In this essay, I want to take another look at the phenomenon of transparency and its relevance to qualia realism and representationalism. I don’t suppose that what I have to say will cause those who disagree with me to change their minds, but I hope not only to clarify my position and that of others who are on my side of the debate but also to respond to various criticisms and objections that have arisen over the last 10–15 years or (...) so.The transparency thesisI begin with four quotations, two from G. E. Moore, one from Gilbert Harman, and one from an earlier paper of mine:…that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact seems to escape us; it seems, if I may use a metaphor, to be transparent — we look through it and see nothing but the blue… (Moore 1903, p. 446).When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous (Moore 1903, p. 450).When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all experien. (shrink)

Powers are popularly assumed to be distinct from, and dependent upon, inert qualities, mainly because it is believed that qualities have their nature independently of other properties while powers have their nature in virtue of a relation to distinct manifestation property. George Molnar and Alexander Bird, on the other hand, characterize powers as intrinsic and relational. The difficulties of reconciling the characteristics of being intrinsic and at the same time essentially related are illustrated in this paper and it is argued (...) that the reasons for thinking of powers as essentially relational are based on misguided epistemological consideration. Finally, I present a way of thinking of fundamental properties as primitive natures that we can only understand in virtue of what they do but which we should not think of as being ontologically constituted by these doings. According to this view, properties are both qualities and powers. (shrink)

Colors are of philosophical interest for two kinds of reason. One is that colors comprise such a large and important portion of our social, personal and epistemological lives and so a philosophical account of our concepts of color is highly desirable. The second reason is that trying to fit colors into accounts of metaphysics, epistemology and science leads to philosophical problems that are intriguing and hard to resolve. Not surprisingly, these two kinds of reasons are related. The fact that colors (...) are so significant in their own right, makes more pressing the philosophical problems of fitting them into more general metaphysical and epistemological frameworks. (shrink)

I distinguish between two claims of transparency of experiences. One claim is weaker and supported by phenomenological evidence. This I call the transparency datum. Introspection of standard perceptual experiences as well as bodily sensations is consistent with, indeed supported by, the transparency datum. I formulate a stronger transparency thesis that is entailed by representationalism about experiential phenomenology. I point out some empirical consequences of strong transparency in the context of representationalism. I argue that pain experiences, as well as some other (...) similar experiences like itches, tickles, orgasms, hedonic valence, etc., are not transparent in this strong sense. Hence they constitute empirical counterexamples to representationalism. Given that representationalism is a general metaphysical doctrine about all experiential phenomenology for good reasons, I conclude that representationalism about phenomenal consciousness is false. Then, I outline a general framework about how the introspection of phenomenal qualities in perceptual experience works in light of the transparency datum, but consistent with the rejection of strong transparency. The result is a form of qualia realism that is naturalist and intentionalist, and has close affinities to the adverbialist views developed in the latter part of the last century. I then apply this framework to pain experiences and their bodily locations. (shrink)

My first aim in this paper is to show that the transparency claim cannot serve the purpose to which it is assigned; that is, the idea that perceptual experience is transparent is no help whatsoever in motivating an externalist account of phenomenal character. My second aim is to show that the internalist qualia theorist's response to the transparency idea has been unnecessarily concessive to the externalist. Surprisingly, internalists seem to allow that much of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience depends (...) essentially (and not just causally) upon externally located properties. They argue that we can also be aware of internal, non-intentional qualia. I present an alternative response the internalist can make to the transparency claim: phenomenal character is wholly internal, and seeming to be aware of externally located properties just is being aware of internally constituted experiential features. (shrink)

Two popular theses central to recent theorizing about consciousness are the transitivity principle and the transparency of experience. According to the former, conscious mental states are mental states we are aware of in some way. According to the latter, there is some awareness-relation that we seemingly cannot bear to our experiences. I argue that, within certain reasonable constraints, there is no precisification of these theses that renders them compatible.

