Rethinking Introspection: A Pluralist Approach to the First-Person Perspective

190 Pages·2013·1.77 MB·English

by  Jesse Butler (auth.)

N ew Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science
S eries Editors: J ohn P rotevi, Louisiana State University and Michael Wheeler,
University of Stirling
T his series brings together work that takes cognitive science in new directions.
Hitherto, philosophical reflection on cognitive science – or perhaps better, philo-
sophical contribution to the interdisciplinary field that is cognitive science – has
for the most part come from philosophers with a commitment to a representa-
tionalist model of the mind.
H owever, as cognitive science continues to make advances, especially in its
neuroscience and robotics aspects, there is growing discontent with the represen-
tationalism of traditional philosophical interpretations of cognition. Cognitive
scientists and philosophers have turned to a variety of sources – phenome-
nology and dynamic systems theory foremost among them to date – to rethink
cognition as the direction of the action of an embodied and affectively attuned
organism embedded in its social world, a stance that sees representation as only
one tool of cognition, and a derived one at that.
T o foster this growing interest in rethinking traditional philosophical notions of
cognition – using phenomenology, dynamic systems theory, and perhaps other
approaches yet to be identified – we dedicate this series to ‘New Directions in
Philosophy and Cognitive Science’.
T itles include:
R obyn Bluhm, Anne Jaap Jacobson and Heidi Maibom ( editors)
N EUROFEMINISM
I ssues at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Cognitive
J esse Butler
R ETHINKING INTROSPECTION
A Pluralist Approach to the First-Person Perspective
J ulian Kiverstein & Michael Wheeler (e ditors)
H EIDEGGER AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
M ichelle Maiese
E MBODIMENT, EMOTION, AND COGNITION
R ichard Menary
C OGNITIVE INTEGRATION
M ind and Cognition Unbounded
Z dravko Radman (e ditor)
K NOWING WITHOUT THINKING
M ind, Action, Cognition and the Phenomenon of the Background
M atthew Ratcliffe
R ETHINKING COMMONSENSE PSYCHOLOGY
A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Stimulation
J ay Schulkin ( editor)
A CTION, PERCEPTION AND THE BRAIN
F orthcoming titles:
A nne Jaap Jacobson
K EEPING THE WORLD IN MIND
Biologically Embodied Representations and the New Sciences of the Mind
H anne De Jaegher
P ARTICIPATION SENSE-MAKING
A n Enactive Approach to Intersubjectivity
R obert Welshon
N IETZSCHE, PSYCHOLOGY, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
C harles T. Wolfe (e ditor)
B RAIN THEORY
E ssays in Critical Neurophilosophy
N ew Directions in Philosophy a nd C ognitive Science
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R ethinking Introspection
A Pluralist Approach to the
First-Person Perspective
J esse B utler
U niversity of C entral Arkansas, U SA
© Jesse Butler 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-28037-4
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DOI 10.1057/9781137280381
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1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
2 2 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
F or Blue
C ontents
S eries Editors’ Foreword i x
A cknowledgements x i
I ntroduction 1
1 I ntrospection as Inner Perception 6
H istorical overview 7
P erceptual models of introspection in psychology 1 0
I nner perception in contemporary philosophy of mind 1 2
2 P oking Out the Inner Eye 1 6
I s there a mind’s eye in the brain? 1 7
W hat are the objects of mental perception? 2 1
D o mental states exhibit perceptual qualia? 2 8
P erception, evolution, and knowledge of minds 3 1
P erception and recursion 3 6
I ntrospection and attention 3 7
3 I ntrospection as a Metaphor 4 1
T he prominence of perceptual metaphor 4 1
W hat is introspection? 4 5
T he diversity of introspection 4 8
4 K nowing Our Own Consciousness 5 1
K nowing what it is like 5 2
T he inadequacy of standard models
of phenomenal knowledge 5 5
T he existential constitution model
of phenomenal knowledge 6 2
O bjections and clarifications 6 5
P utting skepticism of self-knowledge in its place 6 9
C onclusion 7 3
5 I ntrospection through Cognition 7 5
R epresentation, metarepresentation, and misrepresentation 7 6
C onceptualizing our own mental states 8 4
A ttention and introspection 9 0
I ntrospection and the extended mind 9 4
C onclusion 9 7
vii
viii Contents
6 U nderstanding Our Own Beliefs and Desires 9 9
F olk psychology and first-person authority 1 02
T he theory theory challenge to first-person authority 1 03
E mpirical evidence of theory-mediated introspection 1 06
M ind-monitoring mechanisms and the phenomenology
of propositional attitudes 1 12
Conclusion 1 16
7 T he Internal Monologue 1 19
K nowing our own thoughts through language 1 20
O bjections and clarifications 1 30
K inds of self-knowledge enabled by inner speech 1 37
F rom self-determined truth to self-deception and back 1 40
C onclusion 1 47
8 O n the Social Side of Self-Knowledge 1 48
S ocial self-knowledge 1 49
N avigating one’s position in social space 1 51
D irect and indirect testimony about oneself 1 53
B ias and the rationality of testimonial deference 1 56
C onclusion 1 60
C onclusion: Is That All There Is? 1 61
N otes 1 65
R eferences 1 69
I ndex 1 77
Series Editors’ Foreword
O ne of the oldest and yet most difficult of the ancient Greek philo-
sophical imperatives is ‘Know thyself’. A perhaps equally ancient asso-
ciation couples vision – theory – and truth. Combining the two leads us
to introspection: the route to knowing yourself is to look within
yourself.
A s venerable as the introspective tradition is, it came under severe attack
when philosophy and scientific psychology became allies. Cast aside
for its impressionism and relativism, introspection spent the twentieth
century banished from scientifically oriented philosophy, lost in the
wilderness of poets, novelists, and phenomenologists.
I f introspection is to be readmitted to polite company then, Jesse
Butler argues, it will have to be rethought. And that rethinking shows
it not to be a literal inward vision – despite a long series of philosophers
who have used language suggesting that it is – but a metaphor grouping
together multiple and heterogeneous processes.
T he most basic of those processes, Butler shows, is revealed by the
phenomenological method, which is not, pace its enemies , navel-gazing
yielding subjective impressions, but rather the careful demonstration
that our basic cognitive self-relation is non-reflective subjective aware-
ness. As Butler puts it, ‘We know ourselves by being ourselves, not as
objects but rather through the qualitative character of our experiences
as living subjects’. This is a unique sort of knowledge, Butler claims,
irreducible to the types of knowledge currently discussed in analytic
philosophy of mind. Butler calls it the ‘existential constitution’ model
and discusses it in relation to the classical phenomenologists and to
contemporary thinkers.
B utler does not stop there, however. He goes on to show how non-
reflective self-awareness is only one of our ‘introspective’ capacities; we
can and do objectify ourselves for genuine and valid cognitive purposes.
Such higher-level, reflective introspection occurs through the use of
normal outwardly directed cognitive processes such as representation,
conceptualization, and attention that we turn back on ourselves. To
complete the picture, Butler also discusses the self-application of Theory
of Mind, inner speech, and sociality and self-knowledge.
ix
x Series Editors’ Foreword
A ll in all, then, Butler’s R ethinking Introspection shows how the ancient
theme of introspection, when brought back from exile and appropri-
ately rethought, offers widespread and important current application.
J ohn Protevi, Louisiana State University
M ichael Wheeler, University of Stirling