 What arguments support the phenomenological claims, however? Phenomenologists don’t simply appeal to a correct phenomenological description but provide additional, more theoretical, arguments. One line of reasoning found in virtually all of the phenomenologists is the view that the attempt to let (intransitive) consciousness be a result of a higher-order monitoring will generate an infinite regress. On the face of it, this is a rather old idea. Typically, the regress argument has been understood in the following manner. If all occurrent mental states are conscious in the sense of being taken as objects by occurrent second-order mental states, then these second-order mental states must themselves be taken as objects by occurrent third-order mental states, and so forth ad infinitum. The standard response to this objection is that the regress can easily be avoided by accepting the existence of non-conscious mental states. This is precisely the position adopted by the defenders of higher-order theory. For them a second-order perception or thought does not have to be conscious. It would be conscious only if accompanied by a (non-conscious) third-order thought or perception (Rosenthal 1997, 745). The phenomenological reply to this solution is rather straightforward, however. The phenomenologists would concede that it is possible to halt the regress by postulating the existence of non-conscious mental states, but they would maintain that such an appeal to the non-conscious leaves us with a case of explanatory vacuity. That is, they would find it quite unclear why the relation between two otherwise non-conscious processes should make one of them conscious. Or to put it differently, they would be quite unconvinced by the claim that a state without subjective or phenomenal qualities can be transformed into one with such qualities, i.e., into an experience with first-personal character, by the mere addition of a non-conscious meta-state having the first-state as its intentional object.