David Rosenthal is professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with courtesy appointments in linguistics and cognitive neuroscience. He is also the coordinator of the Graduate Center’s Interdisciplinary Concentration in Cognitive Science. He has published widely on consciousness, the mental qualities of perceiving and sensation, the representational character of thought, the nature of emotions, the self, and related topics, including his 2005 book, Consciousness and Mind. His work on consciousness advances the theory that a psychological state is conscious if it is accompanied by a thought to the effect that one is in that state. He has also published on the nature of the emotions, the mind-body problem, and the relation of thought and speech. And he has occasionally strayed into other areas, such as early modern and ancient philosophy, and methodology in studying the history of philosophy.
He is past president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, and has been a Visiting Professor at Nihon University, Tokyo, and Washington University in St. Louis, and a Research Fellow at the Universities of Bielefeld, Bremen, and Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton and an A.B. from the University of Chicago.