 Yet another ‘local’ objection is targeted against higher-order thought theories in particular (whether actualist or dispositionalist). It presents such theories with a dilemma: either they are attempts to explicate the concept of consciousness, in which case they are circular; or they are attempts to provide a reductive explanation of the property of being conscious, in which case they generate a vicious regress (Rowlands 2001). The first horn can be swiftly dismissed. For as Rosenthal (2005) and many others have made clear, higher-order theories aren’t in the business of conceptual analysis. Rather, their goal is to provide a reductive explanation of what it is for a state to be phenomenally conscious. Our discussion will therefore focus upon the second horn.