Introspection , intentionality and the transparency of experience

1. Introspection and phenomenal character How much can introspection tell us about the nature of perceptual experience? This partly depends on what we understand by ‘the nature of perceptual experience’. It is hardly to be expected that introspection could tell us, for example, whether our experiences are brain states, or supervene on brain states; this is something which must be decided on the basis of broad metaphysical and empirical considerations. But one might expect that introspection could tell us a lot about what has come to be called the phenomenal character of experience; that is, what it is like to have the experience, or how the experience is from the subject’s point of view. This much should be uncontroversial. The question I want to address in this paper is to what extent introspection can determine the correct theoretical account of phenomenal character.2 Some philosophers have argued recently that introspective evidence provides direct support for an intentionalist theory of visual experience. An intentionalist theory of visual experience treats experience as an intentional state, a state with an intentional content. (I shall use the word ‘state’ in a general way, for any kind of mental phenomenon, and here I shall not distinguish states proper from events, though the distinction is important.) Intentionalist theories characteristically say that the phenomenal character of an experience, what it is like to have the experience, is exhausted by its intentional content. Visual experience, and on some views sense-experience generally, does not involve the awareness of ‘qualia’, intrinsic, non-intentional features of the experience. According to Gilbert Harman and Michael Tye, support for this view comes from introspecting on experience. Tye describes his ‘argument from introspection’ as follows: