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What is introspection?

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Reason is our only means of knowledge. Reason means sense perception plus inferences from sense perception. True? Sense perception means the traditional five senses--sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch--plus any other sense that we might have--hot, cold, gravity, whatever. All knowledge starts with sense perception. Then how how is introspection possible? Introspection seems to bypass sense perception and observe one's own mind directly. Is this a nonsensory means of knowledge? But there is no such thing as a nonsensory means of knowledge. Do you mean reason is our only means of knowledge about -the external world-?

In John Locke's version of epeistemology there are two starting points of knowledge: sensation and reflection. According to John Locke we have knowledge of the outside world by sensation, knowledge of our own mind by reflection. I take reflection to be the same as introspection. Is introspection a separate thing? Or can it be reduced to sensation?

How is introspection done? By sense perception? Or some other way?

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  • 3 weeks later...
You are aware (as a conscious being), and you can hold some things in your mind. In addition, you can access things that you remember. Also, you can apply reason to things that you know.

Introspection also presupposes having identified yourself as the entity behind products of consciousness. Man must be capable of subsuming facts about himself under a concept of self before he can relate the products of consciousness to himself.

So the list of presupposed powers currently reads consciousness, memory, inference, and abstraction.

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