5 - TRANSPARENCY

Summary

In this chapter I examine the transparency argument for representationalism. Its central idea is this.

1. (T1) When we attempt to focus on (alleged) qualities of our experiences, we find that we cannot do so. What we find instead is only properties of the things that are represented in our experiences. The experiences themselves are transparent; we look right through them, so to speak, to the qualities of the things represented in them.

If we accept this idea at face value, then

1. (T2) Experiences must be either (a) things we are not directly aware of at all or (b) things we are directly aware of without being aware of any of their qualities.

2. (T3) Awareness of experiences without awareness of any of their qualities is both peculiar in itself and useless in accounting for phenomenal consciousness. Thus, we ought to reject alternative (b).

3. (T4) Alternative (a) is acceptable. Experiences can be regarded as brain events that represent things as being colored, flavored, and so on. In having them we are aware of the qualities of things, not of experiences. We are not directly aware of experiences; rather, we infer them as events that represent to us the qualities of things.

Therefore,

1. (T5) Experiences are transparent representers of qualities of things.

Against this argument, qualitative event realists will say that the properties that ordinary things actually have are P-properties, and nothing is represented to us in ordinary experience as having those.