Luke Muehlhauser Speaks with Eric Schwitzgebel – The Unreliability of Naive Introspection

Interesting discussion for those who are philosophically inclined. Here is the abstract for Schwitzgebel's paper on on naive introspection - which is essentially the idea that our subjective consciousness is not very reliable in its representation of "reality."

The Unreliability of Naive Introspection

Eric Schwitzgebel

Philosophical Review, 117 (2008), 245-273

Abstract: We are prone to gross error, even in favorable circumstances of extended reflection, about our own ongoing conscious experience, our current phenomenology. Even in this apparently privileged domain, our self-knowledge is faulty and untrustworthy. We are not simply fallible at the margins but broadly inept. Examples highlighted in this essay include: emotional experience (for example, is it entirely bodily; does joy have a common, distinctive phenomenological core?), peripheral vision (how broad and stable is the region of visual clarity?), and the phenomenology of thought (does it have a distinctive phenomenology, beyond just imagery and feelings?). Cartesian skeptical scenarios undermine knowledge of ongoing conscious experience as well as knowledge of the outside world. Infallible judgments about ongoing mental states are simply banal cases of self-fulfillment. Philosophical foundationalism supposing that we infer an external world from secure knowledge of our own consciousness is almost exactly backward.

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The perspective offered here is one of the most common arguments against subjective or introspective versions of inquiry into consciousness.

CPBD 082: Eric Schwitzgebel – The Unreliability of Naive Introspection

by Luke Muehlhauser on December 12, 2010 in Podcast

(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)

Today I interview philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel about how well we really know our own conscious experience.

Download CPBD episode 082 with Eric Schwitzgebel. Total time is 1:18:36.

Eric Schwitzgebel links:

• Home page at University of California, Riverside
• Eric’s blog
• Describing Inner Experience: Proponent Meets Skeptic
• Perplexities of Consciousness
• “The Unreliability of Naive Introspection“
• Eric on Philosophy TV with Peter Carruthers and Brie Gertler and Tamar Gendler

Links for things we discussed:

• Michael Tye
• Titchener, Experimental Psychology (part 1, 2, 3, 4)
• Russ Hurlburt
• Religion and crime
• Do atheists commit less vicious sex crimes?

Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed. You can also subscribe on iTunes.

Tags: Philosophy, introspection, consciousness, Luke Muehlhauser, Eric Schwitzgebel, The Unreliability of Naive Introspection, Conversations from the Blue Dot, Common Sense Atheism, conscious experience, subjectivity