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, (...) phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mindbody problem. (shrink)

This is the written version of a reply to Michael Tye's "Transparency, Qualia Realism, and Representationalism," given at the 40th Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy. It argues that, given one standard way of understanding these theses, qualia realism is trivially true and transparency theses are trivially false. I also discuss four objections to Tye's claim that the phenomenal character of the experience of red just is redness, and conclude by arguing that philosophers of perception should state their claims as about the (...) properties of subjects of experience rather than as about the properties of experiences themselves. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for an essentialist account of cyborgs. This means that one condition for being a cyborg is to possess phenomenal consciousness, ‘what it feels like’ to undergo an experience. In this context, I make two related claims: (1) the metaphysical claim that it is essential to cyborgs to have phenomenal consciousness due to their being augmented human beings, and (2) the related claim that this metaphysical constraint need not apply to cyborg-like entities, which may or may (...) not be augmented humans and so might not possess phenomenal consciousness. In support of these claims, I argue that cyborgs without phenomenal consciousness would lose information-processing abilities essential to the human condition and would be better understood as androids with biological body parts. First, I briefly characterize phenomenal consciousness in the context of the Mind–Body Problem. Then I introduce the Mind–Technology Problem and claim that it is better suited to frame the relevant discussion. In a second step, I argue that phenomenal consciousness is a vital feature of the human mind as it is fundamental for practices that relate what it feels to have an experience to other minds capable of such experiences, as in the arts. Briefly, thus, I argue that, without phenomenal consciousness, there is no art, and that art involves information-processing abilities essential to the human condition. Then I describe two different kinds of entity that might be considered cyborgs in the context of enhancement, distinguishing between cyborgs and cyborg-like entities. Finally, I argue that entities that do not possess phenomenal consciousness cannot be classified as cyborgs, since without it, an essential capacity of human experience, to be affected by the expressive arts, is absent. (shrink)

The long history of theorizing about perception divides into two quite distinct and irreconcilable camps, one that takes sensory experience to show us external reality just as it is, and one that takes such experience to reveal our own mind. I argue that we should reject both sides of this debate, and admit that the phenomenal character of experience, as such, reveals little about the nature of the external world and even less about the mind.

In recent work, Michael Tye has criticized a certain sort of representationalist view of experience for holding that phenomenal characters are properties of experiences. Instead, Tye holds that phenomenal character is 'out there in the world.' This paper has two aims. One is to argue for the somewhat surprising conclusion that Tye’s apparently radical new view is not a change in view at all, but a notational variant of a standard representationalist theory. My more general aim, though, is to lay (...) out a bit more clearly than is usually done the basic metaphysics of representationalist views of consciousness. In the end, what I argue is that unclarity on this score is what has permitted the choice between standard representationalist theories and Tye’s new position to appear to be something more than a verbal question. I conclude by discussing the bearing of this on the question of whether we can be aware of phenomenal character in introspection, and the relative importance of properties of subjects and properties of experiences in the theory of consciousness. (shrink)

Perceptual disjunctivism, as I regard it in this paper, is the view that veridical perceptions and hallucinations, while indistinguishable via introspection, are states of fundamentally different kinds. This fundamental difference can be spelled out in various ways. According to the view I will be concerned with, it is a fundamental difference in the personal-level structure of both states. Against this version of disjunctivism, I will raise a new challenge. It is a variant of what can be seen as the standard (...) challenge against disjunctivism: how to do justice to the indistinguishability of veridical perceptions and hallucinations. It differs, however, from common versions of this challenge in where it locates the potential incompatibility of disjunctivism with the relevant fact of indistinguishability. Commonly, it is the disjunctivist assumption of a fundamental difference between both kinds of states which is regarded as incompatible with the indistinguishability of these states. In contrast, I will suggest that if hallucinations and veridical perceptions differed in the way proposed by structural disjunctivism, this difference would induce a corresponding difference in the psychological processes of their introspection and that the assumption of such a difference in the manner of introspection is most likely incompatible with a properly formulated indistinguishability claim. (shrink)