the ins and outs of introspection

The Ins and Outs of Introspection

Philip Robbins*Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract

Introspection admits of several varieties, depending on which types of mental eventsare introspected. I distinguish three kinds of introspection (primary, secondary, andtertiary) and three explanations of the general capacity: the inside access view, theoutside access view, and the hybrid view. Drawing on recent evidence from clinicaland developmental psychology, I argue that the inside view offers the most promisingaccount of primary and secondary introspection.

Everyone agrees that introspection involves representing one’s own mentalevents. It is also generally agreed that introspection is largely under voluntarycontrol, rather than automatic; that it can be selectively directed or pointed,subject to the operation of attentional mechanisms; that it lacks a distinctivephenomenology of its own, over and above whatever phenomenology theintrospected events might have; that it gives rise to self-attributions of mentalevents, typically first-person in form; and last but not least, that it affordsepistemic access only to one’s own mind, not to anyone else’s.

This minimal description of introspection is bedrock. Beyond it, sensesof the term multiply. In a relatively narrow sense, introspection is a capacityto detect those mental states and processes occurring in oneself that arephenomenally conscious, that is, mental states and processes that have acharacteristic “feel” to them: pains, itches, emotions, visual and auditoryimages, imaginings, rememberings, judgings, wonderings, and the like. Thedeployment of introspection gives rise to meta-consciousness, that is,awareness of being in or undergoing a particular conscious state or process( Jack and Shallice; Lambie and Marcel; Schooler).1 In a wider sense,introspection is a capacity to detect one’s mental events, whether or notthose events are phenomenally conscious. The class of mental events thatare introspectible in this sense is arguably more extensive than the class ofevents that are introspectible in the narrow sense, since it includespropositional attitudes: beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, and other mentalstates that plausibly lack phenomenal feel (Carruthers, “Simulation”;Lormand; Nichols and Stich; Robbins).2 In a still wider (and looser) sense,introspection is a capacity to detect one’s own mental events and dispositions,including personality traits (Wilson,“Knowing”; Strangers).

© Blackwell Publishing 2006

Philosophy Compass 1/6 (2006): 617–630, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00043.x

Correlatively, we can distinguish three introspective subcapacities.Primaryintrospection is a capacity to detect and categorize one’s conscious mentalstates and processes, such as pains, emotions, and imaginings. Secondaryintrospection is a capacity to detect and categorize one’s non-consciousmental states, such as beliefs and desires.3 Tertiary introspection is a capacityto detect and categorize one’s dispositional mental states, such as neuroticismand conscientiousness.4 Introspection in the narrow sense above covers justthe first of these subcapacities, introspection in the intermediate sense coversthe first two, and introspection in the widest sense spans all three. A fullaccount of introspection will need to tell a plausible story about each strandof the general capacity, the first two strands especially.

1. Three Views of Introspection

There are three main approaches to the mechanics of introspection. Accordingto the first approach, introspection is a process that affords relatively directaccess to one’s mind. It does so in virtue of operating on “inside information”about one’s internal psychological states – information that is very close tothe source. In particular, the informational linkage between source andreceiver is not mediated by inferential mechanisms of the sort that areplausibly involved in the attribution of mental states to other people, namely,mechanisms that process information based on observations of the target’sovert behavior and circumstances. On the first view, these third-personmindreading mechanisms play no role in introspection.5 Instead, theinferential machinery of introspection taps relatively directly into themachinery of mind itself. I’ll call this the “inside access” view ofintrospection.

Note that there is no implication here that “inside” in “inside access”means inference-free. The idea is rather that the information channelbetween receiver (one’s introspection device) and source (one’s mind) isrelatively direct, since it takes in no “outside information.” But inferenceis still involved. The exact character of the inference varies, dependingon what version of the view is under consideration. Over the years,several possibilities have been defended. According to the phenomenologicalversion, the machinery of introspection is sensitive to the qualitativefeatures of mental states, and classification of one’s mental states proceedsvia detection of those features (Goldman,“Psychology”). According to therepresentationalist-functionalist version, introspection is realized by a“monitoring mechanism” that reads off one’s mental states on the basis ofinformation about their functional profile and representational content(Nichols and Stich; see also Armstrong).6 According to the neural version,introspective mechanisms detect and classify one’s mental states on the basisof information about their neural properties, analogously to the way thatinteroceptive mechanisms, like pain and hunger, detect one’s bodily states

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© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 1/6 (2006): 617–630, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00043.x

on the basis of information about their physical properties (Goldman,Simulating).

This general picture of introspection contrasts sharply with the “outsideaccess” view. On the outside view, introspection consists largely of theprocessing of information that lies at a greater remove from the targetand to which one enjoys no special access, such as information about one’sbehavior and circumstances. As with the inside view, there are multiplevariants. According to the “theory” theory, introspection exploits the samebody of knowledge used to attribute mental states to other subjects, namely,a folk theory of psychology (Gopnik; see also Ryle). According to the“displaced perception” account, introspection uses perceptual informationabout the local environment to infer how the latter is currently beingexperienced (Dretske). Similarly, according to the “ascent-routine” account,subjects determine whether or not they believe a given proposition byjudging the truth-value of the proposition and inferring accordingly: yes ifthe proposition is true, no otherwise (Gordon).7 There are substantialdifferences between these accounts, especially between the theory theoryand its rivals. But all three accounts have the same basic structure. They allassume that the introspective judgment is grounded on inference from theobservation of mind-external states of affairs, either behavioral orenvironmental.

A third option for theorizing about introspection, the “hybrid”view, splits the difference between the inside and outside access views,incorporating elements of both (Bem). According to the hybrid view,introspection draws on both inside and outside information about the target.Motivating this view is the suspicion that in typical cases, neither form ofinformation on its own suffices for detection and classification of one’s mentalstates. For introspection to work smoothly, it needs to draw on informationfrom both internal monitoring or scanning (as per the inside access view)and behavioral and environmental observation (as per the outside accessview).

These views of introspection have different empirical consequences. Sincethe inside access view assumes that introspection does not implicatemechanisms of the sort that figure in third-person mindreading, it impliesthat the first capacity should be dissociable, both diachronically andsynchronically, from the second (Nichols and Stich).8 Non–theory-theoreticversions of the outside view, such as the displaced perception account, areon a par with the inside view in this respect, since they too assume thatintrospection is functionally independent of third-person mindreading.

In contrast to the inside view, the theory theory assumes that introspectionand third-person mindreading are subserved by a single mechanism, so itprecludes the possibility of the first capacity being dissociated from the second(Gopnik; Carruthers,“Simulation”; Frith and Happé). The hybrid view saysthat introspection implicates third-person mindreading mechanisms in anessential way, so it too rules out dissociation. Unlike the theory theory,


The Ins and Outs of Introspection . 619

however, it leaves open the possibility that full-blown introspection comeson line after third-person mindreading does (but not before). Hence, unlikethe theory theory, the hybrid view is consistent with diachronic dissociation,provided that the temporal direction of dissociation is reversed.

In what follows, we’ll see how these predictions fare with respect to theempirical record. The conceptual and empirical geography of this area iscomplex. To do full justice to this complexity, we would need to considereach of the three types of introspection identified above (primary, secondary,and tertiary) at length. I will focus on the case of primary introspection:partly because this is the core form of introspection as traditionally conceived(and arguably the heart of the matter), and partly because the evidentialpicture is more detailed here than it is in the other two cases (see section2). The treatment of secondary introspection will be more sketchy, and thecase of tertiary introspection will largely be left to the side (see section 3).

2. Primary Introspection

As noted earlier, the term “primary introspection” refers to the detectionand classification of a specific class of mental events: phenomenally consciousstates and processes, such as pains, emotions, imaginings, and rememberings.Of the three types of introspection identified above, the primary type isplainly the best candidate for explanation along the lines of the inside accessview. Popular wisdom suggests that our own phenomenally conscious statesare precisely those states to which each of us enjoys immediate, privileged,and relatively unfettered (and unfiltered) epistemic access – access of a higherand more intimate sort than we have to the phenomenal states of others. Anatural way to test this view is to see whether there are individuals whoseprimary introspective capacity is intact despite defects in their capacity toattribute phenomenal states to others (synchronic dissociation), or whetherintrospection comes on line in normal individuals before third-personmindreading does (diachronic dissociation). Evidence of such dissociationswould support the inside access view and undermine both the theory theoryand the hybrid view.

