Jesse Butler

In this dissertation I offer a new framework for understanding introspection, characterizing it as a multi-faceted phenomenon that has a broad range of epistemic qualities. I begin by arguing that the standard understanding of introspection as a kind of perception through which we observe our own minds is misguided as a literal account of introspection. With this established, I move on to discuss our diverse abilities to know, and fail to know, our own minds. First, I describe the uniquely first-person experiential knowledge that we have in virtue of being constituted by our own conscious mental states. Second, I illustrate how we know about our own minds through higher-order cognitive abilities, through which we represent, conceptualize, and pay attention to aspects of our own minds in much the same way that we do in understanding the world around us. Finally, I present and discuss several different ways in which language, through the phenomenon of inner speech, contributes to our ability to introspect. Throughout this project, one prominent goal is to map out the varied epistemic dimensions of introspection. Some kinds of introspection provide unique ways of knowing our own minds that are not subject to typical epistemic error, such as the experiential self-knowledge intrinsic to being in a conscious state. However, many other kinds of introspection are subject to error, such as the inherent capacity to misrepresent anything that is mediated through conceptual and representational thought and the capacity to deceive ourselves through the narratives we construct in inner speech. In addition, we can also engage in self-constitutive mental processes, such that what we know about ourselves can at times be a function of what we ourselves determine. Taking note of these diverse aspects of introspection provides a foundational framework for further empirical inquiry and conceptual analysis, whereby the broad range of introspective activities we engage in, along with the impacts they have on both our ordinary lives and our intellectual investigations into the nature of the mind, can be more accurately understood, evaluated, and utilized.

We seem to have private privileged access to our own minds through introspection, but what exactly does this involve? Do we somehow literally perceive our own minds, as the common idea of a 'mind's eye' suggests, or are there other processes at work in our ability to know our own minds? Rethinking Introspection offers a new pluralist framework for understanding the nature, scope, and limits of introspection. The book argues that, contrary to common misconceptions, introspection does not consist of a single mechanism but rather a diverse range of mental states and cognitive processes with a broad spectrum of epistemic properties. Building upon this revised conception of introspection, the book illustrates and analyzes the variety of ways in which we introspectively grasp the contents of our own minds, from the immediate phenomenal knowledge generated by conscious experience to the self-deceptive possibilities enabled by certain kinds of inner speech.

In response to Petitmengin and Bitbol's recent account of first-person methodologies in the study of consciousness, I provide a revised model of our introspective knowledge of our own conscious experience. This model, which I call the existential constitution model of phenomenal knowledge, avoids the problems that Petitmengin and Bitbol identify with standard observational models of introspection while also avoiding an underlying metaphorical misconception in their own proximity model, which misconstrues first-person knowledge of consciousness in terms of a dichotomous epistemic relationship. The end result is a clearer understanding of the unique nature and epistemic properties of our knowledge of consciousness, as well as the epistemic status of subsequent first-person reports on conscious experience