What....did I over-simplify?

You accused me of being arrogant in rejecting some collective experience, when all I’m rejecting is an idea.

(Sigh) — Mww

So, you don't deny our experience, just that what we experienced exists. Is that correct?

Or is it that what we experienced isn't introspection? But that can't be right, because earlier I defined "introspection" as "observing yourself the same way you observe the rest of the world," which is what I experienced.

What?!!? Hell, no. I got no right to reject anything of the sort. If someone said they were rejecting my experiences, I’d give ‘em a funny look and just walk away.

An idea is not, and never can be, an experience. Especially the idea involving one person, and the experience involving other persons.

I'm still confused. What is the idea you reject? If you could put it in a full sentence.

I deny that the idea of introspection does what you say it does.

And what it is he says it does?

you don't deny our experience, just that what we experienced exists. — T Clark

I don’t even deny introspection exists. I reject that the idea of introspection is sufficient to justify what you say it does. But if you do think it sufficient......have at it.

And, in my own mind, I can reduce the rejection of the idea of introspection a further step, to the idea that it isn’t introspection at all. It is understanding that’s actually doing all the hard work you reserve for introspection. But that’s just me.

I don’t even deny introspection exists. — Mww

You did previously deny that introspection exists. Have you reconsidered?

Whatever - I stand behind my judgment of arrogance.

Awww.....does that mean I don’t get a Christmas card?

What is the idea you reject? — Coben

I reject the idea of introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation.
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I’m not understanding what you’re driving at, here.

It is in their best interests, it's just that people do not become that way naturally - hence the value of introspection. You have said the employment of interpretations among other things has left people aware, it has not. Whether introspection is redundant or not depends on whether a person can learn about themselves by using it. For you to say introspection is redundant is to say that people are on a level of self-awareness that makes it redundant. I don't know exactly what that level is but seeing as we are so complex, with so many different factors attributing to our behaviour and feelings, it must be quite high.

I think it's actually super easy to tell apart the introspective from the disinterested, the notion that introspection could be redundant because people are experiencing their thought process and biases doesn't just dismiss the usefulness of introspection but also the sciences which attempts to go into detail to explain people's behaviours. Neural science alone demonstrates how many influences on our thinking go completely unnoticed. Nobody has full knowledge about the reasoning for their thoughts and actions and really most people have very little knowledge. Introspection is a component of a larger undertaking to understand just a little bit. To say it's redundant is a huge mischaracterisation of the human experience.

Science and the like are good but as you said previously, we are not the same. Currently, introspection is the only way, besides I suppose, seeing an expert or talking with someone else, to look not just into how all humans are but how specifically you are. I think introspection has value beyond a means to know oneself but from that capacity, its value is that your introspection pertains specifically to you as opposed to all people generally. On the topic of its redundancy or being superfluous, it's just like anything else. When you're playing a sport, it's a good idea to take a video recording of yourself to see what's going on. You would think you're the one playing the sport, of course, you knew what happened but actually people are like "wow thats me!?" and so it is with introspection. Simply doing and being doesn't entail understanding, I don't see a need to say more than that.

I reject the idea of introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation. — Mww

OK, I don't think I've asserted that - not that you said I did, as far as I've noticed. It leaves room for it to be a means of self-observation (and is nearly synonymous). But this matches my sense that people have a lot of blind spots in introspection. That it is a skill, and it takes a willingness, amongst other things, to be unpleasantly surprised, at a very gut level. Other forms of self-observation also require skill and some need to be able to face unpleasance, but not on such a gut level. To find, for example, contempt for someone one loves, it quite different from noticing that one tends not to clean up after dinner when your wife didn't have sex with you the evening before. To feel that smack of the 'wrong' emotion takes more than a little bravery to explore.

I reject the idea of introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation. — Mww

Well, introspection is self-observation of internal states. I started the thread, so it must be true. When I have been writing about introspection, that's what I've been writing about. If you're using a different definition, it would have been helpful and courteous if you'd told us that back at the beginning.

What other methods of self-observation are there?

It is in their best interests, it's just that people do not become that way naturally — Judaka

They could. All they gotta do is think about it.
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matches my sense that people have a lot of blind spots in introspection. — Coben

And I will admit that people are liable to have blind spots in their understandings.
——————-

Nobody has full knowledge about the reasoning for their thoughts and actions — Judaka

Full knowledge about the reasoning, probably not. But reasoning itself is a conscious activity, which makes explicit the subject absolutely must fully know the thoughts it is reasoning about.

OK, I don't think I've asserted that — Coben

No, you didn’t. I embellished what the idea of introspection represents to me

I didn’t change your definition of introspection; I substituted an different conception of it.
——————-

What other methods of self-observation are there? — T Clark

Generally, pure thought; specifically, as a component of it, understanding.

Generally, pure thought; specifically, as a component of it, understanding. — Mww

Thought is not introspection, it is the thing that introspection observes. Again - whatever you call it - you have redefined the terms of this discussion.

I'll give you the last word and go play with someone who will play by the rules.

They could. All they gotta do is think about it. — Mww

I thought your position is that they don't need to, what's introspection if not "thinking about it"?

And I will admit that people are liable to have blind spots in their understandings. — Mww

The world would be a better place if people were more like you thought they were lol.

Full knowledge about the reasoning, probably not. But reasoning itself is a conscious activity, which makes explicit the subject absolutely must fully know the thoughts it is reasoning about. — Mww

I don't know if you're just playing devil's advocate here but reasoning is subject to influence from biases, emotions and interpretations which people are not aware of. Since you are seemingly completely in the dark about this, it's not just introspection you lack but basic knowledge about psychology and neuroscience. Honestly, even just realising that being tired or angry can influence how you think should be basic common knowledge. Reasoning is often just wrong in explaining behaviour, you are just offering explanations for why you're doing something without knowing whether or not it's true.

Even if you know why you did something, it's worth investigating your reasoning and asking how you came to your conclusions. I could actually give thousands and thousands of examples where people are ignorant of the reasons for their own reasoning and of examples where they'd be unable to give convincing explanations for their interpretations (which they adopted thoughtlessly). A good example is whether or not we trust someone. There's a whole science on what kind of people appear trustworthy from attractiveness to facial expressions and mannerisms, even beards make a difference. You think people literally have full knowledge of why they trust person A and not person B when the reasons are so illogical? How can that be? Obviously someone having a beard or being unattractive doesn't make them untrustworthy but that's how we're programmed to think.

Surely, you could come up with your own examples of this if you tried as well, there's just way too much to choose from for me to believe you couldn't do it.

what's introspection if not "thinking about it"? — Judaka

Exactly. Nothing whatsoever happens between the ears that doesn’t rise to the self as pure thought, which, ironically enough, serves as a good definition of rationality. Not introspection.

What do you think the definition of introspection is?

I think the definition of introspection is whatever any decent English dictionary says it is, but I’ve never looked it up.

But here, I’m using Clark’s, from page one: “Introspection is observing yourself the same way you observe the rest of the world”, as I gave above, slightly embellished: introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation.

The point isn't that you agree with a dictionary, it's that you don't know the definition of a word while also arguing about it. Introspection entails analysing and examining one's thoughts, feelings and actions. It is not limited to self-observation and any application of rational analysis about yourself, your thoughts and feelings is considered introspection.

I think what @Mww is getting at is that we don't know we are having certain thoughts, feelings or sensations by looking inside and inspecting them, seeing them there, so to speak. We know thoughts, feelings and sensations simply by having them, or by having memories of having them. Something like that?

I argue the the propositions and conditions in support of the definition given.

You know......Socratic dialectics. Philosophy done right.

The dreaded, cursed, Cartesian theater!!! BOOOO!!!! I turned him on to that, but he missed it. Page 4.

An otherwise normal human knows his thought as soon as he has them. It’s their relation to other thoughts he may have trouble with.

Yes, and when I said earlier in this thread:

" I like the terms exteroception and interoception as between them they encompass everything of which we can be aware.

So we know thoughts, feelings, sensations, bodily states etc interoceptively, and we know everything external to the body exteroceptively. Of course there are "crossovers" involving touch and taste (at least). Conceptual knowing and affective responses to the world also seem to be "crossovers". We read a book or perceive worldly things in general exteroceptively, and the thoughts and feelings evoked by reading and perception of worldly things are known interoceptively. There are ways in which the distinction could be considered to be artificial or at least not cut and dried, but I think it is more or less useful nonetheless."