2.1. THE CASE FOR DISSOCIATION

Both friends and foes of the inside view have appealed to clinical studies ofautistic spectrum disorders, especially Asperger syndrome, to make theircase (Carruthers, “Autism”; Frith and Happé; Nichols and Stich). Autismis a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder that adversely affects socialcognitive function, including capacities for social interaction, communication,and empathy. At the severe end of the autistic spectrum is Kanner syndrome,which is marked by low IQ as well as language deficits. At the mild end isAsperger syndrome, in which general intelligence and core language skillsare spared. Across the spectrum one finds impairments of third-person



mindreading, as gauged by performance on various tests of the capacity toparse the social world in mentalistic terms. A paradigmatic example of suchtests is the Sally-Anne task, which is used to assess understanding of theconcept of belief. In this task, the subject observes a puppet show featuringtwo characters, Sally and Anne. Sally has a basket and Anne has a box; Sallyputs her marble into the basket and leaves; while Sally is away,Anne removesthe marble from the basket and puts it into the box. The subject is thenasked where Sally thinks her marble is, or where Sally will look for it. Toanswer correctly, the subject needs to understand that Sally’s beliefs aredistinct from her own, and to resist assimilating the former to the latter.Other tests of third-person mindreading focus on production andcomprehension of deception, conversational pragmatics, understanding offigurative language (metaphor, sarcasm, and irony), recognition of emotionsfrom facial expressions, and understanding stories involving bluff and doublebluff (Baron-Cohen).

Proponents of the inside access view argue that individuals with Aspergersyndrome have no difficulty introspecting their mental states, despite theirdifficulty attributing such states to other people (Nichols and Stich). Sincethe topic of this section is primary introspection, let us consider this claimwith specific reference to phenomenal mental states. There are several piecesof evidence that bear on the issue.

The first comes from a clinical study of introspection using the “descriptiveexperience sampling” method developed by Russell Hurlburt (Hurlburt,Happé, and Frith). In this experimental paradigm, subjects are instructed tocarry a small device that beeps at random intervals, and to respond to eachbeep by “freezing” the contents of their awareness and jotting down adescription of it in a notebook. Three adults with Asperger syndromeparticipated in the study by sampling and recording their experiences for aweek. All three of the subjects were able to produce introspective reports,albeit with varying degrees of success. This lends prima facie support to thedissociation hypothesis.

On closer inspection, however, this interpretation of the results appearsquestionable. Here are three points that invite skepticism. First, the samplesize (n = 3) is too small for the results of the study to carry much weight.Second, even within this small sample, proficiency at experience samplingco-varied with proficiency at third-person mindreading, judging from thesubjects’ performance on false-belief tasks. Granted, false-belief tests do nottap the ability to attribute conscious mental states per se. But successfulperformance on these tests does correlate with the latter ability, and it doesindicate some capacity for sophisticated third-person mindreading. Thispattern of results militates against dissociation. Third, subjects’ reports werehighly anomalous. In studies of descriptive experience sampling by normalsubjects, the reports mention several different phenomenal state types,including emotional feelings, bodily sensations, visual images, and innerspeech (Hurlburt; see also Hurlburt and Heavey). By contrast, the subjects



in the Asperger study reported visual experiences, visual imagery in particular,almost exclusively. On the assumption that the phenomenal experience ofAsperger subjects is even remotely like that of normal individuals (that is,not restricted to the visual modality), this suggests that introspection isimpaired in the disorder. Autobiographical reports from Asperger individuals,which refer to experiences across a range of sensory modalities, make thisassumption hard to deny.9

Against this, one might read the autobiographical reports as evidence thatprimary introspection is intact in Asperger syndrome (Nichols and Stich).But this claim is hard to justify, for several reasons. First, since long-termautobiographical memory is notoriously unreliable even in normalindividuals, and tends to be highly reconstructive and “theory-laden,” reportsof this kind cannot be taken at face value. This goes double for reports fromclinical subjects suffering from a range of cognitive deficits. Second, thereports in question were not produced by a systematic interview process,and partly as a result of this, they are difficult to interpret. In particular,they do not provide clear evidence that these subjects have normalmeta-consciousness. What authors sometimes report as anomalous sensoryexperiences (e.g., insensitivity to pain), could just as well be accounted forin terms of defective introspection (that is, failure to identify and classifypains as such).10 Third, and most tellingly, there is independent experimentalevidence of defects in emotion introspection in Asperger subjects. This lastpoint is worth considering in detail.

