In Introspection Vindicated,
Gregg Ten Elshof attempts to defend the perceptual model of introspection
(PMI), a view which has fallen on hard times in the philosophy of mind. The
book is quite short but very clearly written and densely populated with
argument. Elshof examines in detail some of the main contemporary arguments
that he considers responsible for the PMI’s demise. He argues that these
arguments have not been decisive and therefore PMI should be considered as a
viable competing model.

At the very beginning of his book, Elshof
states that he is going to discuss introspection as an issue in its own right,
that is, without addressing questions about whether PMI can be reconciled with
any particular theory of the mind. In addressing however issues related to
whether inner perception is necessary for phenomenality, Elshof is already
engaged in the first/higher order representationalist debate. In addition, it’s
not very clear why our preferred model of introspection shouldn’t have anything
to do with issues such as an interest for example, in defending some or other
version of a materialist understanding of the mind. As he himself observes, a
project to establish some or other model of self-knowledge would require a
systematic treatment of its implications for every field of inquiry for which
there were such implications.

Another
weakness of the book is that the author starts his discussion by rather
presupposing that introspection designates a non-inferential epistemic activity
thereby dismissing self-directed theoretical inference views (Rosenthal, 1990
or see Dretske, 1999 for the view that introspective knowledge is essentially
inferential) without argument (he barely discusses any of the competing
models). Moreover, Elshof spends almost no time to say anything positive about
PMI (e.g. questions such as whether inner perception represents features the
outer perception is of or features of the outer perception, remain unanswered)
and he cites no experimental evidence that favors a version of a perceptual
model of introspection. After all however, as the title indicates, Elshof’s
essay is a defense of PMI to the effect that the main arguments against that
model are inconclusive.   

PMI theorists portray introspection
as something like my looking inward and thereby finding out what’s going on in
my own mind. According to the Lockean classical view, the perception of the
operations of our own minds within us is not a sense as having nothing
to do with external objects; yet it is very like it, and might properly enough
be called internal sense. What makes us aware of the experiences we are
having is this sense, our introspective scanner. (There are contemporary ‘inner
sense’ models of introspection — or PMI — such as those defended by David
Armstrong 1981, and William Lycan 1996, 2003. What they mainly have against the
rival first-order Representationalist view — e.g. Dretske, 1999 — is first that
on this account to represent the content that P and introspectively
to know that content appears to be one and the same state of affairs and
introspection seems to be fallible; and second that the question of how
introspection yields justified belief is left unanswered. On the other hand,
one of the most prominent rivals of the inner sense view was Ludwig
Wittgenstein. According to him, whereas there is such a thing as introspection
there is no inner eye. There is nothing to perceive since there are no
inner conditions of observation which might be poor or optimal. On
Wittgenstein’s view, there is no difference between having a pain and being
aware or conscious of it).

According to Elshof (Ch. 2), the
central theses that characterize an account of introspection that is a version
of PMI are the following: By introspecting, human beings are engaging in some
form of reflection or inner perception of their own occurent mental states;
introspective access to these mental states is private; at least some first-level
mental states exist independently of the subject’s inner perception of them and
lastly, human beings sometimes acquire knowledge concerning their own mental
states by means of such inner perception (pp. 23-24). As we would hope, Elshof
takes care to draw a few distinctions such as the one between ‘inner’ and
‘outer’ perception. He says that the objects of introspection are ‘internal’ in
the sense that "there is a way of knowing about them which is
available only to S" (p. 14, emphasis in the original). What
primarily interests him in this book, as it were, is this way of knowing
and whether or not this way is like sense perception.

Elshof’s response to the early
arguments against PMI is to the effect that they are inconclusive against the
possibility of split consciousness (namely that the mind can simultaneously
split between ordinary thinking and awareness of that thinking) and consists
solely of a two-pages-long rejection of a couple of assumptions: Comte’s
assumption that ‘it is an organ which does the observing when
introspection occurs and …that it is an organ which is observed’ and
Brentano’s ‘general assumption … that the mind can only attend to one
thing at a time’ (p. 30). I guess this is far from being a detailed examination
of the historical arguments against PMI.

