about her own mental states. We might form the belief that someone
else is happy on the basis of perception – for example, by perceiving
her behavior. But a person typically does not have to observe her own
behavior in order to determine whether she is happy. Rather, one makes
this determination by introspecting.
When compared to other beliefs that we have, the beliefs that we
acquire through introspection seem epistemically special. What exactly
this amounts to is discussed in the first part of this essay. The
second part addresses the nature of introspection. Though the term
"introspection" literally means "looking within" (from the Latin
"spicere" meaning "to look" and "intra" meaning "within"), whether
introspecting should be treated analogously to looking – that is,
whether introspection is a form of inner perception – is debatable.
Philosophers have offered both observational and non-observational
accounts of introspection. Following the discussion of these various
issues about the epistemology and nature of introspection, the third
section of this essay addresses an important use to which
introspection has been put in philosophical discussions, namely, to
draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of mind.
1. The Epistemic "Specialness" of Introspection
We form beliefs about our own mental states by introspection. How
exactly introspection works will be discussed in the next section. But
however it works, philosophers have long taken note of the fact that
each individual's introspective capacity seems to place her in a
unique position to form beliefs, and gain knowledge, of her own mental
states. An individual's introspective beliefs about her own mental
states seem in some way more secure than her beliefs about the
external world, including her beliefs about the mental states of other
people. Correspondingly, her introspective beliefs about her own
mental states seem more secure than the beliefs that anyone else could
form about her mental states. In these ways, there seems to be
something epistemically special about the beliefs that we form on the
basis of introspection. Typically, this specialness has been referred
to as the privileged access that we have to our own mental states.
To say that an individual has privileged access to her own mental
states is to say that she is in a better position than anyone else to
acquire knowledge (or perhaps, justified beliefs) about them. But what
exactly does privileged access amount to? In this section, of the
numerous different claims that philosophers have made in this regard
are discussed. (See Alston 1971 for a particularly comprehensive
discussion of these and similar claims.)
a. Infallibility
In the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes worries that he may
be deceived by an evil demon. As a result, all of his beliefs about
the external world may well be false. But however powerful the demon
may be, Descartes claims that it cannot deceive him about the contents
of his own mind. Though it might not be true that he is seeing,
hearing and feeling what he thinks he is, it is nonetheless true, he
says, that "I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This
cannot be false." (Descartes 1641/1986)
This passage has been commonly interpreted in terms of infallibility.
As such, it gives us one of the strongest claims that philosophers
have made about the epistemic specialness of our self-knowledge: One
cannot have a false belief about one's own mental states. In this way,
I am in a privileged position to make judgments about my mental
states, since other people can have false beliefs about my mental
states. But, necessarily, if I believe that I am in a particular
mental state, then I am in that mental state.
Before discussing this thesis, it is worth noting that there has been
some unfortunate terminological messiness in this area. Sometimes the
terms "incorrigibility" or "indubitability" have been used as a
synonym for what has just been referred to as "infallibility." For
example, when Armstrong (1963) asks whether introspective knowledge is
incorrigible, he has in mind the claim that it is logically impossible
for someone to be mistaken when she makes a sincere introspective
report. He then explicitly uses the words "incorrigible" and
"indubitable" interchangeably. (See also Shoemaker 1963, who uses the
term "incorrigible" to refer to any sincere introspective report in
which "it does not make sense to suppose, and nothing could be
accepted as showing, that [the individual] is mistaken, i.e., that
what he says is false.") However, the terms "incorrigibility" and
"indubitability" are also often distinguished from one another, and
from "infallibility," to pick out related, but different, kinds of
epistemic specialness. On this usage, an individual's introspective
belief is said to be incorrigible when no one else can have grounds
for correcting it; an individual's introspective belief is said to be
indubitable when she herself can have no grounds for rejecting it.
(See Alston 1971 and Gallois 1996.) Note that these three kinds of
epistemic specialness can clearly come apart. For example, we can
conceive (at least in principle) of cases in which an individual's
introspective report was false even though no one else had grounds for
correcting it, or in which the individual herself has no grounds to
reject it. It thus seems best to keep separate the terms
"infallibility," "incorrigibility," and "indubitability." This essay
reserves the term "infallibility" for the claim discussed above that
it is not possible for me to believe that I am in a given mental state
unless I am in that mental state.
One further qualification is also needed. As stated above, the
infallibility thesis concerns our self-knowledge generally, rather
than just our introspective knowledge, and is thus overly broad.
Suppose that in the course of a polite disagreement, a friend accuses
me of being angry at her. In fact, she is lying to cover her own anger
at me. But, because she is normally reliable, I might take her
accusation at face value and become convinced that I am angry at her.
This case, in which I have the belief that I am angry even though I am
not, shows that we can have fallible self-knowledge. (See Gertler
2003b for some similar examples.) The case does not show, however,
that we can have fallible introspective knowledge. In fact, one might
suppose that my belief in the case above is mistaken precisely because
it was not formed on the basis of introspection, but rather on the
basis of my friend's testimony. Proponents of infallibility
undoubtedly intend the infallibility thesis to apply only to
introspective knowledge and not to self-knowledge more generally. To
make this clear, we can insert the following qualification in the
statement of the infallibility claim: Necessarily, if I believe on the
basis of introspection that I am in a particular mental state, then I
am in that mental state.
