What does the ‘Transparency of Experience’ Show about the Relationship between the Phenomenality and the Intentionality of Experience?

Abstract

A pretty big debate has been going on in the recent philosophy of mind as to whether the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is exhausted by (or reduced to) its intentional content. On the one hand, Representationalists often argue on the ground of the so-called ‘transparency of experience’ that the phenomenal character of an experience is exhausted by its intentional content. On the other hand, qualia theorists object that there are non-intentional features of experiences (‘qualia’). But, in my view, the debate itself is wrong-headed in this respect: it presupposes that intentional contents of experiences can be explained without mentioning their phenomenal characters, but this presupposition is groundless. In this paper, I argue, by reconsidering the ‘transparency of experience’ thesis, that a more appropriate view on the relationship between intentional contents and phenomenal characters of experiences is a pretty much different one than that shared by both sides of the debate.