Reticence of visual phenomenal character: A spatial interpretation of transparency

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3):393-414 (2007)
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Abstract

It is often claimed that the phenomenal character of visual experience is 'transparent' in that the phenomenal features of visual experience do not seem 'mental'. It is then claimed that this transparency speaks in favour of some theories of experience while speaking against others. In this paper, I advance both a negative and a positive thesis about transparency. My negative thesis is that visual phenomenal character is reticent in that it does not reveal whether it is mental or non-mental in nature. This, in turn, means that, by itself, transparency does not speak in favour of (and against) the theories it is often thought to speak in favour of (and against). My positive thesis is that the phenomenon referred to as the 'transparency' of visual phenomenal character is best characterized in spatial, not mental, terms

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Robert Schroer
University of Minnesota, Duluth

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The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
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Sensations and brain processes.Jjc Smart - 1959 - Philosophical Review 68 (April):141-56.

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