The Transparency of Experience and the Mark of the Mental

This dissertation is aimed at providing a comprehensive picture of the debate in the contemporary philosophy of mind about the relationship between intentional and phenomenal properties. The dissertation consists of three chapters. The main purpose of the first chapter is to present the so-called transparency of experience thesis and to provide the general framework within which the two research programs considered can move. The second chapter focuses on the position labelled as intentionalism, the attempt of explaining phenomenal properties in intentional terms, whereas the third chapter is intended to explore the possibility of pursuing the opposite explanatory strategy, named phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT). The first chapter provides the typical formulation of the transparency of experience thesis, a twofold claim asserting that introspection only shows properties of the objects of experience and denying that there are intrinsic (qualitative) properties of the experience itself, which grounds the standard version of intentionalism. Then, the chapter offers some considerations about the nature of intentionality, which essentially involves aspectual shape and the possible non-existence of intentional objects, providing some constraints for the assessment of the theoretical options available. Afterward, the chapter focuses on the problem of intentionality, which allows to present relational and monadic conceptions of intentionality and to notice that also phenomenal intentionality theorists can appeal to the transparency of experience. This last possibility is due to a shared claim among the two research programs in question: the idea that (at least in some cases) phenomenal character is inherently intentional. Such a view is opposed to what has been the orthodox position in philosophy of mind starting from the second half of the twentieth century, commonly labelled as separatism. After developing the dialectic between such perspectives, the chapter ends with the consideration of a weaker formulation of the transparency thesis, which implies the existence of intrinsic (qualitative) properties of the experience. The second chapter presents the logical space available to intentionalists. There are several dimensions of variation of such a view, depending on the strength of the relationship between phenomenal and intentional properties, on their characterization as wide or narrow and as relational or monadic properties. Moreover, one might claim that phenomenal character is exhausted by intentional content or take into account how intentional content is represented. Finally, the resulting position might provide either a reductive or a nonreductive theory of phenomenal character. The third chapter considers the possible articulations of PIT. Again, various choices may be made, with respect to both the strength of the relationship and the characterization of intentional and phenomenal properties, but also concerning the extent of intentionality and the possibility of non-phenomenal intentional properties. Moreover, one might try to ground intentional content on phenomenal consciousness or to conceive of intentionality as a sui generis phenomenal property. In the conclusions, after some considerations about the nature of subjectivity and the possibility of a constitutive relationship between presentation and representation, which grounds both intentionalism and PIT, some implications about our conception of mind are explored.