Rethinking Introspection

A Pluralist Approach to the First-Person Perspective

J. Butler

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349447671, 9781137280374
• eBook ISBN: 9781137280381
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geist & Körper in der Philosophie

Offering a pluralist framework for understanding the nature, scope, and limits of self-knowledge from the first-person perspective, Rethinking Introspection argues that, contrary to common misconceptions, introspection does not operate through inner perception but rather develops out of a diverse array of mental states and cognitive processes.

1

Introspection as Inner Perception

Literally speaking, the term ‘introspection’ means to look within. The concept of introspection thereby suggests an ability to perceive within oneself. If we regard introspection in this literal manner, we are led to posit a perceptual faculty in the mind through which we observe our own mental states. Just as we perceive the external world through specific perceptual mechanisms, such as eyes, ears, and skin, we might perceive internal events through some similar sort of mechanism or process that is specially aimed toward the perception of mental states. A number of people, both past and present, have regarded introspection along these lines. Moreover, ordinary talk of a ‘mind’s eye’ or ‘looking within’ oneself likewise suggests some kind of perceptual process regarding introspection. However, as I will argue later, there are good reasons for thinking that this view of introspection is mistaken as a literal account of what goes on in our minds when we come to know our own mental states. Dismissing this common view of introspection will open the concept of introspection to a broader range of understanding and analysis. It will allow us to conceive of introspection not as a singular mechanism or process, but rather as a metaphor for our diverse and heterogeneous capacities to obtain knowledge of our own minds.

Before explaining why we should dismiss the perceptual account of introspection, however, I will first survey how common and prominent this viewpoint has been and, to a large extent, continues to be, through an overview of perspectives that express, defend, or tacitly assume some version or other of the perceptual account of introspection. My purpose here is not to give a comprehensive survey or analysis of these viewpoints, but rather to illustrate the commonality of the perceptual model as it appears both throughout history and in contemporary thought. Readers already familiar with perceptual accounts of introspection in philosophy and science may wish to skip ahead to the next chapter, though the material here will clarify the target of the criticisms I will make there.

Historical overview

First of all, many historically significant and influential philosophers either assumed or endorsed a perceptual account of introspection. Although some earlier figures might be noted here, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas (Lyons, 1986, pp. 1–2; Wallace, 2000, p. 76), let us begin with the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes, at the dawn of what William Lyons dubbed ‘the golden age of introspection’ (1986, p. 2ff). As you may know, Descartes sought an indubitable foundation for knowledge through first-person reflection. At the core of this pursuit was his reliance upon his introspective knowledge of his own mind. Through ‘clear and distinct’ (seemingly) observation of the contents of his own mind, Descartes constructed his epistemic and metaphysical framework for philosophy. Consider, for example, his (in)famous observation of himself as an immaterial soul:

Then I looked carefully into what I was. I saw that while I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world and no place for me to be in, I still couldn’t pretend that I didn’t exist. I saw on the contrary that from the mere fact that I thought about doubting the truth of other things, it followed quite evidently and certainly that I existed; ... This taught me that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature is simply to think [here = ‘to be in conscious mental states’], and which doesn’t need any place, or depend on any material thing, in order to exist. Accordingly this me – this soul that makes me what I am – is entirely distinct from the body, is easier to know than the body, and would still be just what it is even if the body didn’t exist (Descartes, 1637, Part IV).

There is much to say about this passage and the reasoning behind it, which arguably set the study of the mind on a misguided course from which we are still recovering today (see, e.g., Wheeler, 2005; Rowlands, 2010), but for our immediate purposes the thing to note is the emphasis on inner observation. The use of the words ‘looked’ and ‘saw’ is particularly revealing here; Descartes thought he could clearly and distinctly perceive his own nature as a conscious being, apart from his fallible sensory-mediated perceptions of the outer world, including his own body. In this respect, Descartes conceived of introspection as a kind of inner perception, albeit a very special and epistemically privileged perception that is quite distinct from ordinary sensory perception. To be precise, the elevated epistemic status of inner observation sets Descartes’ particular brand of introspection apart from other perceptual accounts of introspection, many of which regard introspection as fallible and epistemically on par with external perception. In fact, for this reason, some distinguish Cartesian introspection from perceptual accounts of introspection (e.g., Gertler, 2011), but his repeated emphasis on inner observation, irrespective of its epistemic standing, clearly places him in the perceptual account camp, broadly construed.

Moving along in history, the conception of introspection as a kind of perception is more explicitly articulated by the classical empiricist John Locke. After discussing the perception of sensible objects via ideas present in the mind, Locke goes on to say:

Secondly, The other Fountain, from which Experience furnisheth the Understanding with Ideas, is the Perception of the Operations of our own Minds within us, as it is employ’d about the Ideas it has got; which Operations, when the Soul comes to reflect on, and consider, do furnish the Understanding with another set of Ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are, Perception, Thinking, Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the different actings of our own Minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our Understandings, as distinct Ideas, as we do from Bodies affecting our Senses. 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. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this REFLECTION, the Ideas it affords being such only, as the Mind gets by reflecting on its own Operations within it self. (Locke, 1689/1975, Book II, Chapter I, Section 4, p. 105).

