Schwitzgebel, Eric - The Unreliability of Naive Introspection

06/20/2008

Philosophical Review, Vol 117 No 2 2008

This is a prolonged skeptical discussion about introspection and the notion of the infallibility of current conscious experience. The paper has more of a conversational style rather than present any logical arguments in an explicit format. Author first points out that most of the skeptics up until now have not questioned current conscious experience, leaving it instead as the last refuge. Author tries to show that introspection is unreliable in two ways (pg265):
1- it often goes wrong or yields the wrong results
2- it often fails to do anything or yield any result at all
Author says that we fail at 'assessing the causes of our mental states' for 'even the most basic features of our currently ongoing conscious experience'. (pg247) The only places in the philosophical/psychological communities where the author has seen arguments like this is possibly in the behaviorists (who reject the importance of introspection) or perhaps with 'Eastern meditative traditions'. (pg246-7)

Introspection is considered 'a species of attention to currently ongoing conscious experience'. Even though infallibilism is out of favor, most hold that in favorable circumstances introspection can 'reliably reveal at least the broad outlines of one's currently ongoing experience' (pg248).

iii. Author first discusses emotion, asking whether it is partially constituted by cognitive elements, or not? Are emotional states always felt phenomenally? Do emotional states like 'joy' have the same feel most of the time? (pg249-50) Author suggests that this is not just a matter of how we describe our CCE (current conscious experience) but that the qualia aren't entirely evident.

iv. Author then discusses introspection of particular instances of emotional experience (pg251-2), like the one you're having right now. Does introspection reveal it as clearly as your eyes reveal the place you're in? Consider another person pointing out that you're angry-- which you honestly deny because you don't feel anything.

v. Author next turns to introspection of CCE when it comes to perception. Author grants that CCE of vision perception is difficult to get wrong. (pg 252-3) Yet in dreams we do get CCE wrong; we make judgments that are 'baldly incoherent' about what our CCE is. For instance, author doubts that there is color in dreams, yet we judge there to be. So was our CCE of color, or not? This argument turns on our making the judgment that we experienced red when we didn't in fact experience red.

vi. Author asks us to consider visual perception-- we have a good handle on the visual worlds, especially within certain limits of focus, yet we mostly get wrong how narrow our focus is. We think it is a few feet wide, but in fact it is just a few inches. (pg254-6) If this is so, our CCE of our visual field is not as clear as we think it is. We're 'wrong about an absolutely fundamental and pervasive aspect of [our] sensory consciousness'. (pg256)

vii. Does thought have a distinctive phenomenal character, aside from imagery? After a seminar in 2002, philosophers disagreed 17-8, the majority saying yes, the minority saying that either 'imagery exhausts it' or 'no phenomenal character'. (pg257-8) Author suggests this is because there is no answer-- introspection fails.

viii. Author considers pain and paradigm cases of 'foveal colors'. But these are easy cases and using these 'rigs the game' (pg259-60) Can't we generate the belief we're in pain without the there being a pain in CCE? Why then do people think they're infallible? Because no one ever corrects us on these inner episodes.

ix. Sometimes I can say 'I'm thinking' and it is true. But this infallibility is 'cheap', since it is self-referentially supplying the conditions for truth. (pg260-1) This doesn't work as well when you say: 'I'm thinking of the entire Taj Mahal in full detail'. Author also suggests that many ways out of this doubt is to 'change the topic': is 'I'm thinking about x' really a judgment about CCE?

x. Author discusses an objection to his view: introspection shows how things appear to us; maybe we can be wrong about what those things actually are, but not how they appear. Author draws a distinction between epistemic 'appears' and 'phenomenal' appears. It might be possible that sometimes an epistemic report on CCE is infallible if the existence conditions equal the truth conditions. Yet a phenomenal report of 'appears' might be tainted by judgment or belief, like believing there's an optical illusion when there isn't one. (pg262-3)

x. Author casts doubt that CCE is so grossly different to allow for all these problems with divergence but also to be infallible. (pg264-5)

xi. Author considers the charge that he is pushing the limits of introspection, but thinks that if it moves from CCE, it is changing the topic. (pg266)

Lastly, author suggests that visual experience of the external world is much more stable than introspection of CCE.