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Is Introspection As Reliable As Outside Perceptions?

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nimble

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I have been reading Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained." This has sparked in interest in me to pursue integrating what I think I have learned from this book, into what I previously held with Objectivism.

In this book, Dennett is taking a materialist perspective on the mind, and trying to clear up the flaws in materialism to make it a better explanation of what goes on in our heads.

The most recent part of the book that I've read is discussing why introspection has failed explaning consciousness in the past. He believes that it is because humans have little capacity to actually explain their inner brain functions via introspections. He uses the example, that most of philosophy has tried to explain consciousness via introspection, yet it has failed on every occassion (Hume, Locke, Descartes, etc). He posits that none of these philosophers were intentionally trying to give false accounts of what they learned through introspection. In fact, they thought that what they were writing was true to any reader, since they could just reproduce the same mental states that the author had done to reach the conclusions that they did. He claims that most introspection is just theorizing, rather than actual inner experience.

My question is, does this hold any truth?

He gives the experiment of 5 statements, 4 of which are true, one is false. These are all questions that we should be able to answer if we know anything about how are minds function.

1. You can experience a patch that is red and green all over at the same time--a patch that is both colors (not mixed) at once. ***Note this states "experience," not that there is a patch all green and red.

2. If you look at a yellow circle on a blue background, and the luminance or brightness of the yellow and blue are then adjusted to be equal, the boundary between the yellow and blue will disappear.

3. There is a sound, sometimes called the auditory barber pole, which seems to keep on rising in pitch forever, yet it never actually does.

4. There is an herb that if overdosed on it, you become incapable of understanding your native language, even though it leaves your hearing unimpaired. So you hear the sounds just find, and you recognize that it is your native language, just you don't understand it.

5. If you are blindfolded, and a vibrator is applied to a point on your arm while you touch your nose, you will feel like your nose is growing like Pinocchio's.

After the first reply I'll tell which one is false.

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Why should we necessarily be able to answer those questions if introspection is to be considered as reliable as extrospection? Does looking at a sunset inform you that the sun's rays are distorted by airborn dust and the thickness of the atmosphere into being red? Does hearing a man's voice through a public address system tell you about crystals, vibrations, electronics, speakers, etc?

No. So why should examining your experience of your thoughts tell you about nerves, synapses, and so forth?

I'll tell you what I can answer through introspection. I can tell you that I didn't intentionally plug up the garbage disposal with those carrots. I can tell you that I forgot to take out the trash. I can also tell you that I really seriously dislike liver, that I like my roommte (most of the time), that I'm hot, or cold, or hungry or tired or thirsty.

People that claim introspection is unreliable are trying to get you to admit, by admitting that you can't tell which neuron is firing at any particular moment, that you can't tell whether you feel good or like something or intended to murder a policeman. They fail to recognize that, just as your sight presents you with particular information in a particular form, so does your ability to introspect. It's Kant's ideas of perception all over again; your perceptions are invalid because you perceive them via some means.

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It depends what you want to use it for. If its for something 'day to day' like evaluating your emotions or values then sure, introspection is a good method. However when it comes to doing scientific psychology, more objective methods should be used to supplement it where possible. A research paper which was nothing but a scientist describing his introspective experiences might not be capable of producing anything repeatable or verifiable. But at the same time, the value of introspective works like Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" shouldnt be understated. If someone is good at describing things and noticing fine details, then a description of their subjective experiences can certainly be worthwhile.

The biggest problem with introspective reports is that they are necessarily mediated by language. People generally arent very good at describing their experiences, and our forms of expression can often mislead us - the words that a person uses to 'translate' his experience can be heavily influenced by his worldview, and this presents a barrier to objectivity. The 'do we observe volition?' debates on this forum are excellent example of this sort of thing. Both sides are under the impression that they are simply giving a description of their experiences, yet they produce descriptions which are diametrically opposed. This is a language problem.

Here are 2 specific things which illustrate the limitations of introspection in philo/psychology:

1) it is intuitively obviously that we can make colour discriminations over our entire visual field. However, this is wrong. People generally cannot discern the colour of objects that lie outwith a 45 degree angle directly in front of them, even though they can 'see' the object.

