representation. These proposals face several serious objections.

Key words: enactivism, externalism, intentionality, internalism, methodological solipsism, misrepresentation, mode of presentation, narrow content, phenomenal character, psychosemantics, qualia, representational content, subjectivity, supervenience, teleofunctions

It is only in the mid-1980s that the contemporary cognitive movement born out of the Cognitive Revolution rehabilitated consciousness as a major theme of investigation. Given the subjective character of conscious properties, this important evolution revived a time honored question of philosophy: is a scientific theory of subjective properties possible, and if so how? The article reviews the main elements of the current debate elicited by this twofold issue, focusing on the proposal that a science of subjective properties requires a new methodology granting a crucial role to the self-description by the investigated subjects of the content of their conscious experience.