So, according to Locke, we perceive the inner workings of our minds through a kind of observational faculty, which he calls ‘reflection’. Although he distinguishes this faculty from ‘sensation’, reserving the latter term for our perceptual access to the external world, Locke regards this internal operation of the mind as similar enough to ordinary sense perception to warrant the characterization of it as an ‘internal Sense’. He speaks of introspective reflection as observing the operations of the mind, perceiving them in much the same way that we perceive external objects. The epistemic status of Lockean inner sense is thereby quite different from Cartesian introspection, but both share the idea that we conscious beings have a first-person mode of observation toward our own minds.

A similar inner sense account of introspection is found in the work of Immanuel Kant, who inherited and transformed many of the ideas of the modern period, both rationalist and empiricist. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant speaks repeatedly of ‘inner sense’ as a faculty by which we perceive mental phenomena. For instance, in regard to our knowledge of both internal and external objects, Kant states that

The relation of sensibility to an object and what the transcendental ground of this [objective] unity may be, are matters undoubtedly so deeply concealed that we, who after all know even ourselves only through inner sense and therefore as appearance, can never be justified in treating sensibility as being a suitable instrument of investigation for discovering anything save always still other appearances ... (Kant, 1781/1929, A278/B334, p. 287)

The basic idea here is that sensory objects can only be known as appearances (rather than as they are ‘in themselves’), and that this applies not only to external objects but also to internal mental objects as well, including the self. So, just as we come to know of tables, chairs, trees, and people through the appearances they produce in our senses, we likewise come to know of our own mental lives by their appearing to us through some kind of inner sensory modality. While there may be some difficulties in translating Kant’s own rather idiosyncratic terminology over to our now common talk of introspection, the similarities are clear enough to show that Kant, like many philosophers and theorists before and after him, thought that we obtain knowledge of our own minds in some kind of perceptual manner, whatever the specific mechanism of this inner sense may be.

Moving along toward the twentieth century, William James is another notable philosopher (and psychologist) who characterizes introspection as a kind of perception. In describing his general methodology for psychology, James famously states that:

Introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined – it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. Every one agrees that we there discover states of consciousness. (James, 1890, vol. 1, chapter VII)

This is the most direct and confident commitment to the perceptual model of introspection we have seen thus far, perhaps illustrating the solidification of this perspective in the investigation of the mind over time. James asserts that it is so obvious that introspection is a kind of mental perception that it need not even be explained, and regards this obviousness as so fundamental that it provides his foundation for empirical psychological research.

James exhibits a very common intuition here, one that can be traced back to Descartes (if not earlier) and persists to this day, simply taking it for granted that we somehow literally observe the contents of our own minds. I will later argue that this view of introspection is not nearly as obvious as it seems if we attend closely to the phenomenology of first-person experience, and that what we have here is not a literal understanding of introspection but rather the persistent application of perceptual metaphor to non-perceptual cognitive processes. For the time being, however, the point to notice is how obvious and basic it seems to James that introspection is a kind of perception. To James, and to many others before and after him, it is simply given that we observe our own conscious mental states through a perceptual faculty called introspection.