Elshof’s discussion of the
contemporary arguments against PMI begins in the rather short Ch. 3 where he
briefly discusses the positions of Lyons, Searle and Dennett on the matter.
Their views are nevertheless clearly and fairly represented and Elshof argues
quite convincingly that the arguments under discussion are inconclusive. In Ch.
4 & 5, he discusses Shoemaker’s view. His objection that inner perception
requires phenomenal ‘sense-data’ is rejected on familiar grounds: Inner sensings
are directed at one’s perceptions themselves and not at entities interposed
between objects and one’s perceptions of them. With respect to Shoemaker’s
critique against the broad perceptual model of introspection (in which the
objects are states of affairs), I find Elshof’s discussion to the effect that
there is a need for an account that allows for experiential awareness of our
beliefs, illuminating and convincing enough.  

In Ch. 5, Elshof makes the further
claim (against Shoemaker’s Humean denial of the introspectability of the self)
that one can have introspective access not only to individual states of mind,
but also to the self, itself. As he correctly observes, one of the conditions
that should be met in order for PMI to accommodate this claim is that our
epistemological access to the self parallels our epistemological access to the
external world (since it appears that in introspection there is no possibility
of misidentification of the object-self). Elshof says that the self stands to
introspection as the external world stands to perception and whereas there are
no natural conditions in which one might utter "someone is hungry all
right but I’m not sure if it is I" there are conditions in which it would
be perfectly natural for one to utter "I am experiencing some kind of
state but I’m not sure if it is hunger" (p.84). Elshof concedes that the
self does not present itself as an object in introspection as neither does
external reality (doesn’t present itself as an object in sense perception). So
if one doubts that the self exists one should in the same sense doubt that
external reality exists. 

The implicit analogy here is
between objects of external reality and states of the self. But if external
reality is the sum of all objects (or the states of affairs constituted by
these objects) and internal reality (the self) the sum of mental states of the
self I cannot see how can the self be something over and above the sum of its
states. Why should one think that a self might exist after all? That is, why
should one think that the analogy with external reality breaks here and whereas
external reality is the sum of its objects the self (the internal reality) is
something over and above the sum of its states? Nothing positive is said on
this connection and as things stand it’s difficult to see how Elshof’s view can
escape from succumbing to a Humean bundle theory of the self.

As previously mentioned, Elshof
rejects the view that it is an organ that does the observing when introspection
occurs. But what does it? What is the nature of the inner perception or
observation as opposed to outer perception (this is crucial for the PMI
theorist needs to explicate the four theses stated above)? In his very short
concluding section, Elshof argues that looking at an object is not sufficient
for attending. He claims that attention is a characteristic of inner perception
(not only of outer) since one can attend for instance, to his memory of Neil
Armstrong’s first step on the moon or to his memory of his first day at school,
which are not currently sense perceptible. According to Elshof, the commonality
between inner and outer perception is selective attention, which is what
grounds PMI. Initially, you will recall, we wanted to know the introspection’s
special way of knowing and what makes it particularly special in the
case of PMI. What we come to know is that ‘self-knowledge is no more
mysterious for being of something which is not sense perceptible since
knowledge of sense perceptible features of the world requires the exercise of
this same capacity’ (p.91, emphasis in the original). It’s not the case that
sense organs do the attending in outer perception either and therefore the same
action of attending is required both for knowledge of empirical objects and for
knowledge of our own cognitive operations.

© 2005 Dimitris
Platchias

Dimitris Platchias
is studying for a Ph.D. in philosophy in the University of Glasgow.  His main interests lie in the Philosophy of Mind
and especially in the Philosophy of Perception and Consciousness.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology