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resistant to absorption into the mechanistic picture of science.2
A Historical Sketch of Introspection
If mental states exist solely as first-person, subjective phenomena, as suggested
by everyday experience, the first-person point of view should certainly be primary; and
we should let this subject matter dictate our research methods, rather than the converse.
This implies the use of introspection as a primary method of cognitive science, but
scientific resistance to this proposal is strong. One legitimate reason for this aversion is
that introspection has already been tried out by philosophers and psychologists, and its
failure to produce reliable scientific knowledge is a historical fact. With this objection in
mind, here is a brief review of the history of introspection in the West.
Augustine was among the first Western thinkers to write on the topic of the
firsthand observation of mental phenomena. In his treatise The Free Choice of the Will,
he discusses the existence of an  inner sense, or mental perception, that functions
distinctly from the five physical senses. While the eyes perceive colors but not the
phenomenon of seeing and the ears hear sounds but not the phenomenon of hearing, this
inner sense perceives both the objects of the five outer senses and those sense operations
themselves. Such mental perception, he asserts, is a kind of arbitrator, or judge, of the
external senses, for it decides what is and is not sufficient for the various outer senses.
For example, it observes whether or not one has seen enough of an object, for it is aware
of pleasure and pain. He admits to uncertainty as to whether the inner sense also
perceives itself. Augustine distinguishes between this inner sense and reason. The outer
and inner senses perceive their respective objects and  report them to reason; but reason
alone has the capacity of knowing. The inner sense does not truly understand, for it lacks
intellect; while reason is more powerful than any of the other senses and comprehends
itself as reason.3
At the end of the medieval era, Descartes, discussed introspection, as did
Augustine, as an element of his proof of the existence of God. In his Meditations, he
claims that with the  natural light of the mind whatever is perceived distinctly and
clearly is necessarily true. Errors in introspection arise only when one judges that the
ideas inside one s mind resemble things outside the mind or are modeled on them. The
more precisely one examines the contents of the mind, without referring them to anything
else, the less is there any room for error.4
The word  introspection first appeared in the second half of the seventeenth
century, and the golden age of this mode of inquiry lasted from then until the first decade
of the twentieth century. Throughout most of that period, introspection thrived in a
secular, philosophical context; but by the closing decades of the nineteenth century,
science finally turned its attention to the empirical study of the mind, and introspection
was chosen as an important means of accumulating scientific data concerning mental
phenomena.
Perhaps no one played a more influential role in the initial development of this
 introspectionist school than the German physiologist and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt.
The challenge he faced was to present a model of the introspective observation of
subjective, mental phenomena so that it appeared akin to the well-established, scientific
modes of extraspective observation of objective physical phenomena. His response was
to try to order and control the external conditions of introspection by having subjects sit
still and confront simple perceptual stimuli, such as a green triangle, and to report
according to well-defined rules. Such visual stimuli were presented for very brief and
accurately timed periods with a  tachistoscope, and the reaction times between the
presentation of the stimulus and the introspective report on the ensuing sensation were
recorded with a metronome or chronograph. Wundt believed that scientific data could be
obtained only from subjects who had been put through this routine at least ten thousand
times.
Thus, the practice of introspection was distanced from the philosophical
introspection of John Locke and even further removed from the contemplative
introspection of Augustine and transformed into a repetitious, ro-botlike performance that
seemed to Wundt to fulfill the criteria for scientific observation. The contemplative,
philosophical, and simple everyday practices of introspection were deemed hopelessly
unscientific; introspection was thought to provide reliable, scientific data only through
such external restraints.
A similar rationale determined that subjects would introspectively focus on simple
perceptual stimuli, for Wundt believed that more complex mental phenomena, such as
thoughts, volitions, and feelings, were not sufficiently amenable to experimental control
to be objects of scientific inner perception. Such inner observation was so contrived and
hedged in with rules and regulations that to the uninitiated layperson it looked like an
esoteric rite, far removed from anyone s commonsense experience of introspection.
Already in the 1880s the introspection-centered approach to psychology began to
decline. American students trained in Germany returned to establish psychology
laboratories in major American universities; and graduate schools soon sprang up that
were exclusively modeled after the German doctoral system, in which the professional
boundaries between psychology, philosophy, medicine, and other disciplines were strictly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]