Referring to it as consciousness and thereby emphasising its inherently self-reflective character - to experience x is to experience the experiencing of x - is to take up an inherently doubtful position, since if this self-reflectiveness has a functional dimension then it for all practical purposes consciousness, the thing with qualia, be dispensed with, while consciousness without any distinctive functionality comes to no more than an epiphenomenon,or a type of illusion without a subject. As an alternative it could be referred to using terms that already contain functionality concealed within them, terms that carefully eschew the grammar of consciousness, such as 'the on-going', or Dasein, or even '(immanent) intentionality'. The peculiar thing is that this latter class of terms also subtly dissolves the distinction between self and world, or between self and non-self, and hence begs the question of a certain impersonality, and even of a nascent ethics. The loss of the intense particularity of the self, of Sartre's facticity, in this way of treating the question seems to be greater than the apparent gains, which all go towards the equivocal realm of ontological depth-signalling.