2) Imagine a blue sky, or someone's face. What is it youre actually doing? Most people will say they 'see' the sky in their minds eye. This is an example of a metaphor leading us astray. 'Seeing' things with your mind is very different from 'seeing' things with your eye. I look at my computer monitor in front of me, yet I am also 'aware' of a persons face in my mind. But the perception of the face doesnt in any way obscure my perception of the monitor (the face isnt in my visual field). So where exactly IS the face? How do I see 2 things at once, without either of them being 'on top' of the other? The language which we are tempted to use to describe this sort of thing leads to the idea of there being a face existing purely 'in my mind' , which leads to 'cartesian theatre' viewpoints.

edit:

<rant>

the problem with Dennett's 'heterophenomenology' is that its absurdly pointless - it closes off perfectly valid lines of research simply to satisfy his strange philosophical biases. There are certainly pitfalls to using introspection, but theres no reason why a scientist cant write about his own experiences as long as he can tell others how to reproduce them for theirselves. Again, Aldous Huxley's writing is a good example of this - if he had been describing something that had never happened to anyone before, then the scientific value of his work would be questionable. However, his experiences were repeatable in the sense that anyone is able to take mescaline, and the accounts of different mescaline (and other hallucinogenic drug) users exhibit a remarkable degree of cohesion. Dennett has a very strange idea of what it means for something to be 'repeatable'. If I find out that pressing my eye in a certain way causes me to see a red square, then 'scientific repeatability' doesnt require me to do an experiment where I get 100 people to press their eye and write up their reports. Instead, I could just write a paper explaining the effect it had on me, and tell others that they could experience the same thing by pressing their eye too.

</rant>

I'll tell you what I can answer through introspection. I can tell you that I didn't intentionally plug up the garbage disposal with those carrots. I can tell you that I forgot to take out the trash. I can also tell you that I really seriously dislike liver, that I like my roommte (most of the time), that I'm hot, or cold, or hungry or tired or thirsty.
These questions might be interesting for you personally, but they are fairly irrelevant from the standpoint of philosophy/psychology. Edited by Hal
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Thanks, Hal. So you are familiar with Dennett and his methodology?

Fairly so. Your best bet to get a quick overview of where Dennett is coming from would be the above paper I linked, along with perhaps "Quining Qualia", "An Overview of my Work in Philosophy", and "The Fantasy of First-Person Science" from here. However his most influential doctrine is probably that of the Intentional Stance, where intentional systems/mental states are defined in terms of the attitudes we have towards them (if I say that some object, be it a person, computer or thermostate 'believes' X, then this just means that it is convenient/natural to use the discourse of 'beliefs' in order to explain its behavior. Theres nothing more involved in 'having beliefs' than being capable of being described using words like 'believe'). In other words, hes a philosophical behaviorist, strongly influenced by Gilbert Ryle and Wittgenstein (who he misinterprets utterly). Along with Paul Churchland, he's probably been the most influential champion of materialism within academic philosophy during the last 30 years.

Your best bet to learn about Dennett would be to read the book that you have by him. Dont let the opinions of others prejudice you - Dennett has a very clear writing style and doesnt use academic jargon, so theres no excuse not to base your evaluation of him on primary sources alone. But bear in mind that what youre getting is probably the most extreme and uncompromising statement of the materialist/neo-darwinian position out there.

Edited by Hal
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Megan's answer was excellent, I'll just point out some specific issues:

1. You can experience a patch that is red and green all over at the same time--a patch that is both colors (not mixed) at once. ***Note this states "experience," not that there is a patch all green and red.

The question is: can you "experience" something that not only does not exist, but is also impossible (red has identity, green has identity, objects have identity and they cant be both at the same time).

What is his definition of "experience"? You certainly can imagine the concept of an object of two colors at the same time and in the same manner (as to write it down), you certainly cannot visualize such a thing, even in your mind.

2. If you look at a yellow circle on a blue background, and the luminance or brightness of the yellow and blue are then adjusted to be equal, the boundary between the yellow and blue will disappear.

Why should introspection provide information about the sense of vision?

3. There is a sound, sometimes called the auditory barber pole, which seems to keep on rising in pitch forever, yet it never actually does.

Why should introspection provide information about the sense of hearing? At most you can say if you have ever experienced such an effect.

4. There is an herb that if overdosed on it, you become incapable of understanding your native language, even though it leaves your hearing unimpaired. So you hear the sounds just find, and you recognize that it is your native language, just you don't understand it.

