Transparency Theory

Transparency theory makes the argument that because sensory (e.g., visual) experience represents external objects and their apparent properties, experience has no other properties that pose problems for materialism. We “see right through” perceptual states to external objects and take no notice that we are actually in perceptual states; the properties we perceive in perception are attributed to the objects themselves, not to the perception (Lycan, 2019).

If we look at a tree and try to turn our attention to the intrinsic features of our visual experience, the only features there to turn our attention to are features of the actual tree itself, including relational features of the tree from the perspective of the perceiver (Harman, 1990).

Transparency and Representationalism

To make the argument, at a minimum, an additional premise is needed: If a perceptual state has mental properties over and above its representational properties, they must be “introspectible.” But “not even the most determined introspection ever reveals any such additional properties.” This is the transparency thesis proper (Lycan, 2019).

Philosopher Amy Kind cites experiential transparency as a major motivation driving representational theories of consciousness, which view phenomenal character as being reduced to intentional content. Assuming experience is transparent in that we “look right through” experience to the objects of that experience, “this is supposed to support the representationalist claim that there are no intrinsic aspects of our experience” (Kind, 2010).

Philosopher Michael Tye states that one important motivation for the theory that “phenomenal character is one and the same as representational content” is “the so-called ‘transparency of experience.’” He addresses introspective awareness of experience and one problem case for transparency, that of blurry vision (Tye, 2002). A similar theory is “intentionalism,” the view that the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on intentional content (Pace, 2007).

Franken’s Transparency of Appearing

Philosopher Dirk Franken characterizes “the transparency of appearing” as follows: "The phenomenal quality of a particular state of appearing is fully exhausted by the sensible properties present to the subject of the state and their distribution over the respective field of appearance.”

Starting “from the assumption that the transparency of appearing is a purely phenomenological feature,” Franken describes his “Transparency Thesis” with several propositions: “There are no other properties, next to the sensible properties, that have any bearing on the phenomenal quality of a state of appearing. The presentation of sensible properties is just all there is to the phenomenal quality of a state of appearing. No properties of the subject (insofar as it is the subject of this state) or of the state itself contribute to this phenomenal quality.”

He defends “surprising consequences” of the Transparency Thesis. First, “one has to give up the idea of the first-person-perspective as a kind of inner seeming or appearing directed onto mental states (at least, if the relevant states are states of appearing).”

Next, two assumptions entailed in numerous popular accounts of phenomenal consciousness are negated: (i) “phenomenal qualities are properties of states of appearing that are independent or partly independent of the (sensible) properties presented in these states; ” and (ii) “there can be phenomenally conscious states of appearing even though there is nothing that is presented to their subjects” (Franken, n.d.).