I was kind of hinting at the "Cartesian theatre" problem inherent in the notion of introspection. Having a thought or feeling is like looking at a tree. Just as we don't need to "look within" to know that we are looking at a tree, we don't need to look within to know that we are thinking or feeling. And we don't need to look within to know that we are remembering looking at a tree or remembering having a thought or feeling.

This relates to Kant's distinction between inner and outer sense, too. I didn't elaborate on the ways in which the distinction could be thought to be artificial (think of Heidegger or Merleau Ponty) , even though it is more or less useful.

Yes, I read that, and after looking up the terms because I had no experience with them, pretty much agreed with you. There is certainly an inner and an outer domain, and as long as the names given to them reflect the distinction, it doesn’t really matter what the names are.

:cool:

And I will admit that people are liable to have blind spots in their understandings. — Mww

Certainly about themselves and other people. The motivations for bias are so strong.

But we barely notice a lot of our thoughts, at least if other minds are anything like mine, and after interrogating a lot of people - at least, I think many would have wanted to use that verb to describe my approach - I also think that many other minds are like mine.

IOW it's not like a ticker tape - god, I feel old - but more like voices in a diner while you're focused on eating.

So, introspection is metaphorically, a bit like rather than simply getting tense about the growing tensions between the man and woman in the next booth, focusing in on that conversation, tuning out the others even more, and noticing the effects of that conversation, for example on one's own feelings. Oh, jeez this is like Mom and Dad were like. No wonder I want to barf.

I think most people, yes, sure, notice some thoughts more clearly, that that a great mass of their thoughts are like other conversations in the diner. They notice the effects. An occasional conclusion comes into focus, like some phrase or sentence at another booth, is clearly heard, before that discussion falls back into the fog of noise again.

(there's an added complication, in that one identifies, in some flitting way, with various patrons of the diner, at various times. You are sort of all of them, but find yourself as one patron at one time and then another soon after, several patrons babbling at the same time, in the background as you flit and you often don't remember much of this)

Introspection is an essential aspect of critical inquiry, if not critical inquiry itself. Whether one is a positivist or a Continental-kinda thinker, introspection is inevitable. The trouble, I think, begins when we focus on the subject of introspection. To staunch logical positivists, metaphysical inquiries are pointless, whereas to,say, the phenomenologists, the efforts to create "a truly logical language based on pure reason" (as the positivists sometimes intend to) would be futile.

Additionally, a positivist might not really concede that deductive and inductive reasoning involve introspection. To them, it's pejorative. Yet, much has been said about the epistemological significance of introspection. We need only look at the works of Gadamer and Merlau-Ponty. On the other hand, people such as Popper and Feyerabend have shed light on the sociological factors responsible for the valorization of certain kinds of cognitive processes and verificatory methods. This has given rise to disciplines such as Philosophy of Science and Sociology of Science. In effect, these disciplines aim to look at the ways in which a certain field or ways of making knowledge claims are legitimized. That is, they look for their conditions of possibility (Please see: Sociology: The Essentials). Foucault's work is also especially salient in this context, especially The Order of Things, which focuses on the grounds on which knowledge became possible across what he calls epistemes.

Introspection is inevitable.

Introspection is an essential aspect of critical inquiry, if not critical inquiry itself. — James Laughlin

This agrees with my conception of introspection as the examination of mental events, a type of reflection (examination of experience). How would you define introspection?

Also, what do you think is the epistemological and verificatory significance of introspection?

Introspection is inevitable. — James Laughlin

Please elaborate.

When I say introspection is inevitable, I mean that it is an essential feature of any kind of conscious thinking. Introspection has already happened when one thinks there is the need for conscious thinking in a given circumstance. As you say, reflection is the "examination of experience." So this appears to be a good (although certainly not exhaustive) definition of introspection.

Point 2: Introspection implies verification to a certain extent. Conversely, verificatory endeavors require the verifier to be introspective, even if this involves the invocation of a heuristic. This I think also reasonably explains the epistemological significance of introspection.