This collection of essays addresses a perennial problem in philosophy: How do we know our own minds? The editors’ introduction gives the reader a good conceptual road map to navigate the essays, which “represent a wide range of diverse perspectives on the relationship between the psychology and the epistemology of introspection.” (5) This guide is particularly helpful given the philosophically technical nature of the book. Philosophers interested in different subfields of the discipline as well as psychologists and cognitive scientists should find this collection rewarding.

Introspection has been associated, at least since Descartes, with infallibility and privileged access. From the first-person perspective it seems that we cannot be wrong about our own mind and that the way we know our own minds is different from how we know other minds and other minds know us. Nowadays arguments favoring absolute infallibility are rare; but a defense of a limited infallibility about certain mental states is discussed in several chapters of the book. The nature of the kind of access that we have to our own minds is also a matter of heated debate.

Although most of the chapters discuss self-knowledge of beliefs, some of them also discuss self-knowledge of mental states like seeing or feeling pain. These, unlike beliefs, are usually considered to be accompanied by phenomenal consciousness, i.e. the what it is like to be in such a state. In most discussions it is a tacit assumption that we should aspire to find a single explanation of introspection for all kinds of mental states.

The book in fact begins with a skeptical discussion about the unity of introspection. Schwitzgebel claims that “there is no important, cognitively distinct process that is the process of introspection.” (34) He argues that a plurality of psychological processes take place during an introspective event, just as much a plurality of different processes govern different types of introspective events. In his piece, Dretske distinguishes between knowing what one thinks (which can be done by children and perhaps even animals), and knowing that one thinks (which requires cognitive sophistication from the subject such as learning the concept of knowledge and which is far from trivial). In response to Dretske, Stoljar argues that a trivial answer to the question “How do you know you are seeing X?” (e.g. “I know I see X because I’m seeing X”) is allowed as long as the question is seeking evidence. Whereas if the question is seeking an explanation, our expertise in knowing ourselves allows us to answer the question non-trivially. Either way, Stoljar thinks that by knowing the propositions that are the contents of one’s thoughts one can also know that one is thinking them.

The second and third parts of the book present positive views and criticisms of the nature of introspection. The proposals vary depending on what the author thinks introspection is based on: perception, inference, consciousness, or nothing at all. According to Gertler, subjects can refer to their sensations by introspective demonstratives (e.g. this pain) because they are directly acquainted with them. In the case of our own minds, in contrast to mind-independent objects, what is real and the way in which we know it overlap to certain extent. This means that there is a constitutive connection, and not merely a causal connection, between how things are and how we consciously experience them characteristic of introspection of phenomenal states.  

Siewert and Sosa join a large list of philosophers arguing that introspection should not be compared to perception or inner sense. Siewert rejects inner sense theories because there is no principled way of distinguishing phenomenologically between first-order and second-order sensing. The activity of an inner sense that perceives our sensing cannot be distinguished from the activity of the sensing itself, so, we should not postulate its existence. According to him we should not accept “the usual opposition of “inner” and “outer”. Attention to experience is not some senselike turn of a “gaze” to the “inside” away from the “outside”.” (164) Rather, we get to know about ourselves by asking the right questions.

On a somewhat similar line, Sosa argues that perceptual seemings characteristic of perception ought to be distinguished from introspective seemings because they have a different rational basis. Introspective seemings are justified only if they are based on the very mental state that one seems to be in, while perceptual seemings are based on sensory experience that accompanies our representations.

As part of a notable tradition that goes back to Ryle’s behaviorism, but that tries to distance itself from it, Byrne proposes an inferentialist account of introspection that relies on general rational capacities. He argues that we know that we see–just like we know we believe something–by following a simple rule: If you have a conscious visual experience of x and x is an F, believe that you see an F! One merit of Byrne’s approach is that it tries to explain both self-knowledge of beliefs and perceptual states, an integrative endeavor that many overlook.

Moran–like Stoljar–is bothered by Dretske’s challenge regarding non-trivial answers to the question: How do I know that I believe that p? Moran’s attractive, but complex, reply is that one can give such trivial answers only if one considers certain facts about rationality. In particular, by appealing to one’s rational entitlement to believe that one believes what one rationally ought to believe. This is explained in terms of transparency. Self-knowledge is transparent when, for answering the question “Do you believe that p?”, one just needs to answer–trivially from Dretske’s point of view–“p?”. The proposal, then, is that by answering a question about the world we constitute our beliefs about our beliefs.

The chapters of the third part gravitate around issues of infallibility. Infallibility about certain mental states can be defended by those views that found introspection on consciousness or on nothing, i.e. constitutive accounts that do not require a further justification for at least some introspective states. According to the latter, introspection is different from other ways of knowledge because it does not have to be based on something and can sometimes be infallible. Under these views, introspection is immune to certain errors because there is a necessary connection between some of our mental states and the authority we have about them. For example, we cannot be wrong about something looking red to us, because even though there was nothing red in front of us, it would still be true that it looks as if there was something red.

In Shoemaker’s paper (the only one not originally written for the book), it is argued that some mental states have to be available to us. For some mental states, it is a requirement of rationality that we are in such states if and only if we believe that we are in such states. For instance, I can only be in pain if I believe that I am in pain. Although compelling, the view suffers from a problem present in many other approaches: it is restricted to a miniscule subset of mental events.

In a similar line, Smithies argues that introspective self-knowledge should be understood as internal access to a justification. Unlike Shoemaker, he cashes out the notion of introspective accessibility in terms of conscious phenomenology instead of mere availability. Given the necessary connection in his account between rationality and introspection, his view entails that rational agents must be omniscient and infallible about their phenomenal mental states.

In contrast to Shoemaker and Smithies, Silins and Greenough deny that introspection is infallible. For Silins answering the question “p?” gives us, on one hand, justification for believing that we believe the answer. But, on the other hand, doing so does not necessarily reveal our true beliefs. But this means that we could have introspective justification to believe that we believe that p at the same time that we actually do not believe that p. Greenough presents a more general case against infallibility. He thinks that although some individual mental states can be known, there is no basic class of mental state that necessarily puts us in a position to form a justified belief that we are in such state.

The fourth, and last, part of the book presents articles that connect the nature of introspection and what the editors argue is the “subject matter of introspection” (19): phenomenally conscious states. Zimmerman’s chapter explores the relationship between introspection and visual experience. Both Spener and Horgan argue in their essays that although phenomenal character is self-presenting, it cannot be used to answer theoretical questions about such phenomenal character. Horgan is explicit about it: “Although the answers to these questions are fully determined by the (…) phenomenal character of experience, the answers cannot be simply “read off” from experience.” (420) These two last chapters represent a serious challenge for those who think that introspection is a good source for a theory of conscious experience.

The book can be seen as a twofold approach to the relationship between introspection and consciousness. Firstly, different views about the nature of introspection are offered and put under scrutiny. Secondly, the authors explicitly consider the constraints that different theories of introspection impose on theories of the nature of phenomenal consciousness and vice versa. This double approach concocted by the editors is certainly worth the reader’s time.

 

© 2013 Jorge Morales

 

Jorge Morales is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at Columbia University. He is interested in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, and in moral psychology.