# Agency and observation in knowledge of one's own thinking Casey Doyle **Abstract:** This essay addresses the question how we know our conscious thinking. Conscious thinking typically takes the form of a series of discrete episodes that constitute a complex cognitive activity. We must distinguish the discrete episodes of thinking in which a particular content is represented in phenomenal consciousness and is present “before the mind's eye” from the extended activities of which these episodes form a part. The extended activities are themselves contentful and we have first‐person access to them. But because their content is not represented in phenomenal consciousness, this access cannot be broadly observational. Instead, I argue, it is agential. Furthermore, that extended activities are intentional explains the possibility of a nonobservational form of introspective access to the discrete episodes in consciousness. When we form an image of something we are not observing. The coming and going of the pictures is not something that happens to us. We are not surprised by these pictures, saying “Look!” (Contrast with e.g. after‐images) Wittgenstein, 1967: §632 … when you think a particular thought, there is of course no intention in advance to think that particular thought. (Peacocke, 1999, p. 209) **Authors:** [[Casey Doyle]]