How Transparent is Experience? Reassessing Diaphaneity in Early Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The thesis that experience is in some sense “transparent” or “diaphanous” played a major role in the realist revolt against British Idealism spearheaded by GE Moore and Bertrand Russell around the turn of the twentieth century. Roughly speaking, this thesis asserts that the introspectable qualitative characters of our experiences are in some sense constituted by the actual characters of the objects we experience. After distinguishing different conceptions of such transparency, I argue that Moore, Russell, and other notable British Realists at most accepted what I call “weak transparency”. Next, I consider two special kinds of experience that led CD Broad to give important concessions to the critics of
British Realism. Lastly, I argue that pre-neutral monist Russell merely endorsed what I call “objectual transparency” and that his treatments of pain and attention offer a different line of response to Broad’s challenges.

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