The Transparency of Experience

TLDR

Sense‑datum theories are criticized for failing to explain how introspection shows that sensory experiences are directed at mind‑independent world entities, implying transparency. The paper argues that the transparency claim exposes explanatory problems for sense‑datum theories and, by examining intentional theory, naive realism, and sensory imagination, shows similar challenges for intentional theories. The author analyzes intentional theory and naive realism to explain transparency and investigates the link between sensory experience and sensory imagining. The paper concludes that sensory imagination poses an explanatory challenge for intentional theories similar to that faced by sense‑datum theories.

Abstract

A common objection to sense–datum theories of perception is that they cannot give an adequate account of the fact that introspection indicates that our sensory experiences are directed on, or are about, the mind–independent entities in the world around us, that our sense experience is transparent to the world. In this paper I argue that the main force of this claim is to point out an explanatory challenge to sensedatum theories. In the first part of the paper I explore the form of explanation that an intentional theory of perception can offer of this fact, and I contrast this with an alternative picture labelled naïve realism which can also accommodate and explain the fact of transparency. In the second part of the paper I explore the connection between sensory experience and sensory imagining, arguing that various features of sensory imagining support the hypothesis that in visualising a tree one imagines seeing a tree. In the final part of the paper I argue that the conclusion concerning sensory imagination presents an explanatory challenge for intentional theories of perception which parallels the challenge to sense–datum theories.