Introspection

This paper presents and defends an alternative version to the so-called strategy of phenomenal concepts (aka PCS) in defense of type B materialism in Jackson’s knowledge argument. Endorsing Ball and Tye’s criticism, I argue in favor of the following claims. First: Mary’s newly acquired content is nonconceptual in the light of all available criteria. Second: Mary’s acquisition of such content is precisely what allows us to explain, at least in part, both her epistemic progress (once released from her confinement) and the increase in her expertize regarding her old PHENOMENAL RED. However, although the acquisition of such nonconceptual content is indispensable, it is sufficient to explain Mary’s epistemic progress. Third: assuming that concepts are mental files, after undergoing the visual experiences of red for the first time, such
newly acquired nonconceptual content goes through a process of “digitization” so that it can be stored in the mental file PHENOMENAL RED. Fourth and final claim: it is based on this concept of PHENOMENAL RED, now phenomenally enriched by the newly acquired nonconceptual content, that Mary is able to identify introspectively the phenomenal red of her new experience.

The metajudgment of motor responses refers to our ability to evaluate the accuracy of our own actions. Can humans metajudge the duration of their Reaction Times (RTs) to a light-flash and the accuracy of their reproduction of a reference time interval bounded by two light flashes (Anticipatory Response Time, ART)? A series of four distinct experiments shows that RT_Meta and ART_Metajudgments are possible but with accuracies about ×2.4 and ×3 poorer than the corresponding RT and ART ones. In order to reveal the origin of this drop in performance, we ask whether a visual feedback synchronous with subjects’ key-presses could improve performance. We show that overall the presence of a visual feedback does not significantly improve metajudgment accuracy although such a trend is noticeable in ART_Meta. We then compare these performances with the passive perceptual estimation of the played back (Pb) RT and ART time intervals when bounded by two (RT_Pb) and three (ART_Pb) light flashes. We show that RT_Meta and RT_Pb accuracies are close to equal, but that ART_Meta is about ×2 less accurate than ART_Pb which in turn is ×1.5 less accurate than ART. The latter observation fails however to reach statistical significance hence not sustaining proposals that active time estimation is more reliable than passive one. The whole dataset is accounted for by a clock-type model where duration estimation performance is limited by four noise sources (visual, clock-count, motor and proprioceptive + efference copy) plus one proper to ART_Meta task. It is proposed that the latter reflects the impossibility for the time-counting system to use the same time origin more than once.

The history of introspection reconsidered. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1980,  16, 240-262.

Abstract: The term “introspective psychology” is misleading in that it covers a variety of diverging positions on the theory and practice of introspection. From the beginning there was a basic discrepancy between the British and the German philosophic tradition, with the former relying more exclusively on introspection than the latter. Wilhelm Wundt’s advocacy and use of introspection was extremely circumscribed and essentially limited to simple judgements tied to external stimulation. During the first decade of the twentieth century some experimental psychologists, notably E. B. Titchener and the Würzburg School, greatly enlarged the scope of introspection, ushering in the brief vogue of “systematic introspection.” The latter never gained wide support in North America and was supplanted in Germany by developments that do not constitute “introspective psychology” in any precise sense.

On the basis of two thought experiments, I argue that self-building technologies are possible given our current level of technological progress. We could already use technology to make us instantiate selfhood in a more perfect, complete manner. I then examine possible extensions of this thesis, regarding more radical self-building technologies which might become available in a distant future. I also discuss objections and reservations one might have about this view.

The period of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, known as late antiquity, gave rise to some of the elements that have since constituted the identity of the Western self, alongside new lines of psychological investigation. This article seeks to show that these developments constitute an important stage in the history of Western psychology. It argues, moreover, that without these developments there could be no modern discipline of psychology. Psychology, however, did not exist in the ancient world as an independent science, nor was a distinction drawn between scientific and moral or religious elements of psychological knowledge. Accordingly, this important source of evidence has been neglected by scholars investigating the history of Western psychology, who have tended to focus on the 19th-century roots of scientific psychology. While this is, indeed, the only part of the history of psychology that has a relatively un-problematical subject matter, this article argues for the need to broaden the focus on the history of the discipline of psychology to include the history of psychological knowledge, and seeks to make this important source of evidence available for scholars other than historians of late antiquity.

Категорія персонажа пов’язана з часовими та просторовими характеристиками, що зображують художню дійсність у якій знаходяться персонажі художнього твору. Інтроспекція персонажа є однією з форм художньої дійсності твору.