Why should introspection provide information about states of mind you have never experienced?

5. If you are blindfolded, and a vibrator is applied to a point on your arm while you touch your nose, you will feel like your nose is growing like Pinocchio's.

Why should introspection provide information about the sense of touch, specifically how it reacts to a situation you have never experienced?

In all, the exercise itself is absurd. It is an attempt to prove that introspection does not provide data about the outside world as do the senses. Shocking.

mrocktor

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1. You can experience a patch that is red and green all over at the same time--a patch that is both colors (not mixed) at once. ***Note this states "experience," not that there is a patch all green and red.

(..)

See "On Seeing Reddish Green and Yellowish Blue", Hewitt D. Crane; Thomas P. Piantanida, Science > New Series, Vol. 221, No. 4615 (Sep., 1983), pp. 1078-1080, which I assume is what he's talking about.

There's an online copy here but the formatting is fairly poor. JSTOR has a better version if you have access.

Edited by Hal
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Megan's answer was excellent, I'll just point out some specific issues:

The question is: can you "experience" something that not only does not exist, but is also impossible (red has identity, green has identity, objects have identity and they cant be both at the same time).

What is his definition of "experience"? You certainly can imagine the concept of an object of two colors at the same time and in the same manner (as to write it down), you certainly cannot visualize such a thing, even in your mind.

mrocktor

Actually this experiment can be reproduced by holding an all red folder and all green folder right next to each other about 1 foot in front of you. If you try to "look through" them, then you will notice that the two patches of red and green seem to be in one another, yet you can tell that they are distinct. This has something to do with the way your eyes interpret things distinctly then try to make one picture of it in your head. One eye sees green, the other one red, and when its put together in your head, they seem to be inside of one another, or appear as one. Even though the actual existence of such a patch is logically impossible, you can experience it.

The point is that most people will theorize about what they can and can't experience without actually using introspection to find out. And I think you helped prove his point. His point seems not to be that you are incapable of introspection, but that most people circumvent that and just make things up based on what they've learned through outrospection/perceptions.

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These questions might be interesting for you personally, but they are fairly irrelevant from the standpoint of philosophy/psychology.

No? They are data for forming conclusions. I didn't intend to block up the garbage disposal? Well then it's clear that I'm not, for instance, acting out of some bizarre repressed hatred. Apparently I'm just absent-minded.

It is of distinct philosophical and psychological importance as to whether or not people can provide the answers to questions of that sort, unless, of course, you think philosophy and psychology are divorced from reality and life, in which case what difference do they make to me whatsoever?

The point is that most people will theorize about what they can and can't experience without actually using introspection to find out. And I think you helped prove his point. His point seems not to be that you are incapable of introspection, but that most people circumvent that and just make things up based on what they've learned through outrospection/perceptions.

This is not what you indicated in your first post; you were pointing to the idea that Dave Dennet considers introspection to be the ability to predict your experiences prior to having them, and the fact that we can't indicates that introspection is not a valid means of evaluation. This constitutes a serious attack on your ability to judge what you are feeling/thinking at a given time, which usually winds up becoming an attack on consciousness (and particularly volition).

Now, if he's complaining that he's having a hard time explaining consciousness through introspection because most people are really bad at it and full of sh*t, that's a different story entirely.

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The point is that most people will theorize about what they can and can't experience without actually using introspection to find out. And I think you helped prove his point. His point seems not to be that you are incapable of introspection, but that most people circumvent that and just make things up based on what they've learned through outrospection/perceptions.

Actually, while I may have been wrong about the color experiment, you proved my point. To show that I was wrong, you resorted to perceptual experimentation. You didn't offer "think about ... and you will see that you can experience such a thing", you offered "do this and you will see that".

Introspection is not a tool for obtaining perceptual knowlege.

q.e.d.

mrocktor

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Now, if he's complaining that he's having a hard time explaining consciousness through introspection because most people are really bad at it and full of sh*t, that's a different story entirely.

I think that is his point, to the best of my knowledge. Sorry if I mislead you. I'm posting as I read more, so I may get to later parts in the book that I have questions about, and then he corrects them later. Basically, he asks seemingly important questions, and then you have to guess where he is going with it.

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