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Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a (purported) introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, and bridges the gap between them. Our aim in this paper is threefold: to scrutinize Michael Tye's transparency theory (2002, 2009, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest and import of transparency theories in general.

Ian Stoner has recently argued that we ought not to colonize Mars because (1) doing so would flout our pro tanto obligation not to violate the principle of scientific conservation, and (2) there is no countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. While I remain agnostic on (1), my primary goal in this article is to challenge (2): there are countervailing considerations that render our violation of the principle permissible. As such, Stoner has failed to establish that we ought not to colonize Mars. I close with some thoughts on what it would take to show that we do have an obligation to colonize Mars and related issues concerning the relationship between the way we discount our preferences over time and projects with long time horizons, like space colonization.

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Ambitious Higher-Order theories of consciousness-Higher-Order theories that purport to give an account of phenomenal consciousness-face a well-known objection from the possibility of radical misrepresentation. Jonathan Farrell (2017) has recently added a new twist to an old worry: while Higher-Order theorists have the resources to respond to the misrepresentation objection, they do so at the expense of their ambitions. At best, they only account for phenomenal consciousness in the technical Higher-Order sense, not in the standard Nagelian sense. Building on the work of Berger (2014) and Brown (2015), I contend that Farrell's argument fails. The upshot is not only that radical misrepresentation presents no threat to the ambitiousness of Higher-Order theories, but also a deeper insight both into Higher-Order theories themselves, and what the standard Nagelian construal of phenomenal consciousness does, and does not, commit us to.