Проведене дослідження засвідчує, що персонажна інтроспекція у текстах сучасної художньої короткої прози є самостійною категорією, відмінною від інших текстових явищ, що має свої особливості виділення та власне функціональне навантаження.
У дослідженні подана зручна система співвідношення категорії персонажної інтроспекції з іншими текстовими категоріями, а також подана проста класифікація функцій персонажної інтроспекції.

The objective of this article is twofold. In the first part, I discuss two issues central to any theoretical inquiry into mental imagery: embodiment and consciousness. I do so against the backdrop of second-generation cognitive science, more specifically the increasingly popular research framework of embodied cognition, and I consider two caveats attached to its current exploitation in narrative theory. In the second part, I attempt to cast new light on readerly mental imagery by offering a typology of what I propose to be its four basic varieties. The typology is grounded in the framework of embodied cognition and it is largely compatible with key neuroscientific and other experimental evidence produced within the framework.

In " Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness " , Keith Frankish argues for illusionism: the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Illusionism, he says, " replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem – the problem of explaining how the illusion of phenomenality arises and why it is so powerful ". The illusion of phenomenality is indeed quite powerful. In fact, it is much more powerful than any other illusion, in the sense that we face a very special and unique intuitive resistance when trying to accept that phenomenality is an illusion. This is bad news for illusionists, because this means that they cannot entirely model their explanation of the illusion of consciousness on the explanation of other illusions. Explaining this unique intuitive resistance to illusionism may therefore constitute the hardest aspect of the illusion problem. However, I think that this aspect of the problem is solvable. I will outline a possible solution, which is based on the hypothesis that our (illusory) introspective representations of phenomenal states characterize them as having unique epistemological properties and as playing a special epistemological role.

Several contemporary philosophical theories of introspection have been offered, yet each faces a number of difficulties in providing an explanation of the exact nature of introspection. I contrast the inner-sense view that argues for a causal awareness with the acquaintance view that argues for a non-causal or direct awareness. After critically examining the inner-sense and the acquaintance views, I claim that these two views are complementary and not mutually exclusive, and that both perspectives, conceived of as (what I call) modes of introspective access, actually broaden the notion of introspection. I then propose a useful distinction between (what I call) stimuli-induced introspection-i.e., a receptive process whereby some specific mental states induce introspection-and (what I call) self-triggered introspection-i.e., a selective process whereby the individual's own interest and volition initiates introspection. I argue that that distinction may eliminate the false dichotomy which claims that only one of those types of awareness, either the causal one or the direct one, is conducive to introspection or is defined as introspection.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

El  presente  trabajo  tiene  como  propósito  justificar  la  relevancia  de  estudiar detalladamente el concepto de introspección en el marco de la psicología discursiva. Para
estos  fines  hemos  elaborado  en  cuatro  tiempos  una  revisión  crítica  de  la  historia  de  la introspección desde sus orígenes hasta la época actual. En el primer apartado llevaremos a cabo  una  revisión  histórica  con  el  fin  de  demostrar  que  la  psicología  nunca  dejó  de  ser introspectiva  y  que  actualmente  la  introspección  está  ocupando  un  lugar  central  en  las reflexiones teóricas y metodológicas. En el segundo apartado haremos una revisión de los principales planteamientos  en torno  a  la  idea de introspección que fueron propuestos en  los orígenes  de  la  psicología  moderna  y  de  cuáles  fueron  las  principales  problemáticas asociadas. En el tercer apartado describiremos  los problemas que despierta actualmente  la introspección,  y  revisaremos  dos métodos específicos  que  surgen  como alternativas a ésta
para  el  estudio  de  la  experiencia  consciente:  la  neurofenomenología  y  la heterofenomenología.  Para finalizar expondremos cómo la reciente propuesta de Woofit y Holt  (2011)  abre el camino para llevar el problema de la introspección y el estudio de la experiencia al terreno de la psicología socio-discursiva.

Les limites rencontrées dans l’étude du fonctionnement cognitif lors de mes débuts dans la recherche (1970) m’ont conduit d’abord à privilégier les enregistrements vidéos de conduites
finalisées pour pouvoir enrichir le recueil de données, puis devant les nouvelles limites tenant à l’exclusion de tout ce qui n’était pas visible et enregistrable, à remobiliser “l’introspection
guidée” pour avoir accès au point de vue du sujet. Après avoir visité toute la bibliographie des apports et critiques de l'introspection (fin 19ème, première partie du 20ème siècle), j’ai
constaté après quelques autres1, qu’il n’y avait pas de critiques décisives quant à l’utilisation de l’introspection rétrospective, mais qu’en revanche, il n’existait aucune technique
systématique experte de recueil et de production de ces verbalisations. J’ai donc créé une technique d’entretien spécifique pour guider l’introspection des vécus : l’entretien
d’explicitation, puis dans un second temps la technique de l’auto-explicitation dans laquelle le chercheur se prend lui-même comme objet d’étude et produit des descriptions de son propre vécu par écrit.

