 A couple of salient methodological challenges stand in the way of explaining specific consciousness. The first is that much of the detailed work will for the foreseeable future be done on non-human animals where introspective report is not easily available and where the intentional action inference will be essential. To strengthen that inference, we will need more detailed models that make plausible that conscious experience figures in the generation of the observed behavior. There is an experiment-theory circle that we must break into: we need a theory that supports the role of consciousness in behavior but the theory itself will be supported by behavioral data. How will we break into this cycle? The intentional action inference will be an important means of tracking consciousness, and the limits of its applicability must be investigated. The second challenge is that there is a need to individuate different kinds of explanatory correlates of consciousness, for some will be causes (upstream of conscious states), some will be enabling conditions, and some will be constituents of the state itself. Dividing these cases involves not just gathering data, but having a clear conceptual framework to draw distinctions in a principled way. Clearly joint philosophical and experimental work is needed.