There is little doubt that Asperger subjects have difficulty recognizing theemotions of people around them. Evidence to this effect is sufficiently robustto motivate ongoing discussions of the “amygdala theory” of autism (Dziobeket al.; but see Castelli for qualifications). It appears that these individualsalso have difficulty recognizing their own emotions. Indeed, a standardcomponent of the symptomology of autistic spectrum disorders is“alexithymia,” understood as the inability to identify and describe one’sown emotions, or lack of emotional insight (Hill, Berthoz, andFrith). Alexithymia is assessed on the basis of self-reports generated usingthe Toronto Alexithymia Scale, which includes items such as “I am oftenconfused about what emotion I am feeling” and “When I am upset, I don’tknow if I am sad, frightened, or angry.” Subjects rate each item using a5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree). In a recentlarge-scale study, nearly half of the participants with autistic spectrumdisorders (nearly all of them Asperger’s) ranked as severely impaired atemotion self-processing, whereas none of the normal participants fell intothis category (Hill, Berthoz, and Frith). The results of this and related clinicalstudies (e.g., Berthoz and Hill) suggest that emotion introspection is impairedin Asperger syndrome.

Another source of evidence bearing on the dissociation hypothesis comesfrom studies of meta-cognition – specifically, studies of meta-memory – inautistic children (Farrant, Boucher, and Blades). In one experiment, subjects



were given a simple memory test (memorizing a list of numbers) and thenasked what strategy they had used to perform the task (“What did you doto help you to remember all the numbers?”). In order to answer themeta-memory question, subjects presumably had to recall from episodicmemory how they had gone about memorizing the list of numbers,introspect that remembrance of thought processes past, and then reportthat introspection. Sample responses referred to strategies like cumulativerehearsal: “When you said ‘one,’ ‘six,’ ‘four,’ I remembered ‘one,’ ‘six,’‘four’ in my mind, then got the other number, then said it all together”(Farrant, Boucher, and Blades 118). Children with autism performedremarkably well on this task; in fact, there was no statistically significantdifference between their performance and that of normal children.

Nichols and Stich interpret this result as supporting their hypothesis thatintrospection is dissociable from third-person mindreading. But there aretwo problems with this interpretation of the data. First, the autistic childrenin this study performed unusually well on standard false-belief tasks,suggesting that their capacity for third-person mindreading may have beenrelatively intact. Hence, the evidence for dissociation here is weak at best.Second, in a separate study of meta-cognition in autistic children, Farrantand colleagues tested children on “recall readiness,” the ability to judgewhen one has successfully committed information to memory (Farrant,Blades, and Boucher). Here they found that children with autism performedsignificantly less well than normals. In contrast to the study described above,the subjects in this study were not tested on false-belief tasks. Had thosetests been done, they might have shown that performance on the recallreadiness task positively correlates with performance on tests of third-personmindreading – contrary to what the dissociation hypothesis predicts.

One last piece of evidence bearing on the issue of synchronic dissociationcomes from self-reports of individuals with Asperger syndrome regarding“private self-consciousness,” that is, the frequency with which one reflectson oneself as a subject of thoughts, feelings, and other mental states(Blackshaw et al.). The study in question used the Self-Consciousness Scale(Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss), the relevant subscale of which – the PrivateSelf-Consciousness Scale (PrSC) – includes the following items:

• I’m generally attentive to my inner feelings.• I’m aware of the way my mind works when I work through a problem.• I’m alert to changes in my mood.• I’m often the subject of my own fantasies.• I sometimes have the feeling that I’m off somewhere watching myself.

Blackshaw and her team found that Asperger subjects scored significantlyhigher on the PrSC than normals. Since PrSC scores presumably trackintrospective ability to some extent, this result suggests that introspection isrelatively intact in Asperger syndrome. The Asperger subjects also scoredlower than normals on the Projective Imagination Test, a test of third-person



mindreading ability in which subjects are shown a line drawing of a socialsituation and asked to describe the situation in mentalistic terms (e.g.,“Whatare the people in the picture thinking or feeling?”). These findings providemodest support for the dissociation hypothesis.

Let us pause briefly to take stock. We’ve just reviewed a fair bit ofevidence bearing on the hypothesis that primary introspection is dissociablefrom third-person mindreading. The overall pattern of results, thoughsuggestive, is inconclusive. As things stand, the dissociation hypothesis isnot clearly confirmed by the clinical record. To get more empirical tractionon this hypothesis, we need to consider studies of introspection in normallydeveloping individuals.

