Abstract
Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a (purported) introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, and bridges the gap between them. We have three aims: to scrutinize Michael Tye’s transparency theory (Noûs 36(1):137–151, 2002; Consciousness revisited: materialism without phenomenal concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009; Philos Stud 170(1):39–57, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest, and import, of transparency theories.
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Notes
The term ‘phenomenal property’ is occasionally used to denote a property that is mental by stipulation. On our usage this is not built in.
This claim is, at a minimum, standardly understood in terms of de re awareness. Eloise might still be aware that she is having an experience. See Tye (2009:5) and Tye (2014a: 40). For various ways of further unpacking this portion of the transparency claim in an unrelated context—something we don’t touch on here—see Gottlieb (2016).
When we say that ‘experience is transparent’, we are referring to the introspective claim. When we ask ‘what follows from transparency’ (or related questions), context will make clear whether we are asking what follows from the metaphysical claim or just the introspective claim. Of course, there is plenty of action surrounding the introspective claim too, typically with respect to its purported universality (e.g. Block 1996, 2003; Kind 2003; Smith 2008). But here we just assume it, focusing on its implications once supplemented with an appropriate auxiliary claim. Also, when it is said that transparency tells us nothing much at all, the focus is on the introspective claim (e.g. Schroer 2007). We grant this; the introspective claim can be accommodated by just about any theory of perceptual experience (cf. Gupta 2012: 12; Frey 2013; Gow 2016). The auxiliary claim does the heavy lifting.
Our focus is on literal projectivism, as opposed to figurative projectivism; on the former, colors are instantiated in the visual system, and in virtue of this instantiation objects look colored, while on the latter, colors are uninstantiated (Shoemaker 1994). For literal projectivism, see Boghossian and Velleman (1989) and Averill (2005); for figurative projectivism, see Averill (1992); Wright (2003).
Every use of ‘representationalism’ should, unless noted otherwise, be understood as referring to externalist representationalism. P-Externalism embodies Tye’s claim that “[t]he phenomenal character of an experience… is out there in the world” (2009: 119). We are aware of p-properties. Thus P-Externalism also follows from Tye’s (2014a: 41) claim that “[t]he only features of which we are aware and to which we can attend are external features,” and that, in non-veridical experience, “[t]he only features of which we are aware and to which we can attend are locally un-instantiated features of a sort that, if they belong to anything, belong to external particulars.” For the claim that P-Externalism is incompatible with qualia realism, see Tye (2014a: 42-43). For the inference to representationalism as the best explanation of P-Externalism, see Tye (2002: 141).
On our usage, ‘objects’ of experience include objects proper, properties, and property-instances.
This is skepticism about experiences qua particular mental events. As Byrne (2011: 64) notes, such skepticism allows that we can still truthfully say things like ‘Going to Tahiti was a relaxing experience’ suitably paraphrased. See Speaks (2014) for a similar skeptical position based on transparency.
Two points. First, we stress that I-Claim is Tye’s introspective claim. This is not to say that we think I-Claim is implausible; it is plausible. But the form and generality of the introspective claim is certainly not entirely stable throughout the literature on transparency. For other versions of the introspective claim, compare Kind (2003), Stoljar (2004), Molyneux (2009), and Kennedy (2009). Second, I-Claim can be formulated without committing to the existence of experiences—and so consistent with the skeptical meta-theoretical position—by simply say that the only thing F seems to be a property of are objects in S’s environment.
Unless you don’t believe in unconscious perception. This route will be appealing to few (if any) representationalists, and certainly not to Tye.
Tye wants to say that p-properties are physical properties, but strictly speaking it’s not clear that this follows from P-Externalism. Presumably, for P-Externalism to show that p-properties are physical properties it would have to follow from P-Externalism alone that p-properties enter laws or causal interactions at the level of physics.
We thank an anonymous referee for pushing us to consider the abductive version.
Many things can make difference to experience without making a difference to experiences’ phenomenal character. The cosmological constant makes such a difference; if the constant were different, there wouldn’t be any experiences. But there is no element of phenomenal character that corresponds to the cosmological constant. That’s why the cosmological constant isn’t a p-feature. It is just an enabling condition for there being experiences at all.
Here we think of tokens as the stimuli that can cause the visual system of a subject looking at a token to type it. This is expressed in the S-is-conscious-of-x-as-an-F relation, where x is the token and F is the type. The subject is conscious of both the type and the token. What we are calling typing psychologist call categorizing. Understanding vision this way explains illusions—the subject mistypes the token; and the duck-rabbit—the same token is typed in two different ways; and color agnosia—the color agnosic cannot type tokens by color. The agnosic does not experience the type; the hallucinator does not experience the token.
For some purposes it may be helpful to think of redness as a determinable (a hue) whose determinates include scarlet and crimson (they have the same hue). In this case S experiences the determinate scarletness (its h, s and l) and S* experiences the determinable redness (h). This way of thinking about the experiences of S and S* makes no difference to our argument for the claim that these experiences are different experiences of different p-properties—scarletness for S, redness for S*—and so have different phenomenal characters.
Of course, the triangular-shape has three interior angle-shapes. However, we used “some interior angle-shapes” because three-ness is not clearly a p-property.
E3 is not quite (ii-I) of I-Claim, since E3 has ‘essential’ where (ii-I) does not. This addition makes our derivation easier, but note that such a move is not elicit in this context; after all, Tye would grant E3; if F does not seem to a subject S to be a feature of one’s experience E, then surely none of the p-features essential to F will seem to S to be a feature of E. Notice also that the first conjunct of I-Claim (i-I) does not play a role in our derivation of P-Essentialism. But as we saw, the second conjunct (ii-I) does not play a role in Tye’s argument for P-Externalism.
Both Tye's theory and our theory make assumptions about the way experience is related to the world: for Tye, Veridicality; for us, No-Relation. These claims are importantly different. Veridicality concerns the accuracy of perceptual attributives of the form 'x seems F.' No-Relation, by contrast, explains the non-existence of one type of relation between F and E (viz. p-relations) by appeal to the non-existence of relations simpliciter between F and E. Perhaps Tye’s assumption says more about the world, but as we saw this was his theory’s undoing.
We say ‘live’ because P-Essentialism is incompatible with sense datum theories. We do not know of any current sense-datum theorists, but it’s not clear if sense-datum theories are theories of perceptual experience anyway. There is a common reading where they are just theories of what we are most immediately acquainted with in experience. In that case, ruling out sense-datum theory would support the modest position.
Although Johnston’s initial statement of Revelation employs ‘intrinsic’, he later also employs ‘essential’ (1992: 139). Johnston eventually gives up Revelation though, albeit begrudgingly.
For very helpful comments, we thank three anonymous referees for Erkenntnis.
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Averill, E.W., Gottlieb, J. Two Theories of Transparency. Erkenn 86, 553–573 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00119-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00119-0