An introduction to Descartes' theory of knowledge (again, designed for those with little previous familiarity with  the history of epistemology).  The stage is then set to teach them in subsequent classes about Peirce's critique of Descartes, and Dewey's of Plato.

L’entretien d’explicitation se rapporte toujours à un vécu passé, c’est un entretien mené a posteriori. De ce fait, un élément essentiel de sa technique est … l’accès à la mémoire du vécu. La possibilité de parler d’un vécu passé, de le décrire finement à chacun de ses moments et dans ses différentes étapes, est donc fondée sur une activité de rappel, sur un mode de rappel spécifique que j’ai nommé “évocation”. Mais être devant la tâche de se rappeler ce que l’on a vécu peut être source d’inquiétude : vais-je me souvenir ? Il me semble bien même que je ne me souviens pas … Or …

This book explores the widespread phenomenon of celebrity fandom and provides the reader with deeper insights into the emotional dynamics of a consumer’s parasocial fan relationship with a celebrity. Following an overview of how fandom and celebrity have previously been portrayed across different academic fields, the chapters take the reader on a narrative journey into the life of a fan. Using the author’s autoethnographic account of his personal fan relationship with a film actress thereby as a case study, this detailed study examines how consumers can become emotionally attached to a celebrity and how this attachment can add meaning to their life. By exploring the complex nature of consumers’ behaviours and experiences, Celebrity Fandom and Consumer Behaviour uncovers the (para)social link between the celebrity and an individual’s personal desires. This book has an interdisciplinary appeal and will provide an insightful read not only to scholars, students and anyone interested in celebrity fandom, but also to talent agents, publicists and marketing managers working in the entertainment industries.

Markus Wohlfeil was Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Stirling, UK, the University of East Anglia, UK, and University College Cork, Ireland. His research focuses on celebrity fandom; film tourism & consumption; film marketing & business; the role of myth creation, interpretation & adoption within punk subcultures; the reincarnation of punk's DIY culture on PledgeMusic; and experiential marketing communications. He also has a personal interest in amateur filmmaking, watching & collecting movies, going to punk gigs, listening to vinyl records and playing table tennis.

Please note that this manuscript here is only the first half of the first chapter plus table of contents - and posted for promotional purposes.

What assumptions are built into the claim that experience has “phenomenal properties,” and could these assumptions turn out to be false? I consider the issue specifically for the similarity relations between experiences: for example, experiences of different shades of red are more similar to each other than an experience of red and an experience of green. It is commonly thought that we have a special kind of epistemic access to experience that is more secure than our access to the external environment. In the first part of the paper, I argue than one way of eluci- dating this claim is especially plausible—that systematic error, of the kind subjects make about the external environment in traditional “skeptical” scenarios, is not conceivable for introspection of experience, including for our knowledge of similarity relations. I argue that focusing on simi- larity relations gives us a more interesting version of the argument than for other forms of experiential introspection. Then in the second part of the paper I describe an example, inspired by a similar case due to Sydney Shoemaker, in which a subject, despite being fully rational and attentive, apparently is systematically mistaken about the character of their expe- rience in a surprising way. I argue that the example calls into question whether there are properties of experience satisfying the epistemic access constraint, and therefore whether experience has “phenomenal properties” in the intuitive sense.

Объектом исследования является проблематика интроспекции в философии сознания. С целью выяснить эпистемологические возможности интроспекции применялся метод теоретической реконструкции, а также сравнительный и исторический. Новизна работы состоит в том, что она предлагает фундаментальное теоретическое переосмысление проблематики интроспекции в условиях невозможности принятия как позиции, наделяющей ее абсолютной достоверностью, так и точки зрения, полностью отрицающей ее исследовательские возможности. Практическая значимость исследования состоит в том, что его результаты могут быть применены в преподавании курсов гносеологии, философии психологии, проблем современной философии сознания.

This document contains the two papers referenced below:

Grimes, J.O., Cheek, J.M., & Norem, J.K. (2011, January). Four meanings of introversion: Social, thinking, anxious, and inhibited* introversion. Presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio, TX.
[*Note: After the 2011 paper, we renamed the Inhibited factor as Restrained Introversion, with reference to the work of J.P. Guilford.]

