Introspection Flashcards
introspection
process by which someone comes to form belief about their mental state
Privileged access
she is in a better position than anyone else to acquire knowledge about own mental states (or beliefs about)
Claim of infallibility
-other people can have false beliefs about my mental states
-ifi believe i am in a mental state, i am actually in it
if you believe on the basis of introspection, what does this say?
If you believe on the basis of introspection, then you are in that mental state
What three factors make us false in our introspective judgments ?
expectation, presentation, and memory effects
ex: spy is tortured with hot iron, if after 19 times they use ice instead, he will still have same pain reaction bc he is expecting pain.
Wilson’s claim on fallibility of introspection
we often misdescribe out own reasoning process.
ex: people being shown four groups of stockings and choosing that last one claimed that they didn’t take position into consideration.
According to Schwitzgebel…
-we are prone to gross error even in introspective judgments that are often taken to be epistemically the most secure, namely, those about currently ongoing visual experience.
Self-intimation
whenever an individual is in a mental state she will form the belief that she is in that mental state, but it does not rule out her falsely forming the very same belief when she is not in that mental state.
Objection of self-intimation
Just as we can have false beliefs about many of our mental states, we may also fail to form beliefs about many of our mental states.
ex: jealous ex not falsely believing she is not jealous, but fails to recognize her feelings of jealousy
Ryle’s argument (rejection of privileged access)
-their is nothing special about judgments of our own mental states
-After all, one is often inclined to view one’s self with a considerable lack of objectivity.
-we are in a worse position to make judgments about own mental states
Descartes accessibility in principle
A belief remains introspectively accessible in principle even if there are many moments in time in which the belief is not being introspected.
unconscious mental processes
inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior.
- filters out information it deems unnecessary or harmful so that it can protect your psychological wellbeing
Wilson’s measurement problem
even if people can be wrong about their feelings in principle, we have no way of knowing if and when this is the case because we do not have a pipeline to people’s feelings that is independent of their self-reports.”
what is the case of the theory problem?
the functional approach can’t explain many other things (such as dreams, contagious yawning, lefties), so why should it be able to explain all reports of feelings?
Should you believe peoples assumptions about your mental states?
