Higher-Order Thought Rendered Defenseless

I found this book to be a big disappointment. It attempts to elaborate and defend David Rosenthal's (1986, 1990, 1993) "higher-order thought" theory of consciousness, the idea that to be in a conscious mental state is to be thinking (correctly) that one is in a mental state. To have a conscious sensation of red is to be perceiving red and simultaneously to be perceiving the perception as a perception, of a color classed as similar to other colors, such as the color of apples. The theory is attractive because it tidily reduces consciousness to something else, namely nonconscious mental events. It is less popular than it could be for two big reasons: 1) it seems to rule out the seemingly obvious idea that one could be consciously aware of something without thinking about one's awareness; 2) it depends on having a theory of nonconscious mental states, which we don't really have.