Thus understood, the infallibility thesis enjoys some intuitive
support, particularly when it comes to certain types of mental states
like sensations. How can I be wrong that I am in pain right now? (See
Shoemaker 1990 for an attempt to flesh out the inherent plausibility
of the infallibility thesis.) Nonetheless, it is now almost uniformly
rejected by both philosophers and psychologists alike. Some obvious
counterexamples come from our assessments of our emotional states and
character traits. Individuals are notoriously poor judges of whether
they are feeling jealous, for example. And of course there are
widespread examples from literature and cinema where it is plain to
everyone but the bickering hero and heroine themselves that, despite
their protestations to the contrary, they are really in love.
Arguing against the infallibility thesis, Churchland (1988) suggests
that we make mistakes in our introspective judgments because of
expectation, presentation, and memory effects, – three phenomena that
are familiar from the case of perception. As an example where
expectations come into play, he offers the case of a captured spy
whose interrogators have repeatedly tortured him by briefly pressing a
hot iron against his back. What would happen if, after 19 times with
the hot iron, the torturers surreptitiously use an ice cube instead?
Since the spy strongly expects to feel pain, Churchland suggests that
the spy's immediate reaction to the ice cube will not differ
significantly from the reactions that he had to the hot iron, i.e., he
will mistakenly think he is feeling pain. (See also Warner 1993.)
Likewise, Churchland argues that when a sensation is presented to us
for a very short duration of time, mistakes are not just likely but
inevitable. Finally, he asks us to consider someone who suffered
neural damage at a young age and has subsequently not felt pain or any
other tactile sensation for 50 years. Then suppose that her neural
deficits were somehow overcome. In such a situation, Churchland argues
that it would be quite implausible to suppose that she would be able
instantly and infallibly to discriminate and identify all of her newly
regained sensations.
Churchland's criticisms of the infallibility thesis in some ways echo
worries raised by James almost a century earlier. As James noted,
"Even the writers who insist upon the absolute veracity of our
immediate inner apprehension of a conscious state have to contrast
with this the fallibility of our memory or observation of it, a moment
later." He concludes that "introspection is difficult and fallible;
and that the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever
kind." (James 1890/1950)
Another line of objection to the claim of infallibility derives from
some remarks of Wittgenstein (1958). In the course of offering his
private language argument, he worries about how an individual in
isolation would be able to develop a language to refer to her own
sensations. The problem is that in such cases there "is no criterion
of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right
to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about
'right.'" Armstrong (1963) fleshes out the objection as follows (see
also Wright 1989):
If introspective mistake is ruled out by logical necessity, then
what sense can we attach to the notion of gaining knowledge by
introspection? We can speak of gaining knowledge only in cases where
it makes sense to speak of thinking wrongly that we have gained
knowledge. In the words of the slogan: 'If you can't be wrong, then
you can't be right either.' If failure is logically impossible, then
talk of success is meaningless.
In the empirical domain, work in a variety of areas provides important
evidence for the fallibility of introspection. Influential studies by
Nisbett and Wilson (1977) suggest that we often misdescribe our own
reasoning processes. In one study, subjects were presented with four
pairs of stockings and asked to indicate which pair had the highest
quality. The leftmost pair was preferred by a factor of almost four to
one. However, unbeknownst to the subjects, all four pairs of stockings
were identical. Though position effects were clearly playing a role in
the subjects' choice, none of them identified position when asked to
explain their reasoning, and those who were asked explicitly whether
position played any role in their reasoning process all denied it. The
evidence from this and other studies thus suggests that people often
form mistaken beliefs about what reasoning processes they are
utilizing; as Nisbett and Wilson conclude, the evidence is "consistent
with the most pessimistic view concerning people's ability to report
accurately about their cognitive processes."
However interesting this result, Nisbett and Wilson's work might not
seem especially threatening to most proponents of infallibility, since
it concerns introspective access only to higher order reasoning
processes, and in particular, the ability to recognize outside
influences on those processes. But who would have ever thought that we
were infallible with respect to that? In contrast, empirical work on
"changeblindness," which calls into question our introspective access
to our current perceptual states, seems to pose a deeper threat.
According to work done by Kevin O'Regan (who works, ironically, at the
Universite Rene Descartes in France), subjects typically fail to
notice even large changes to objects in their visual field, as long as
the change occurs simultaneously with some other "disruption," such as
a blink or a mudsplash on a windshield. (See, e.g., O'Regan et al,
1999.)
One might try to qualify the infallibility thesis to address some of
the above objections. For example, one might restrict the
infallibility thesis only to those judgments that are made after
careful reflection. Alternatively, one might restrict the
infallibility thesis to a subclass of mental states. For example,
Jackson (1973) defends a limited infallibility thesis, claiming that
we are infallible only about our current phenomenal states. However,
Schwitzgebel (2005) adduces numerous considerations to suggest that we
should reject even these attenuated infallibility theses. According to
Schwitzgebel, we are prone to gross error even in introspective
judgments that are often taken to be epistemically the most secure,
namely, those about currently ongoing visual experience. Though we
typically assume that visual experience consists of a broad stable
field with imprecision or haziness only at the borders, introspective
experiments that force us to direct our attention away from the focal
center reveal that a surprisingly small portion of one's visual field
has any real clarity and precision. (See also Dennett 1991.)
b. Self-intimation
Another account of our privileged access stems from the doctrine of
self-intimation. A mental state is self-intimating if it is impossible
for a person to be in that mental state and not know that she is that
mental state. This doctrine is sometimes referred to as omniscience
(see Alston 1971); if whenever an individual is in a mental state she
has knowledge of that mental state, then that individual is omniscient
with respect to her own mental life. This doctrine is also sometimes
referred to as the transparency thesis – the claim that whatever
happens within a mind is completely transparent to it. (See Shoemaker
1990.) As such, the doctrine is closely associated with the Cartesian
conception of the mind. But though Descartes himself seemed to endorse
both infallibility and self-intimation, it is useful to note that they
can come apart. An individual might be infallible about her mental
states without the mental states being self-intimating; in such a
case, whatever beliefs she has about her mental states will be true,
but there may nonetheless be some mental states about which she has no
beliefs. Likewise, even if mental states are self-intimating, we might
still have false introspective beliefs. Self-intimation requires that
whenever an individual is in a mental state she will form the belief
that she is in that mental state, but it does not rule out her falsely
forming the very same belief when she is not in that mental state.
Like the infallibility thesis, the self-intimation thesis enjoys some
inherent plausibility. In fact, self-intimation may even seem to
follow from the very notion of a mental state. If what it is for an
individual to have a mental state is for her to be conscious of it,
how could self-intimation be denied? Insofar as we think of the mental
in terms of the conscious, and insofar as we think of being conscious
of a mental state as being aware of it, the self-intimation thesis
seems like a truism.
Unfortunately for the proponent of self-intimation, however, there are
two obvious problems with this line of reasoning. First, as the work
of Freud has suggested, we should not limit the mental to the
conscious. Second, the claim that consciousness should be analyzed in
terms of awareness is itself highly controversial. (See e.g.,
Armstrong 1981; Block 1995.)
This second point relates to Armstrong's case (1981) of the distracted
truck driver, which is often offered as an objection to the
self-intimation thesis. When driving for long periods of time at
night, a truck driver may suddenly "come to" and realize that he has
been driving for quite some time without being aware of what he has
been doing. Though the truck driver was clearly in a conscious state
while he was driving (after all, he was engaging in a fairly
sophisticated activity), he had no introspective awareness of that
state.
The self-intimation thesis also falls victim to many of the same
objections that plague the infallibility thesis. Just as we can have
false beliefs about many of our mental states, we may also fail to
form beliefs about many of our mental states. Even if the jealous
lover does not falsely believe that she is not jealous, she might
nonetheless fail to recognize her feelings of jealousy. In fact, the
only way that we are able to explain much of human behavior is to
assume that individuals often lack knowledge of their own mental
states. Why do the hero and the heroine bicker so much, to return to
an example from above? Presumably this occurs because they are unaware
of their true feelings for one another.
The proponent of the self-intimation thesis may be able to sidestep
some of these objections by limiting the scope of the thesis in an
appropriate way. Chisholm (1981) offers a self-intimation thesis
limited to conscious states about which an individual reflects, i.e.,
whenever an individual who is in a conscious state reflects on whether
she is in such a state, she will form a justified belief that she is
in such a state. In recent years Shoemaker has also championed a
limited version of the self-intimation thesis: "it is implicit in the
nature of certain mental states that any subject of such states that
has the capacity to conceive of itself as having them will be aware of
having them when it does, or at least will become aware of this under
certain conditions (e.g. if it reflects on the matter)." (Shoemaker
1988; see also Shoemaker 1995.) The mental states that Shoemaker has
in mind are beliefs and desires. Shoemaker argues for his version of
the self-intimation thesis by invoking considerations of Moore's
Paradox. Named for G.E. Moore, the paradox concerns assertions of the
form "P, but I don't believe that P" (e.g. "It is raining but I don't
believe that it is raining.") In short, Shoemaker argues that any
rational individual who has the first-order belief P will be able to
avoid holding Moore-paradoxical beliefs. Thus, assuming rationality,
the mere possession of a belief is enough to ensure that an individual
will believe that he has that belief. We will return to Shoemaker's
view in our discussion of the nature of introspection in Section 2.
c. Self-warrant
A third account of privileged access can be found in the notion of
self-warrant. As Alston (1976) defines the notion, "a self-warranted
belief enjoys an immunity from lack of justification; it cannot be the
belief it is and fail to be justified." If privileged access is to be
understood in terms of self-warrant, then that would mean that
whenever an individual has a belief about her own mental states, she
is justified in holding that belief. As was the case with the
infallibility claim, for this claim to be plausible it must presumably
be limited to beliefs formed by introspection: if an individual
believes on the basis of introspection that she is in a particular
mental state, then her belief is justified.
Importantly, in contrast to the proponent of infallibility, the
proponent of self-warrant does not claim that the relevant belief must
be true. Self-warrant leaves open the possibility of error. As such,
it is a considerably weaker claim than either of the two claims
previously considered. Moreover, there is something intuitively
plausible about it. Suppose that, on the basis on introspection, I
form the belief I intend to go to the faculty meeting this afternoon.
Granted, I might be wrong, and perhaps other people could supply me
with evidence that would convince me that I am wrong. But that said, I
have no reason to reject the belief. And that alone – when
introspective beliefs are in question – seems to justify me in holding
the belief. This point generalizes our introspective beliefs about
other conscious mental states as well. Typically, nothing is required
to justify an introspective belief about one's own conscious mental
state other than the fact that it is a belief about one's own
conscious mental state. As Alston (1976) argues, if someone were to
report to us that she presently is imagining a blue jay, or that she
is thinking about lunch, or that she has an itch on her left leg, then
we take it for granted that these reports are justified; "We would
unhesitatingly brand as absurd a request for justification such as
'Why do you believe that?', 'What reason do you have for supposing
that?', or 'How do you know that?'"
Against this, Gallois (1996) argues that invoking self-warrant cannot
provide an adequate explanation of the epistemic distinctiveness of
our introspective beliefs. Gallois suggests that ultimately there is
no way of understanding self-warrant except in terms of non-evidential
justification; any other analysis will lead to the implausible
conclusion that all beliefs are self-warranted. But that means that
what is really doing the work to explain the distinctive epistemic
nature of our introspective knowledge is the fact that it is
non-evidentially justified – the notion of self-warrant itself does no
explanatory work. Non-evidential justification will be discussed in
connection with the notion of immediacy, below.
d. Immediacy
An additional claim that is often made about an individual's
introspective access to her own mental states is that it is immediate
or direct. To claim that introspective access is immediate is to claim
that our introspective beliefs are non-inferential and
non-evidentially based. In this respect, our introspective beliefs are
significantly different from perceptual beliefs (and perhaps, from all
of our other beliefs as well).
Immediacy is often linked with infallibility. One reason that
introspective beliefs might be thought to be infallible is that they
are immediate; the fact that they are not inferred from any other
beliefs or based on any other evidence bestows on them an immunity
from error. This position is often associated with Russell, and in
particular, his distinction between knowledge by description and
knowledge by acquaintance: "We shall say that we have acquaintance
with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary
of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths." (Russell
1912) For Russell, the only things with which we have such
acquaintance are our current mental particulars, and when we are
acquainted with some such particular – when our access to it is
immediate – our judgments about it cannot be wrong:
At any given moment, there are certain things of which a man is
'aware,' certain things which are 'before his mind.' … If I describe
these objects, I may of course describe them wrongly, hence I cannot
with certainty communicate to another what are the things of which I
am aware. But if I speak to myself, and denote them by what may be
called 'proper names,' rather than by descriptive words, I cannot be
in error. (Russell 1910.)
Leaving aside the question of whether Russell is right to connect
immediacy with infallibility, a further question remains: can
immediacy provide us with an adequate understanding of privileged
access? Many philosophers have argued that it cannot. For example,
Alston (1971) complains that the notion of immediate awareness is not
well-understood. It will not help to try to comprehend the notion in
causal or special terms, since we do not have a good sense of how
these notions apply to mental states. He suggests further that even
once the notion is clarified, it still will not serve to explain our
privileged access. (Alston 1976). The primary problem concerns the
following question: What, exactly, are we supposed to have immediate
awareness of? Alston notes that we can have awareness of particulars
(my sensation of this patch of color) or facts (that this patch of
color is red). But since we do not enjoy privileged access with
respect to all of our beliefs about the particular, it looks as if
immediate awareness to particulars cannot do the work that it is
supposed to do. The problem does not arise if our immediate awareness
is of a particular fact about the particular – an immediate awareness
of the fact that this patch of color is red can explain why a belief
in that fact would be epistemically privileged. However, here we have
merely traded one problem for another, since it is not at all clear
what sense it makes to say that facts can be immediately apprehended.
Heil (1988) offers an additional reason to deny that immediacy or
directness gives us a sufficient explanation of privileged access.
According to Heil, a mental state's being one's own is neither
necessary nor sufficient for it to be knowable directly. It is
possible, in principle, that I might fail to know many of my mental
states directly, and it might further be possible that I might know
someone else's mental states directly. (Suppose, for example, that
Anne could be wired in such a way so that she is connected to Emily's
nervous system. In this case, Anne might know Emily's mental states
directly.) As he concludes, "a characterization of my privileged
access based exclusively on what is directly known is anemic, hence
unsatisfactory."
2. The Nature of Introspection
However we are to understand the special epistemic status of our
introspective judgments, we might naturally think that this status
owes to the nature of introspection. But what is the nature of our
introspective capacity? Philosophers who have attempted to answer this
question fall, broadly speaking, into two camps: those who give
observational models of introspection, and those who give
non-observational models of introspection. In what follows, we address
each of these accounts in turn. We will also briefly consider the
skeptical view of an additional camp of philosophers, those who deny
that there is any special introspective capacity for which to account.
a. Observational Models
One of the most common accounts of introspection is modeled on
perception: just as our perceptual capacity enables us to observe the
outer world, our introspective capacity enables us to observe the
inner world. As such, introspection can be thought of as an inner
sense. This view is often thought to have originated with Locke, who
claimed that one source of our ideas is:
the Perception of the Operations of our own Minds within us ….
This Source of Ideas, every Man has wholly in himself: And though it
be not Sense, as having nothing to do with external Objects; yet it is
very like it, and might properly enough be call'd internal Sense.
(Locke 1689/1975)
Armstrong (1968, 1981) is probably the main contemporary advocate of
the inner sense view. In the course of advocating a materialist theory
of mind, Armstrong advances a view of introspection as a self-scanning
process in the brain. According to Armstrong, the scanning state and
the state scanned must be distinct states: "although they are both
mental states, it is impossible that the introspecting and the thing
introspected should be one and the same mental state. A mental state
cannot be aware of itself, any more than a man can eat himself up."
(Armstrong 1968, 324) Having offered this consideration, which is
often referred to as the distinct existences argument, Armstrong also
argues that the relationship between the two states is causal.
Given this picture of introspection, it is no surprise that proponents
of the inner sense view typically reject several of the claims
discussed in Section 1 above. Since they view the introspective state
and the introspected state as distinct states, they claim that it must
be possible for one to occur without the other. Thus, they reject the
self-intimation claim. Since it seems possible that the scanning
mechanism could malfunction, they also reject the infallibility claim.
This does not mean, however, that the inner sense view of
introspection should be seen as deflationary. Lycan (1996), who offers
a version of Armstrong's self-scanning view, emphasizes the importance
of introspection to our mental lives: "Introspective consciousness is
no accident … As a matter of engineering, if we did not have the
devices of introspection, there would be no we to argue about, or to
do the arguing." Here Lycan stresses the evolutionary advantages
conferred by our capacity for introspection. The complexity of our
sensory, cognitive and motor systems demands that we be able to engage
in an internal monitoring of these systems.
In recent years, Shoemaker has been one of the most persistent critics
of the inner sense model of introspection. According to Shoemaker
(1994), if introspection were to conform to a perceptual model, even
one broadly construed, then it would have to satisfy two conditions.
The first is what he calls the "causal condition" – introspective
beliefs about one's own mental states are caused by those mental
states, by a reliable belief-producing mechanism. The second is what
he calls the "independence condition" – the existence of mental states
is independent of any introspective beliefs about them. Shoemaker's
main concern with the inner sense model is that introspection fails to
satisfy this second condition. His arguments here relate to his
arguments for the self-intimation thesis, discussed above. According
to Shoemaker, rationality demands that a creature be sensitive to her
own mental states, and thus it is of the essence of mental states to
reveal themselves to introspection. (See also Falvey 2000.)
Many of the additional criticisms of the inner sense view stem from
alleged disanalogies with "outer" sense. For example, there is no
organ of introspection the way that there are organs of sense
perception. Armstrong (1968) dismisses this criticism by noting that
even one of the outer senses – namely, proprioception – proceeds
without a sensory organ. Lormand (2000) makes the further point that
there are mental processes such as imagination, dreaming, and
hallucination that we think of as "sensory" even though they do not
proceed by way of organs of perception.
Another disanalogy arises from the fact that introspecting lacks any
distinctive phenomenology. Lyons (1986) takes this to show that it
cannot literally be a form of inner perception. Each of our other
senses has a distinct phenomenology; think, for example, of the
phenomenology of tasting or of touching. However, the phenomenology of
introspecting seems to derive wholly from what is being introspected;
in and of itself, there is nothing that it is like to introspect.
This last criticism relates to the so-called diaphanousness or
transparency of experience (not to be confused with the epistemic
transparency claim discussed above that is associated with the
Cartesian conception of mind). Experience is said to be transparent in
the sense that we 'see' right through it to the object of that
experience, analogously to the way we see through a pane of glass to
whatever is on the other side of it. For example, when I am having an
experience of a red tomato, and I try to focus on the experience,
there seems to be nothing on which I can train my focus except the
tomato itself. If experience is transparent in this way, then
introspection is not a matter of "looking within."
Moved by considerations of experiential transparency, some
philosophers – most notably Dretske (1995, 1999) – have offered a
perceptual model of introspection that differs dramatically from the
inner sense view. Dretske claims that all mental states are
representational states. But this means that there is no longer any
need, or any use, for the sort of internal scanning mechanism posited
by proponents of the inner sense view. Instead:
One becomes aware of representational facts by an awareness of
physical objects. One learns that A looks longer than B, not by an
awareness of the experience that represents A as longer than B, but by
an awareness of A and B, the objects the experience is an experience
of. On a representational theory of the mind, introspection becomes an
instance of displaced perception—knowledge of internal (mental) facts
via an awareness of external (physical) facts. (Dretske 1995)
On this displaced perception view, then, not only should we reject the
infallibility thesis and the self-intimation thesis, but we should
also reject the immediacy thesis. Introspective knowledge for someone
like Dretske will be inferential knowledge – inferred from our
knowledge of the external world.
In addition to the displaced perception view, there are other views
that are at least broadly speaking observational views of
introspection but yet deny that introspection should be construed
along the lines of the traditional inner sense view. For example,
Nichols and Stich (2003a, 2003b; see also Nichols 2000) have offered a
view of introspection that works by way of a "monitoring mechanism."
The input to the mechanism is one's own mental state; the output is a
belief that one has that mental state. As stated, the monitoring
mechanism sounds very much like Armstrong's self-scanning mechanism,
and thus looks like a version of the inner sense model of
introspection. However, the view proposed by Stich and Nichols differs
from standard versions of the inner sense view in its explicit denial
that the monitoring mechanism detects the presence of the inputted
mental state by way of phenomenological features.
b. Non-Observational Models
In the previous section, we saw Shoemaker's criticisms of the
inner-sense model of introspection. Having developed these criticisms,
Shoemaker (1988, 1990, 1994) offers his own view of how introspection
works. This view is not observational. Rather, on Shoemaker's view,
there is a constitutive connection between being in a mental state and
having introspective knowledge about that state: "Our minds are so
constituted, or our brains are so wired, that for a wide range of
mental states, one's being in a certain mental state produces in one,
under certain conditions, the belief that one is in that mental
state." (Shoemaker 1994)
For Shoemaker, this constitutive connection owes to the fact that we
are rational creatures. It is an essential part of being rational that
a being has the capacity for introspection. Shoemaker argues for this
by primarily by invoking considerations of Moore's Paradox (see above;
section 1c). This argument aims to show that 'self-blindness' is not
possible; in order to explain an individual's possession of an
introspective belief about a given mental state, we need only to
invoke the fact that the individual has the relevant mental state plus
normal intelligence, rationality, and conceptual capacity.
