Varieties of Experiential Transparency

Abstract: Considerations on the transparency of experience in particular, and introspection in general, play a central role in the contemporary philosophy of mind. However, despite various attempts to rectify matters, it seems to me that appeals to transparency and introspection are sometimes mired in confusion: neither there is an explicit and general recognition of the fact that different transparency claims are often treated as one and the same, nor is there sufficiently robust clarity in what introspection itself can support. The central aim of this paper is to achieve some conceptual clarity by bringing to the surface for examination the rich variety of different experiential transparency claims that are left implicit in the literature. The paper falls into three main sections. Section 2 discusses Moore’s views on introspection and the transparency of experience. Contra common opinion, I argue inter alia that Moore is concerned with showing that experience is not transparent (in a sense to be specified). Section 3 introduces “Harmanian transparency”, as it arises in the context of the debate between representationism and phenomenism, and distinguishes it from “phenomenist transparency.” Section 4 distinguishes two varieties of Harmanian transparency, i.e. “experiencing-act transparency” and “mental-paint transparency.