Relative to the case of synchronic dissociation, evidence regardingdiachronic dissociation is in short supply. But it is also more telling. Forexample, in a study of young children’s capacity to report on the imaginativepretenses of others, a group of three-year-olds were shown a scene from atelevision show in which the characters pretended to be on an airplane whilesitting on a bench (Rosen, Schwebel, and Singer). The children were thenasked whether the characters were thinking about being on a plane or sittingon a bench, and the vast majority (90%) of them gave the wrong answer. Anearlier study testing the ability of three-year-olds to report on their ownimmediately past pretenses, by contrast, yielded the opposite result (Gopnikand Slaughter). The children were instructed to close their eyes and thinkof a blue dog, and then to repeat the exercise by closing their eyes andthinking of a red balloon. At that point they were asked what they had beenthinking of first, a blue dog or a red balloon. The vast majority (80%) of thechildren answered correctly. Though it is possible that subjects in this studyanswered the experimenter’s question without recourse to introspection(e.g., by recalling the experimenter’s instructions), the data are suggestive.

A similar pattern of results – that is, weak attribution of phenomenal statesto others together with strong attribution of phenomenal states to self – issuggested by studies of visual perspective-taking in young children (Gopnikand Slaughter). In one study, the children were seated across a table fromthe experimenter and shown a drawing that looked either like a turtlestanding on its feet or like a turtle lying on its back, depending on whichside of the table one was seated at. The children were asked first about theapparent orientation of the turtle from their vantage point, and then aboutits apparent orientation from the vantage point of the experimenter.Three-year-olds performed poorly on this third-person mindreading task,with at most half of them answering correctly. But in a first-person variantof the task, the three-year-olds did much better. In this version of the task,the children looked at the drawing once, switched seats with theexperimenter, and looked at it again. At that point they were asked howthe turtle had looked to them before the perspective shift. This time,three-quarters of the children gave the right answer.



None of this bodes well for the theory theory or the hybrid view. Butnor should it come as any great surprise. The idea that we typically detectand classify our phenomenal states by reflecting on our behavior is wildlycounterintuitive. Indeed, it is doubtful that anyone has defended such aview.11 Rather, proponents of these views tend to focus on theself-attribution of beliefs, desires, and other (plausibly qualia-free) mentalstates: the domain of secondary introspection. In the domain of primaryintrospection, neither the theory theory nor the hybrid view is a seriouscontender. This much seems clear concerning the introspection of certaincategories of phenomenal states, including conscious mental processes,such as episodic rememberings, and bodily sensations, such as pains anditches. Whether it carries over equally to the case of emotions, moods, andother types of phenomenal states, is open to question.

2.2. BEYOND DISSOCIATION

The results of our empirical analysis present us with a choice. Either weendorse the inside view, or we fall back on a version of the outside viewwhich is consistent with the dissociation hypothesis. There are two mainoptions: introspection as displaced perception (Dretske) and introspectionvia ascent routines (Gordon). Neither is promising as an account of primaryintrospection.

Let’s take them in reverse order. The ascent-routine view is in the firstinstance an account of how we introspect beliefs, and by extension how weintrospect other propositional attitudes (desires, intentions, and the like). Itdoes not explain how we introspect phenomenal states and processes, andit offers no help with this explanatory problem. As an account of primaryintrospection, it is a non-starter. The displaced perception view is onlyslightly better off. According to this view, we introspect by inferring ourexperiential state from information about the world gained throughperception. For example, we look outside the window and we see that thesky is blue, and we infer from the fact that the sky is blue that we areexperiencing it as such. This story is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t govery far. For one thing, it doesn’t begin to explain how we introspect pains,itches, emotions, rememberings, and a whole host of other phenomenalstates and processes for which there is no clear environmental correlate. Foranother thing, it fails to explain how the inference from perceptual beliefto introspective belief is mediated, that is, it fails to specify the mechanismresponsible for this transition in thought. Imagine that you look at an objecton your desk (a coffee cup, say) and see that it is cylindrical. Why do youinfer from the fact that the object in front of you is cylindrical that you areseeing it as such? Why don’t you infer instead that you are feeling it as such,that is, having a tactile experience of its shape? As Goldman (Simulating)notes, the displaced perception view is strangely silent about how we detectand classify the functional (vs. representational) dimension of our mental



states. In that sense, the view seems radically underspecified, and in need offilling-in by some variant of the inner access view.

