Transparency of experience

The transparency of experience, also called the transparency thesis, is the idea in the philosophy of mind that perception is phenomenally transparent. This means that perception presents properties of objects—like the redness of a tomato—but never the properties of experience itself. In this way, it is said that "we see right through" experience, making it difficult or even impossible for introspection to reveal its intrinsic properties.

This idea has been interpreted in many ways. Most commonly, it is used to argue for the idea that mental experiences are fundamentally representational, a view called intentionalism or representationalism.[a] This argument is sometimes extended to claim that there are no purely qualitative aspects of experience, or qualia, because all experiences have some representational content. The transparency thesis has also been used to argue for direct realism, disjunctivism, and various other views in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of perception.

The transparency of experience arguably first arose in modern philosophy from figures such as Thomas Reid, but it became more prominent in twentieth century philosophy due to famous passages in the works of G. E. Moore and Gilbert Harman.

Background

Traditionally, philosophers have identified two separate aspects of experience: a representational aspect and a sensational aspect. The representational aspect, which is called intentionality, is an experience's ability to represent or to be directed towards things. The sensational aspect, also called the phenomenal character of the experience, is the way that the experience subjectively feels.[2] The phenomenal character of experiences is also sometimes referred to as qualia. In a more narrow sense, qualia are specifically the non-intentional aspects of phenomenal experience, which are generally thought to be the intrinsic properties of experience.[3]

In the philosophy of mind, some theories attempt to explain what the mind is and what all mental states have in common. One of these theories is intentionalism. This is the view that all mental states are intentional; that is, they all have some representational content.[4] Depending on the definition of qualia, different versions of intentionalism either deny they exist (strong intentionalism) or claim that they exist in addition to an experience's representational content (weak intentionalism).[5] Intentionalism can be contrasted with qualia theories that focus on the importance of non-intentional qualia to explain conscious experience.[6]

Transparency

The transparency of experience claims that the phenomenal character of experience is transparent to its representational content. That is, during introspection one can only perceive the properties of represented objects, not the phenomenal qualities of experience itself.[7] Philosophers refer to this phenomenon as transparency because it suggests "we see right through" experience directly to external objects.[8] Philosophers sometimes use specific examples to explain this idea. For example, Jaegwon Kim states:[9]

Suppose you are looking at a ripe tomato, in good light. You have a visual experience with certain qualitative characters, or qualia—say, redness and roundness. Focus your attention on these qualia and try to determine the exact hue of the color, the precise shape you see, and so on—that is, try to closely inspect the qualities characterizing your experience. When you do this, some philosophers say, you will find yourself focusing on and examining the qualities of the tomato out there in front of you. Your visual experience of the tomato is "diaphanous," or "transparent," in that when you try to introspectively examine it, you seem to look right through it to the properties of the object seen, namely, the tomato.

Philosophers also compare experience to a painting. When looking at a painting, one can focus on what it represents.[10] The Mona Lisa, for instance, portrays a woman with a subtle smile.[11] It is also possible to focus on the paint itself, by looking at the shape of the brushstrokes or the specific hues used to portray light and shadow. According to the transparency of experience, it is possible to focus on what experiences represent, but one cannot focus on any "mental paint".[10]

Philosophers have held the transparency of experience in varying levels of strength; philosophers distinguishes between two views called the weak transparency thesis and the strong transparency thesis. According to the weak transparency thesis, it is difficult to introspect directly to the features of experience, but possible with close attention. The strong transparency thesis, by contrast, claims that it is impossible to directly perceive the features of experience, no matter how hard one tries.[12]

The transparency of experience is distinct from various other ideas also labelled transparency within the philosophy of mind and related areas. One view famously associated with René Descartes, called epistemic transparency or "the transparency of mind to itself", claims that a person cannot be wrong about whether they are in a particular mental state.[13] Another separate concept is referential transparency, the extent to which co-referring terms (like Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens, which both refer to the same person) can be substituted in sentences without altering their truth value.[14] The idea of transparency is also applied to beliefs and self-knowledge. For example, Gareth Evans claims that considering the question about oneself "Do I believe climate change is real?" is the same as considering the question about the world "Is climate change real?", making self-knowledge transparent to the world.[15]

History

The transparency of experience can be traced back to the early modern period in the writings of the common sense philosopher Thomas Reid. Reid claimed that "our attention is commonly employed about that which is the object of our thought, and rarely about the thought itself" and said sensations like the feeling of hardness are "never attended to, but [pass] through the mind instantaneously".[16]

The idea became more prominent at the start of the 20th century due to a passage in G. E. Moore's 1903 paper "The Refutation of Idealism". Arguing against idealism, Moore claimed that "[w]hen we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous." He used the apparent transparency of experience to explain why idealists are misled into their beliefs, but ultimately rejected a strong transparency thesis because he believed conscious experience "can be distinguished if we look attentively enough".[17] Moore's statements about transparency were influential on philosophers like William James and C. D. Broad, who used the transparency of experience to challenge the idea that experiences are inner objects that can be examined through introspection.[18]

In contemporary philosophy, the transparency of experience has become more associated with arguments for intentionalism.[19] A prominent example is due to Gilbert Harman, who introduced the transparency argument for intentionalism in his 1990 paper "The Intrinsic Quality of Experience". Harman distinguished between the properties of objects and the properties of experience. Using the thought experiment of a woman named Eloise looking at a tree, he claimed "the colors [Eloise] experiences are all experienced as features of the tree ... None of them are experienced as intrinsic features of her experience."[20] The transparency argument is also associated with Michael Tye, who has used the transparency of experience to support intentionalism across a number of works since the 1990s.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Not to be confused with indirect realism, which is sometimes also referred to as representationalism

References

Citations

  1. ^ Gennaro 2018, §2.
  2. ^ Kind 2010, p. 902; Horgan & Tienson 2002, p. 520; Bayne 2022, pp. 62–63.
  3. ^ Crane 2001, p. 76.
  4. ^ Bayne 2022, pp. 8–9, 11–13; Kim 2002, pp. 17–18, 23–24.
  5. ^ Crane 2001, p. 77.
  6. ^ Fish 2021, p. 85; Bayne 2022, p. 63.
  7. ^ Stoljar 2009; Bayne 2022, p. 65; Paul 2014, pp. 295–296.
  8. ^ Alter, Kind & Howell 2024, "19. Eloise and the Tree"; Crane 2001, p. 140; Kind n.d., §4.
  9. ^ Kim 2002, pp. 289–290.
  10. ^ a b Fish 2021, p. 64.
  11. ^ "Mona Lisa". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2026-02-15. Archived from the original on 2026-02-11. Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  12. ^ Alter, Kind & Howell 2024, "19. Eloise and the Tree"; Muñoz-Suárez 2011; Bordini 2023, pp. 269–270.
  13. ^ Kind 2003, p. 226; Mandik 2010, p. 125.
  14. ^ Mandik 2010, p. 125.
  15. ^ Paul 2014, p. 296.
  16. ^ Copenhaver 2007, p. 622; Kind 2003, p. 240.
  17. ^ Stoljar 2009; Kind 2003, pp. 229–230; Hellie 2007.
  18. ^ Stoljar 2009.
  19. ^ Stoljar 2009; Spener 2019, p. 168.
  20. ^ Kind 2010, p. 905.
  21. ^ Bordini 2026; Kind 2003, pp. 226–227.

Sources

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