In “The Parting of the Ways: Political Agency between Rational Subjectivity and Phenomenal Selfhood,” Peter Wolfendale attempts to show “how Metzinger’s theory of phenomenal consciousness can be integrated into a broadly Sellarsian theory of rational consciousness” (1). Since he seems to have garnered the interest of more than a few souls who also follow Three Pound Brain, I thought a critical walkabout might prove to be a worthwhile exercise. Although I find Wolfendale’s approach far—far—more promising than that of, say, Adrian Johnston or Slavoj Zizek, it still commits basic errors that the nascent Continental Philosophy of Mind, fleeing the institutional credibility crisis afflicting Continental Philosophy more generally, can ill-afford. Ingroup credibility is simply too cheap to make any real difference in what has arguably become the single greatest research project in the history of the human race: the quest to understand ourselves.

Wolfendale begins with an elegant summary of Thomas…