A similar account is offered by Gallois (1996), who argues that
whenever I have a justified belief, I am entitled to infer from what I
believe to the fact that I so believe it. This non-evidential
inference will be made by any rational creature, since it is the only
way that we can make sense of the world around us; in the absence of
such an inference, an individual will not be able to contrast her
beliefs about the world with the world as it actually is. What would
result, according to Gallois, is an irrational view of the world
around us. Thus, rationality demands the self-attribution of beliefs.
Gallois then offers related considerations to show that rationality
also demands the self-attribution of other mental states. For example,
unless we attribute perceptual states to ourselves, we will be unable
to contrast how the world appears to us with how it actually is.
Obviously, the plausibility of the sort of non-observational account
that Shoemaker and Gallois offer will depend on the notion of
rationality involved. Additionally, proponents of this sort of
non-observational account must defend themselves against charges of
circularity. Briefly put, the charge of circularity arises since it
might naturally be thought that an adequate account of rationality
will have to make reference to our introspective capacity. (See Kind
2003 and Siewert 2003 for criticisms of Shoemaker's account.)
The Theory Theory of self-awareness (TTSA) offers a very different
kind of non-observational model. TTSA derives directly from the
"Theory Theory," a view which claims that an individual's network of
commonsense folk-psychological beliefs constitute a theory which she
uses to explain and predict the behavior of others. Typically, this
inferential, theory-based understanding that we achieve of others'
mental states is contrasted with the direct, non-inferential
understanding that we can have of our own mental states. Recent
results from developmental psychology, however, call this contrast
into question. For example, Gopnik (1993; see also Gopnik and Meltzoff
1994) presents evidence that very young children make errors about
their own psychological states parallel to the kinds of errors that
they make about others' psychological states. These errors are not
easily explained if we assume a sharp divide between the way we come
to know about our own mental states and the way we come to know about
others' mental states. Gopnik thus concludes that the child's theory
of mind applies not only to others but to herself as well:
The important point is that the theoretical constructs themselves,
and particularly the idea of intentionality, are not the result of
some direct first-person apprehension that is then applied to others.
Rather, they are the result of a cognitive construction. The child
constructs a theory that explains a wide variety of facts about the
child's experience and behavior and about the behavior and language of
others.
Recent research on autism and schizophrenia is also often cited by
proponents of TTSA. For example, Carruthers (1996b) discusses
experimental results suggesting that autistic individuals lack
introspective access to many of their own current mental states. If we
think of autism as a kind of "mind-blindness," then these results are
exactly what would be predicted by TTSA.
In developing his own version of TTSA, however, Carruthers (1996a)
departs from Gopnik's claim that self-knowledge is inferential.
Rather, Carruthers thinks that mental states should be thought of as
akin to the theoretical entities of physics; they are the theoretical
entities of folk psychology. Introspection should likewise be thought
of as akin to the kind of theory-laden perception that often goes on
in the physical sciences. For example, armed with the appropriate
background information, a physicist might sometimes simply see that
electrons are being emitted by the substance that she is studying.
Likewise, claims Carruthers, each of us can sometimes simply see –
"that is, know intuitively and non-inferentially" – what mental states
we have. Depending on what sense we make of Carruthers invocation of
"seeing" here, this version of the TTSA might be best classified as an
observational model of introspection (though obviously one that is
quite different from the traditional inner-sense view).
Opponents of this view typically raise two very different sorts of
criticisms. First, they criticize the data for the theory, suggesting
that the research from developmental psychology does not in fact
support the conclusions that proponents of TTSA want to draw. For
example, Nichols (2000) argues that there are developmental
asynchronies between a child's ability to posit knowledge and
ignorance to herself and her ability to posit knowledge and ignorance
to others. Were TTSA to be true, however, we should expect these
abilities to develop in parallel. Second, they criticize the theory
itself. For example, Nichols and Stich (2003b) argue that the theory
is underdescribed in one very critical respect. For TTSA to be
plausible, the proponent has to allow that there is special
information available in the first-person case that is not available
in the third-person case. But proponents of TTSA have no plausible
account of what this special information might be. Consider Gopnik's
remark that "we may well be equipped to detect certain kinds of
internal cognitive activity in a vague and unspecified way, what we
might call 'the Cartesian buzz'." (Gopnik 1993) Stich and Nichols
reasonably note that the postulation of some mysterious 'buzz' does
not offer much help in this regard.
c. Skepticism about Introspection
Many philosophers who take a skeptical view towards introspection were
influenced by the views of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is often
associated with a view called expressivism about introspection, i.e.,
the claim that what appear to be introspective reports of our mental
states are in fact not reports at all, but rather mere expressions of
those mental states. Saying "I am in pain" is akin to saying "ouch."
As expressions, rather than reports, of one's pain, neither of these
utterances has any propositional content. Such expressions, in other
words, are non-cognitive. This view parallels expressivism in ethics,
where utterances like "Giving money to charity is morally right" and
"Killing an innocent person is wrong" are interpreted as expressions
of approval and disapproval. Whether Wittgenstein actually was an
expressivist about introspection is, as is often the case with
Wittgensteinian interpretation, a complicated and controversial
exegetical question. But certainly some of his remarks are at least
suggestive of expressivism, as for example when he says: "the verbal
expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it."
