 Another objection to actualist HOT theory is epistemological, and is due to Goldman (2000). It turns crucially on the fact that the consciousness-making higher-order thoughts postulated by the theory are, themselves, characteristically unconscious. The objection goes like this. When I undergo a conscious mental state M, I generally know, or have good reason to believe, that M is conscious. But how can this be, if what makes M conscious is the existence of an unconscious HOT targeted on M? Since I don’t know that this thought exists, it seems that I shouldn’t be able to know that M is conscious, either. As Goldman himself acknowledges, however, this argument can only really work on the assumption that actualist HOT theory is supposed to be some sort of analytic or logical truth. Rosenthal has always made clear, however, that the theory isn’t intended to be a piece of conceptual analysis, but is rather an account of the properties that constitute the property of being conscious (see Rosenthal 1986, as well as his 2005). And the epistemological argument gets no traction against this sort of view.