The transparency of experience

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 sense-datum 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 naive 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.

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