 So, then, what was the account of consciousness Leibniz had to offer? Some have picked up on what Leibniz says in the quotation above (“…apperception, which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of this internal state”) and argue that consciousness, for Leibniz, is a matter of reflection. And, as we have seen, this is a popular option during the seventeenth century, but it is also an option for which it is not always clear what the underlying structure would be. Does reflection require a distinct second-order perception that takes the first-order perception as its object? Or is it rather like Arnauld’s suggestion of a virtual reflection (in contrast to an explicit reflection)? Many scholars believe that Leibniz is arguing for higher-order theory of consciousness, where consciousness is constituted by a first-order perception and a distinct higher-order perception. (For this sort of an interpretation of Leibniz’s theory of consciousness, see Kulstad 1990, Gennaro 1999, and Simmons 2001.)