epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

, transparency is a property of epistemic states defined as follows: An epistemic state E is "weakly transparent" to a subject S

if and only if In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (shortened as "iff") is a biconditional logical connective between statements, where either both statements are true or both are false. The connective is bi ...

when S is in state E, S can know that S is in state E; an epistemic state E is "strongly transparent" to a subject S if and only if when S is in state E, S can know that S is in state E, AND when S is not in state E, S can know S is not in state E.

Pain Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, ...

is usually considered to be strongly transparent: when someone is in pain, they know immediately that they are in pain, and if they are not in pain, they will know they are not. Transparency is important in the study of self-knowledge and meta-knowledge.

Sources

* Concepts in epistemology {{epistemology-stub