Cheek, J.M., Brown, C.A., & Grimes, J.O. (2014, Sept.). Personality Scales for Four Domains of Introversion: Social, Thinking, Anxious, and Restrained Introversion. Preliminary Research Manual (2nd ed)., Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley MA. 02481-8203  with addendum -- Cheek, J.M., Brown, C.A., & Grimes, J.O. (2020, Sept.). STAR Scales Update -- Revised Restrained Introversion Scale. Unpublished, Wellesley College Psychology Department 
jcheek@wellesley.edu with

.

Knowing oneself well is a basic skill for psychotherapists and other experts who work intensively with people (Leitner, et al., 2014). Even experienced art therapists are in danger of overestimating their own self rather than self- criticising. The aims of introspection and self-reflection, which are the aims of psychotherapy training, are often lost sight of later in everyday working life. (Leitner, et al., 2014). The ability to perceive oneself examined in this work is the basis for constructive self-criticism and the most important basis for art therapy. Those who try to suppress questions, doubts, fears or strong emotions in their work with people become blind to themselves and others. This makes it clear that the ability to perceive oneself is an indispensable basic condition for the
special requirements of art therapy work.

This thesis examines emotional self-knowledge, its place as well as its participation in self-knowledge, the value it has for ordinary individuals and how ordinary individuals can obtain it.
The examination of the nature of the emotions and the value that individuals place on the knowledge of their emotions, which is carried out in this thesis, highlights the importance of the acquisition of emotional self-knowledge, as well as the link that the latter is commonly heard to maintain with happiness. If the acquisition of this knowledge appears to be essential, it is not easy. It requires the unfurling of a number of cognitive abilities, as well as a significant cognitive effort, especially during the use of introspection. Indeed, this thesis exclusively discusses introspective access to emotional self-knowledge, and set aside other forms of access to self-knowledge. In in this work, I therefore question the practical but also moral scope of the use of introspection with regard to emotions, proposing a defense of the introspective process as a process capable of allowing an ordinary individual to detect, to identify and interpret one's own emotions.
This thesis is therefore organized around two main arguments. The first of these arguments gives emotional self-knowledge a fundamental place in the form of self-knowledge that matters to ordinary people. The second defends the idea that introspection offers access to this emotional knowledge, notably through the apprehension that it allows of the phenomenology of emotions, and that this access has a minimum reliability and therefore an epistemic value - even a weak one - as well as a moral and intrinsic value.

Il semble que nous puissions dire que nous sommes conscients de choses variées, comme des objets (une table, une pomme, une voiture), des personnes (des proches, des inconnus, Pierre ou Marie), des qualités (des couleurs, des sons, des formes) ou encore des événements (des pommes qui tombent, des personnes qui se rencontrent ou des formes qui changent). Mais nous avons également tendance à considérer que nous sommes conscients de nous-mêmes : qu’est-ce à dire ? Parfois, nous entendons par là que nous sommes conscients des traits de caractère propres à la personne que nous sommes, ou bien des qualités de ce corps que nous considérons comme le nôtre. D’autres fois, nous comprenons par conscience de soi celle que nous avons du fait que nous existons, que nous avons une histoire et sommes doués d’une identité plus ou moins forte (car nous pouvons avoir changé ou être amené à changer, comme en témoigne la variation de notre caractère ou de notre aspect physique par exemple). D’autres fois encore, la conscience de soi désigne la conscience que nous avons de ce qui se produit en nous : des sensations, des émotions, des idées qui surviennent de manière plus ou moins volontaires, à l’occasion de situations variées.

Le fait que nous puissions attribuer ainsi plusieurs acceptions à la notion de conscience de soi renvoie au paradoxe selon lequel d’un côté, la conscience de soi est une expérience intime que nous faisons quotidiennement et souvent sans grande difficulté (à de rares exceptions près, sur lesquelles nous reviendrons) ; de l’autre, nous avons du mal à déterminer ce qu’il faut entendre par conscience de soi : quelles sont les différents sens de cette notion ? quelle est la spécificité de la conscience de soi, par rapport à d’autres formes de conscience ? quel est, au juste, l’objet de la conscience de soi ? Comment une telle expérience est-elle possible et en quoi consiste-t-elle ?

