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MURAT AYDEDE, and GUVEN GUZELDERE (2000) "Consciousness, Intentionality, and Intelligence: Some Foundational Issues for Artificial Intelligence." Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Volume 12, Issue 3 July 2000 , pages 263 - 277 
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Jerry Fodor, one of the most influential figures in present-day philosophy of mind, once identified the following three questions as the major open problems in the field:

   - How could anything material have conscious states? 
   - How could anything material have semantical properties?
   - How could anything material be rational? 
        (where this means something like: how could the state transitions of a physical system 
         preserve semantical properties?).

(Fodor 1991: 285, Reply to Devitt)


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Our goal in this paper is not to show how CRTM succeeds or fails in answering
Fodor's three questions. Rather, we would like to highlight the fact that there is in
fact a discrepancy between the first question, on the one hand, and the second and
third questions on the other, and then to point out that this discrepancy appears for
both good and bad reasons. The good reasons have to do with a crucial difference
between purely intentional cognitive states, such as beliefs and desires, and
phenomenally conscious states, such as sensations. The bad reasons have to do with
an implicit assumption that theorizing about intentional cognitive states can never
illuminate questions about phenomenally conscious states.




If we are right about how to pursue this research, the ultimate solution will be an interdisciplinary one, involving not only the relevant branches of neuroscience and psychology but also AI in a crucial way.


There is a sense that explaining what makes
a thought conscious is easier than explaining what makes an experience conscious.
Indeed, the sense of philosophical mystery always accompanies the latter and almost
never the former.