 However, it is suitable here to focus on theories that do hold that what makes a state conscious is being an object of the right sort of representation, since these lie close to the concerns that have most dominated philosophy of mind over the last fifty years or so. And, in any case, they raise issues about the relationship of consciousness and self-consciousness whose interest goes beyond their immediate connection with these theories. It will first be useful to note some of the different forms these theories may take. They differ, for instance, on the question of whether the conscious-making representation and its target are distinct states, or collapse into one. The latter option identifies consciousness with a certain sort of mental self-representation (Kriegel 2009), while the “higher-order theory” label is sometimes reserved for accounts of the former type. Another important fork in the road for such accounts: whether they propose that the targeting representation aims at its target in a “thought-like” manner, or in a “perception-like” manner. To take the first option is to endorse (like Rosenthal 1986, 1991, 1993, 2002b, and Weisberg 2011) a “higher-order thought” theory of consciousness; to take the second, a “higher-order perception” (or an “inner sense”) theory (as is found in Armstrong 1968, Carruthers 2004, and Lycan 1995, 2004). Kriegel, for his part, entertains the idea that the right sort of targeting representation is properly regarded as neither thought-like or sensory, but sui generis. Here it becomes clear how some distinction between what properly belongs to thought, and what to the senses (in the last section seen to figure centrally in disputes about cognitive richness), also figures crucially in articulating and assessing different metacognitive theories of consciousness.