3. Non-primary Introspection

Secondary introspection is the detection and classification of one’s mentalstates that are widely (though far from universally) thought of as lackingdistinctive qualia. The paradigm cases of this class of states are the propositionalattitudes: beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, and the like. Assuming there isnothing that it’s like to be in such states, what’s the best way to explain ourcapacity to attribute them to ourselves?

As before, in the case of primary introspection, there are three mainoptions: inside access, outside access, or a combination of the two. And asbefore, there are the corresponding predictions. The inside view implies thepossibility of secondary introspection being dissociated from third-personmindreading, and non–theory-theoretic versions of the outside view do thesame; the theory theory and the hybrid view rule out this possibility (thoughthe hybrid view allows for backwards diachronic dissociation).

In general, the empirical picture looks much the same here as it did in theprimary case: weak on the clinical side (evidence of synchronic dissociation),stronger on the developmental side (evidence of diachronic dissociation).Though it might appear that individuals with Asperger syndrome can introspecttheir beliefs, desires, intentions, and the like normally despite difficultiesattributing such states to others (Nichols and Stich), there is little evidenceto back up this dissociation claim (Robbins). Descriptive experience samplingstudies do not speak to the issue, since they do not address the ability tointrospect attitudes, and autobiographical reports are suspect onmethodological and conceptual grounds. Furthermore, there is evidencethat children with autistic spectrum disorders have difficulty introspectingtheir intentions (Phillips, Baron-Cohen, and Rutter). In a study done withfour-year-olds, subjects were instructed to shoot a toy gun at a row of targetsafter indicating which target they’d selected. The outcome of the shootingwas manipulated to ensure that the actual outcome sometimes failed tocoincide with the subject’s stated intention. The children were then askedwhich target they had intended to hit. Normal four-year-olds answered thequestion correctly, regardless of whether the actual outcome corresponded totheir stated intention. Autistic children, on the other hand, always repliedthat the actual outcome was the intended one. The results of this study cast doubton the idea of autism as a disorder in which secondary introspection is intact.

As for the developmental relation between secondary introspection andthird-person mindreading, direct evidence is hard to come by. But there issome data supporting dissociation. In particular, studies of young children’sunderstanding of the relation between seeing and knowing suggest thatyoung children are better at reporting their own epistemic states than theepistemic states of others under similar conditions (Wimmer, Hogrefe, and



Perner). In one study, one group of three-year-olds were allowed to lookinside a box, while another group were not allowed to look. The childrenwere then asked whether or not they knew what was in the box. Themajority of children answered correctly (those who looked said yes, thosewho didn’t look said no). Then the children observed another person eitherlooking or not looking inside a box, after which they were asked whetheror not that person knew what was inside. In this third-person version of thetask, substantially fewer children got the right answer. This is bad news forthe theory theory (Nichols and Stich), and equally bad news for the hybridview.

Once again, we’re left to choose between the inside view and a versionof the outside view that is not disconfirmed by the dissociation data. Wealready noted some liabilities of the displaced perception view, in particularthe fact that it cannot account for our ability to introspect the functional type ofour mental states. Clearly, an account of secondary introspection that cannotexplain how we introspectively distinguish between beliefs, desires, intentions,and other propositional attitudes will be out of the running. So that rulesout Dretske’s story. Gordon’s ascent-routine story is problematic for a similarreason: namely, it cannot readily be extended to cover the case of attitudesother than belief (Nichols and Stich). It’s plausible enough, at least on itsface, that we determine whether or not we believe the sky is blue bychecking to see if the sky is blue and “answering” accordingly (yes if it is,no if it’s not). It’s totally implausible that we determine whether or not wehope the sky is blue, or whether we expect it to be blue, on this basis. Thatlimitation of explanatory scope – in addition to a failure to specify how theinference from belief about the world to belief about one’s belief about theworld is mediated (by what mechanism, if not some sort of monitoring orscanning device?) – seems fatal to the ascent-routine approach. So here too theinner access view prevails.

Things look very different in the case of tertiary introspection, since theself-attribution of personality traits – states which are bound up with stable,long-term behavioral dispositions – is not plausibly driven by insideinformation. Relatedly, recent evidence suggests that third-person attributionof personality traits and third-person attribution of emotions are underpinnedby distinct bits of neural circuitry, and that these capacities are functionallydissociable (Heberlein et al.). If this point carries over to first-personattributions, that would reinforce the idea that tertiary introspection andprimary introspection are very different animals. For this and other reasons,it seems unlikely that there is a single, unified account of introspection thatexplains all three species of the genus.12

Notes

* Correspondence address: Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program,Washington Universityin St. Louis, Campus Box 1073, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. Email:[email protected].



