Once again the words "non-sequitur" flag this reviewers inability to think outside his own paradigm.

The reviewer claims that "Indirect realism is an epistemology ... Adopting it (or not) is tangential to the issue of whether consciousness is observable."

Quite to the contrary. If one accepts direct perception, then one falls into the same difficulty that Searle mentions, which (in the words of this reviewer) is "that experiences are in a sense "transparent" - that when we look at this paper we observe this paper not our experience of this paper."

If one accepts indirect perception on the other hand, conscious experience no longer exhibits this "transparency". Instead, the objects of perception are now a direct manifestation of actual neurophysiological processes in the physical brain, and they are in no sense "transparent", because we can no longer see "through" our sense data to observe the actual objects out in the world where they lie. Instead,we are forever denied any direct access to the objects themselves, and can only see their internal perceptual effigies. Whether or not this reviewer chooses to accept the principle of indirect realism as his personal philosophy, if he understands that position, he must also understand that it profoundly changes the ontology of the "sense data" of perception, from a magical direct view of external object, to an indirect view mediated by internal representational processes.

The reviewer questions further whether by "observation of consciousness" I mean "observable to an external observer (in the manner of brain states)," or "observable to the subject who has those conscious experiences."

It is perfectly clear from the context that what we are talking about is Searle's contention (Searle 1992, p. 96) that consciousness is impossible to observe. Searle was obviously talking about introspective observation of consciousness, not neurophysiological examination of brain states, where no "transparency" is involved whatever one's paradigmatic inclinations.