(Wittgenstein 1958)
It is worth noting that some philosophers have recently embraced
expressivism without embracing skepticism about introspection. The
basic line is to divorce expressivism from non-cognitivism, i.e., to
deny that mental state self-ascriptions are reports without denying
that such self-ascriptions can be judged true or false. In this
spirit, Falvey (2000) argues that the denial that mental state
self-ascriptions are reports amounts only to the denial of the
observational model of introspection. Mental state self-ascriptions
can be truth-apt even if they are mere expressions. His subsequent
account of self-knowledge hinges on the notion of sincerity of
utterance. According to Falvey, when an individual sincerely
self-ascribes a mental state, the sincerity of her utterance will
guarantee that she is in that mental state. Although Falvey recognizes
that in general the sincerity of an utterance is not sufficient for
the truth of that utterance, he argues that mental state
self-ascriptions are special in that the gap between sincerity and
truth collapses. Moreover, the absence of this gap is what explains
privileged access. (See Bar-On 2005 for a different version of
neo-expressivism.)
An additional source of skepticism about introspection comes from the
rejection of the Cartesian picture of the mind. Cartesianism
encourages us to think of the mind like a theater in which the ongoing
show can be viewed by only one individual, the person whose mind it
is. Critics of Cartesianism suggest that this picture seduces us into
falsely positing a faculty for viewing the show, i.e., a faculty of
introspection. Along with the rejection of Cartesianism, they urge the
rejection of any commitment to a faculty of introspection.
One such critic is Ryle, who argues that the standard philosophical
view of introspection is a logical mess. (Ryle 1949) His primary
criticism takes the form of a regress argument. On the standard view,
self-knowledge consists in a higher-order attention to some
lower-order state. But this entails that we would also have to attend
to the higher-order state. And the situation is actually even worse
than this, since the state of attending to that higher-order state
would itself have to be attended to, and so on, leading to a vicious
infinite regress.
Importantly, in rejecting introspection, Ryle does not deny that we
can attain self-knowledge. We can achieve self-knowledge exactly the
same way that we can achieve knowledge of other people, namely, by
drawing inductive conclusions on the basis of observed behavior. As
this suggests, skepticism about introspection goes along with a
rejection of privileged access. On Ryle's view, there is nothing
epistemically special about our judgments about our own mental states.
In fact, not only do we typically fail to be in a better position to
make judgments about our own mental states than about others' mental
states, or than the position others are in with respect to one's own
mental states, but we might on occasion be in a worse position. After
all, one is often inclined to view one's self with a considerable lack
of objectivity.
In a similar spirit to Ryle's account of introspection is Lyons'
(1986) "replay" account of introspection, according to which
introspection is simply a process of perceptual replay. For example,
if someone introspects in order to determine whether she is angry at
her colleague, Lyons claim that what she will do is to call to mind
the things that she did when she was last with the colleague, – what
she said, how she reacted, etc. In sum, for Lyons introspection "is
not a special and privileged executive monitoring process, over and
above the more plebeian processes or perception, memory, and
imagination; it is those processes put to a certain use."
Dennett, one of Ryle's most famous students, is also skeptical of
standard views of introspection. According to Dennett, in many
instances where we think we are introspecting, we are actually
theorizing. (Dennett 1991) Moreover, since we are notoriously bad at
this theorizing, our first-person access to our own mental states is
considerably less privileged than is commonly thought.
3. Introspection and the Nature of Mind
Having discussed the epistemic status and the nature of introspection,
we now turn briefly to two claims about introspection which have
played significant roles in discussions of the nature of mind. First,
we discuss whether introspection can provide a criterion of mentality.
Second, we discuss whether introspection can provide support for a
dualist answer to the mind-body problem. Both of these claims are
associated with Descartes, and both have come under fire in recent
discussions of philosophy of mind.
a. Introspectibility as a Mark of the Mental
In claiming that the mind is transparent, Descartes was in essence
making a claim about the scope of introspection: the introspective
capacity has complete access to all of the contents of the mind. This
gives rise to a further claim associated with a Cartesian conception
of mind, namely, that introspectibility is the mark of the mental. For
Descartes, there is nothing to the mind but that which is accessible
to introspection.
In making this claim, Descartes should not be seen as committed to the
implausibly strong view that a state must actually be introspected in
order to count as a mental state. An individual can have mental states
that, at any particular moment, are not present to her consciousness.
For example, of the many beliefs that an individual holds, only a very
few are occurrent at any point and time. Most of them are
non-occurrent – they are standing beliefs that are recalled to
consciousness only when needed. Take your belief that 6+7=13;
presumably, before reading the previous sentence, that belief was not
present to your consciousness. But the fact that it was not then being
introspected does not incline us to deny that you then held the
belief.
The accessibility that Descartes has in mind is accessibility in
principle. Although prior to reading the sentence above you were not
introspectively accessing your belief that 6+7=13, you could in
principle have introspectively accessed that belief at any time. A
belief remains introspectively accessible in principle even if there
are many moments in time in which the belief is not being
introspected. You might have some mental states to which it is more
difficult to gain introspective access. In some cases it might require
careful reflection; in other cases, it might even require some kind of
psychoanalysis. But as long as the state can, in principle, be brought
to consciousness, Descartes counts the relevant state as mental.
The problem, however, is that there are some states that we
intuitively think of as mental states but that seem even in principle
inaccessible to introspection. At least since the work of Freud, we
have recognized the existence of mental states that are deeply
unconsciousness. There can be some desires, for example, that are so
deeply repressed that they cannot be made available to introspection
even with the best psychoanalysis that money can buy. Such states, in
other words, are not even in principle accessible to introspection.