Perceptual models of introspection in Psychology

The characterization of introspection as a kind of perception was put to practical use by a group of early psychologists that is now referred to, often in a somewhat pejorative manner, as the ‘introspectionists’ (Boring, 1953; Danziger, 1980; Lyons, 1986; Schwitzgebel, 2004). Most notably, this includes the work of Wilhelm Wundt and E. B. Titchener. Like James, these introspectionists took introspection, as the inward perception of mental states, to be a foundational method for psychological research. Unlike James, however, they tried to narrow and sharpen the focus of introspection like a scientific instrument, so that it could operate more precisely than it does in everyday life. By training experimental subjects to isolate their introspective observations, the introspectionists sought to uncover the basic constituents of experience, much as chemists empirically investigated the basic constituents of physical substances in the construction of the periodic table. However, as those familiar with the history of psychology will know, different introspection-based research projects came up with different, and even opposed, results.¹ Such conflict paved the way for other foundational psychologists to dismiss the use of introspection, and the very different behaviorist approach came to prominence as a foundation for the relatively newborn science of psychology. Even though behaviorism has also since gone by the wayside (for the most part), its rejection of ‘introspectionism’ as a psychological approach still has an impact on psychological research, with almost univocal prominence being given to third-person observation and analysis in mainstream psychological methodologies, at least as they are often officially advertised and described, tacit reliance on verbal reports notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, the characterization of introspection as a kind of perception has continued in psychology. For instance, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, in a book titled The Inner Eye, gives a central role to inner perception in his account of social intelligence (1986). To name another influential example, Ulric Neisser speaks of self-perception in his descriptions of ecological and interpersonal self-knowledge (1993), though he fails to distinguish between the importantly different notions that self-knowledge can be gained through a process of self-perception and that one can gain self-knowledge through ordinary sensory perception (the latter being both quite plausible, and entirely compatible with a rejection of inner perception, as we will see). It is worth noting here that conceiving of introspection as inner perception and rejecting inner perception as a psychological method is not necessarily inconsistent. In particular, it is possible to hold that introspection is a kind of perception without thinking that such perception should be the basis for psychological research. Perhaps, for instance, it is a particularly inaccurate or biased kind of perception and therefore cannot be a trustworthy source of information. In fact, such a view of introspection can be found in recent work in psychology, with use of the term ‘self-perception’ to characterize fallible and biased first-person perception of one’s own mental states (See Silvia and Gendolla, 2001, for instance). This term often occurs with little or no conception or elaboration regarding what this ‘self-perception’ is supposed to be, in terms of actual, concrete processes. Rather, it seems to be simply assumed, just as we saw above with William James and others, that people access their own psychological states in a perceptual manner. Despite the demise of introspectionism in psychology, the view that humans understand themselves through some kind of internal mental perception persists in contemporary psychology.

Inner perception in contemporary philosophy of mind

I will now turn to some prominent contemporary philosophers who explicitly articulate and defend the claim that introspection is a kind of perception. First up is David Armstrong and his influential characterization of introspective consciousness as inner perception. In explaining his account of introspective consciousness, Armstrong utilizes the example of a long-distance truck driver. He states that ‘After driving for long periods of time, particularly at night, it is possible to “come to” and realize that for some time past one has been driving without being aware of what one has been doing’. (1997, p. 723). The idea is that such a person, prior to ‘coming to’, is lacking introspective consciousness. The driver is perceptually aware of the environment, at least insofar as such awareness is required for driving, but not self-reflectively aware of her awareness itself. For Armstrong, this lack of awareness is a lack of perceiving one’s own mental states. In illustration of this, he states

What is it that the long-distance truck driver lacks? I think it is an additional form of perception, or, a little more cautiously, it is something that resembles perception. But unlike sense-perception, it is not directed toward our current environment and/or our current bodily state. It is perception of the mental. Such ‘inner’ perception is traditionally called introspection, or introspective awareness. (1997, p. 724)

Like Locke, Armstrong distinguishes between ordinary sensory perception and introspection while still regarding them as similar enough to classify introspection as a kind of ‘inner’ perception. Although he hints at some caution on this point, it is clear that Armstrong adopts a perceptual account of introspection. In fact, he directly affirms the Kantian viewpoint we looked at earlier:

I believe that Kant suggested the correct way of thinking about introspection when he spoke of our awareness of our own mental states as the operation of ‘inner sense’. He took sense-perception as the model for introspection. By sense-perception we become aware of current physical happenings in our environment and our body. By inner sense we become aware of current happenings in our own mind. (1968, p. 95)

So, like Kant and others, Armstrong thinks that we come to know our own mental states by perceiving them in a sensory or sensory-like manner, just as we come to know about external objects through our various senses. However, unlike the other philosophers we have looked at so far, but like most philosophers today, Armstrong is a materialist and devotes much of his work to understanding the mind in terms of physical processes. Following this general orientation towards the mental, Armstrong suggests that introspection, as a physical process, occurs through a self-scanning process in the brain: ‘ ... it will be a process in which one part of the brain scans another part of the brain. In perception the brain scans the environment. In awareness of the perception another process in the brain scans that scanning’. (1968, p. 94). Through this materialist viewpoint on the inner perception model of introspection, Armstrong characterizes introspection as a contingent, fallible process manifested in the complex machinery of the brain. Just as our eyes can make mistakes in perceiving the world around us, through various physical ailments and other sources of error, so too can our brain scanner make mistakes when perceiving our own mental states. From Armstrong’s perspective, it seems that the only substantial conceptual difference between introspection and ordinary sense perception is in terms of what they are directed towards. One is directed inward, while the others are directed outward, but otherwise they are of the same sort of physical process with parallel epistemic status, involving the fallible perception of objects through specific mechanisms contingently manifested in the human mind.

The contemporary ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Introspection as Inner Perception
• 2  Poking Out the Inner Eye
• 3  Introspection as a Metaphor
• 4  Knowing Our Own Consciousness
• 5  Introspection through Cognition
• 6  Understanding Our Own Beliefs and Desires
• 7  The Internal Monologue
• 8  On the Social Side of Self-Knowledge
• Conclusion: Is That All There Is?
• Notes
• References
• Index