1 The conceptual distinction between consciousness and meta-consciousness (also known asreflexive consciousness, reflective awareness, and meta-awareness) is empirically supported byevidence of dissociations between them, as in studies where people catch themselves in the actof “zoning-out” during reading (Schooler). Hence, as Williams James observed a long time ago,“we must never take a person’s testimony, however sincere, that he has felt nothing, as proofpositive that no feeling has been there” (James 211).2 For dissenting voices on the phenomenology of the attitudes, see e.g., Flanagan; Goldman,“Psychology”; Chalmers; Horgan and Tienson.3 The distinction between primary and secondary introspection is a first-person analog of thedistinction between the phenomenal and intentional stances (Robbins and Jack). To take thephenomenal stance toward something is to think of it as a locus of phenomenal experience, whereasto take the intentional stance toward something is to think of it as a locus of intentionality.Preliminary evidence from clinical studies of autism and psychopathy, and functional neuroimagingof normal individuals, suggests that these stances are functionally and neurally distinct.4 This extension of the term “introspection,” though not uncommon in social and personalitypsychology, is rare in philosophy. Partly for that reason, little will be said about it here.5 The same point applies to simulationist accounts of third-person mindreading, since on the insideaccess view, introspection does not implicate off-line simulation. But simulation-based mindreadingdoes implicate introspection, since simulation routines are generally thought to bottom out inmental self-attribution (Goldman, Simulating).6 See Jack and Shallice and Schooler for accounts of introspection in which the relevant informationconcerns exclusively functional and exclusively representational properties, respectively.7 Though Gordon presents ascent routines as an alternative to introspection, what they really offeris an alternative to introspection as conceived on the inside access view. For present purposes, theascent-routine story still qualifies as a story about how introspection works.8 Note that to say of capacities X and Y that X is dissociable from Y is not (yet) to say that X andY are doubly dissociable, that is, dissociable in both directions. Capacities X and Y are doublydissociable just in case X is dissociable from Y and vice versa (Shallice). Thus, it’s at leastconceptually possible that introspection is dissociable from third-person mindreading but not theother way around. Some proponents of simulation theory claim this as a matter of empirical fact(Goldman, Simulating). It is an interesting question, so far unaddressed in the literature, whattheorists of this stripe should say about the fact that schizophrenic individuals who present withpassivity symptoms (e.g., delusions of control and thought insertion) appear to have defectiveintrospection but normal third-person mindreading (Nichols and Stich; Robbins).9 For example, in her autobiography Gunilla Gerland writes: “All the time I was growing up, Isuffered from an almost constant shudder down my spine . . . It was a constant torture . . . It waslike cold steel down my spine”; and “If I was made to touch jewellery, I felt a sharp whistlingmetallic noise in my ears, and my stomach turned over. Like a note falsely electrified, that soundwould creep from the base of my spine upwards until it rang in my ears, tumbled down into mythroat and settled like nausea in my stomach” (54).10 Gerland writes: “My insensitivity to pain was now as good as total . . . nothing hurt at all. Andyet I felt – my actual feelings were not shut off – because when I was aware that I had injuredmyself somewhere, I could sense something, a non-pain, which branched out into my body fromthe place where the injury was. But the fact was, it didn’t hurt” (157). Since it cannot be assumedthat Gerland is alert to the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and introspectivemeta-consciousness – and to the possibility that these capacities can and do come apart, even innormal cases (see note 1) – passages like these do not show that Asperger subjects are introspectivelynormal. Indeed, they can just as plausibly be read as evidence to the contrary.11 Gopnik is no exception. Though she staunchly opposes perceptual models of introspection, sheconcedes that there are cases in which there is “genuine perception of a psychological state”(Gopnik 12). Talk of perception here is shorthand for talk of relatively direct, subjectively privilegedepistemic access, along the lines of the inside view.12 Many thanks to Murat Aydede, Tony Jack, Shaun Nichols, Adam Shriver, Jeff Zacks, and ananonymous referee for helpful comments and advice. I’m especially grateful to Shaun for thestimulus of his own work on the topic, and for lively and enlightening discussion of the issuesover the past several years.



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the ins and outs of introspection

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