Abstract
What is the relevance of consciousness for criminal responsibility? 'Conscious', like many terms, is said in many ways. Given this, the question of how consciousness matters for criminal responsibility cannot be properly posed, let alone answered, unless we distinguish different things 'conscious' might mean. This paper attempts to make progress on this question by focusing on a more specific one. When a criminal offence requires that a defendant knows, believes , or is aware of something, should we require these mental states to be con-scious? And if we should, in what sense of 'conscious'? With regards to some senses of 'conscious', the answer is clearly 'no'. But I argue there is one sense in which we should require knowledge, belief, and awareness to be conscious in criminal law. In this sense, a mental state is conscious just in case a subject has immediate and authoritative self-knowledge of it.