With some slight tweaking to our accessibility-in-principle claim, it
might be possible to avoid this problem. For example, Brook and
Stainton (2000) offer the following suggestion. Consider some deeply
unconscious states that we are assuming are not even introspectively
accessible in principle. In other words, no matter how hard you were
to try, you could not bring them to introspective awareness.
Nonetheless: "were you to become aware of them, (directly aware of
them, not aware of them by inferring them from behavior or something
else), it would be by becoming able to introspect them." The only way
you could have direct access to such states, in other words, would be
through introspection.
Even this suggestion, however, is not enough to save the claim that
introspectibility is the mark of the mental. First of all, it is not
clear how we should evaluate the above counterfactual conditional,
given that the mental states in question are ex hypothesi inaccessible
to introspection. Second of all, there is another class of mental
states for which it is even harder to make sense of the supposition
that we could become aware of them directly. Consider here any states
that are typically thought to be at the "sub-personal" level. For
example, if we accept Chomsky's theory of language acquisition, each
of us mentally represents all sorts of basic linguistic rules. These
representations, however, are inaccessible in principle to
introspection. Moreover, these states – unlike the sorts of repressed
desires just considered – do not even seem to be suitable targets for
introspective awareness.
For these reasons, it is unlikely that we will be able to use
introspectibility as a criterion of the mental. Perhaps
introspectibility can serve as a sufficient condition for a state's
being a mental state, but it cannot provide us with a necessary
condition. Despite what Descartes thought, our mental life seems to
outrun our introspective capacity.
b. Introspective Arguments for Dualism
In the Second Meditation, Descartes (1641) presents the famous line of
reasoning often referred to as the Cogito – I think, therefore I am.
Even if a powerful demon were to deceive me about the external world,
"he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think
that I am something." And so Descartes concludes that he can be
certain that he exists.
Having achieved certainty about his existence, however, Descartes does
not yet have any certain knowledge about what kind of being he is. He
then goes on to examine the nature of the human mind. The course of
this examination has suggested the following argument:
1. Descartes cannot doubt that he (his mind) exists.
2. Descartes can doubt that his body exists.
3. Descartes' mind is not the same thing as Descartes' body, i.e.,
dualism is true.
Whether Descartes intended to be using the reflections of the Second
Meditation to be offering this argument for dualism is a thorny
exegetical question that we sidestep here. For our purposes, the
question is whether these considerations do support dualism. More
specifically, we are interested in closely related considerations that
specifically invoke introspection:
1. Mental states are known by introspection.
2. Brain states are not known by introspection.
3. Therefore, mental states are not identical to brain states.
According to Leibniz' Law, if a has a property that b lacks, then a is
not identical to b. Here we seem to have found a property that mental
states have that brain states lack, namely, that they are known by
introspection. Unfortunately for the dualist, however, this argument
commits an intensional fallacy. For Leibniz' Law to apply, the
property in question must be extensional, that is, it must apply to an
object independently of how we refer to that object. In this case, the
property "is known by" fails to be extensional.
Faced with this objection, the dualist might offer the following
amended argument:
1. Mental states are knowable by introspection.
2. Brain states are not knowable by introspection.
3. Therefore, mental states are not identical to brain states.
The dualist can plausibly claim that the property invoked by this
argument – being knowable by introspection – is a genuine, extensional
property, and thus he can avoid the intensional fallacy committed by
the previous argument. But this argument falls victim to a related
objection, as explicated by Churchland (1985). According to
Churchland, the materialist has no reason to accept premise 2: "if
mental states are indeed identical with brain states, then it is
really brain states that we have been introspecting all along, though
without appreciating their fine-grained nature." The fact that
temperature is identical to mean molecular kinetic energy means that
we can sense mean molecular kinetic energy by feeling, whether we
realize that's what we're sensing by feeling or not. The fact that we
don't realize that we can introspect brain states does not mean that
mental states are not identical to brain states.
In contemporary discussions of the mind-body problem, the above
argument from introspection has not played much of a role. However,
related considerations from introspection are still in play. For
example, Chalmers (1996) offers an argument from "epistemic asymmetry"
to show that consciousness cannot be reductively explained. According
to this argument:
Our grounds for belief in consciousness derive solely from our own
experience of it. Even if we knew every last detail about the physics
of the universe … that information would not lead us to postulate the
existence of conscious experience. My knowledge of consciousness, in
the first instance, comes from my own case, not from any external
observations. It is my first-person experience of consciousness that
forces the problem on me.
Although this passage (and Chalmers' discussion of the argument) does
not specifically mention introspection, it seems clear that the way
one gains first-person experience of consciousness is through
introspection.
More generally, many of the contemporary arguments offered in
discussions of the mind-body problem rely on premises that can only be
supported by introspection, or by introspective projection. Consider,
for example, Jackson's Knowledge Argument. Mary, who is locked in a
black and white room and has never had any color sensations, learns
every physical fact there is about color. Nonetheless, claims Jackson,
when she leaves the room and sees a ripe tomato for the first time,
she will learn some new fact about the color red. Thus, there are
facts that escape the physicalist story. (Jackson 1982) Whether or not
this argument succeeds in establishing the falsity of physicalism is
hotly debated, but for our purposes, what's most important is the
following question: how can we judge the truth of Jackson's claim that
Mary learns (or even seems to learn) a new fact about color when she
leaves the room? What we must do, it seems, is to imagine ourselves in
Mary's position and judge what we think our epistemic position would
be upon exiting the room. In other words, we engage in a sort of
introspective projection. In this way, introspection continues to play
a key role in this and many other arguments relating to the mind-body
problem.
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