Les réponses à ces questions sont loin de faire l’objet d’un consensus, tant chez les philosophes qu’au sein de la communauté scientifique — notamment celle des chercheurs en sciences cognitives. Cet article se propose de présenter, dans cet ordre, chacune de ces questions ainsi que les principales thèses, classiques et contemporaines, qui nourrissent les discussions particulièrement animées au sujet de la conscience de soi.

This paper sketches how transformation of the mind through Buddhist meditation practice can support introspective investigations of experience in science. Rebuffing conventional associations between transformation and distortion, it carves out a space for epistemically-beneficial transformations. §1 first introduces meditation's place within Buddhist thought, outlining traditional claims that the practice cultivates attentional gestures important for interrogating the mind. It then outlines proposed uses of these practices within science, before introducing worries over their utility. Such worries propose that meditative gestures transform and thereby distort the mind, making resultant introspective judgements unrepresentative of untrained or inattentive experience. The remainder of the paper combats these worries using material from two distinct fields. §2 introduces literature from the cognitive psychology of attention to sketch a first-pass account of how meditative transformations might be of benefit. It argues that converging models of attention here can precisify the phenomenological changes available through meditative training, such that their epistemic merits can be better evaluated. I identify one kind of meditation practice as training a form of top-down attentional control. And using cognitive psychological models of this capacity, I argue that it can (i) accentuate and (ii) isolate particular features of experience, to our epistemic advantage. §3 outlines some more challenging, distortive dangers surrounding the introspective use of top-down attentional control, showing how it can be misappropriated to yield genuinely unrepresentative accounts of experience. Responding to these, §4 brings the attention literature into dialogue with the pedagogical literature on meditation practice to show how to use this attentional faculty appropriately in introspective investigations, addressing such dangers. This allows me to conclude in §5 with some comments on prudent approaches to introspective inquiry within science.

We are trying here to object to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to reduce qualia to structural predicates, which is the way we understand his ontology of the “flesh”, as he seems to us to develop it already in his first works on “expression”. We are more generally objecting through him to any kind of “structural” theory concerning sensation, meaning by this any theory which claims that one cannot attribute a relation to a sensorial content without intrinsically altering it. Our task is complicated by the great number of empirical facts that Merleau-Ponty calls for to prove his structural theory. He notably finds great help in the structural interpretation Kurt Koffka had already laid down for these facts as a Gestalt psychologist. Consequently, we begin with the examination of this theory and of the facts that support it, showing that they cannot seem to corroborate a structural theory unless one confuses “abstraction” and “real separation” of a quale from its context. We then call for William James to support these conclusions, reminding that he had already showed the illegitimacy of the claim by the neo-Hegelian writers of his time to find empirical proof for their own structural theories in similar psychological data. He had also suggested a “knowledge by acquaintance” theory against those writers that we are trying to use in defense for introspection pure and simple.

This paper examines the meaning and evidential role of reports of introspection in cognitive psychology.  A theory of scientific introspection aims to detail the nature, scope and limits of reports of subjective experience in science. Introspective reports best function as experimental data when combined with objective methods of stimulus control and the more recent, developing methods of brain scanning and brain imaging—which are having a invigorating effect on both theory and experimental practice. Introspection has been controversial and variously conceived in the history of psychology: sometimes endorsed as central and crucial to scientific psychology and sometimes rejected outright as subjective. Introspective methods were very prominent in the structuralist origins of experimental psychology, and also important in the origins of functional psychology; but it was subsequently rejected or minimized by the dominant behaviorism of the twentieth century. In common usage, “introspective” often means “reflective,” and related practices may take on broad significance in personal life. This popular (or philosophical) meaning occasionally intrudes problematically into scientific discourse. In particular it tends to license undue confidence in stand-alone introspection. In Wilhelm Wundt’s experimental psychology, emphasis was placed on “stimulus control.” Reports of introspection were regarded as scientifically useful only if the experimentalist could control the sensory stimulus. This effectively limited experimental introspection to situations corresponding to ordinary reports of perceptual observation (though it is reasonably, if carefully extended in particular experimental designs). On the other hand, competing conceptions of introspection extended it to include unchecked, unfalsifiable and poorly replicated results. There has been a modest return of introspection in recent cognitive psychology—chiefly supplemented by techniques of brain imaging and brain scanning. As will be argued, this combination with objective methods is needed; and it will be briefly argued that some account will also be needed of the semantics of the descriptions of conscious contents.

This dissertation defends the reliability of first-person
methods for studying consciousness, and applies first-person
experiments to two philosophical problems: the experience of size
and of the self. In chapter 1, I discuss the motivations for
taking a first-person approach to consciousness, the background
assumptions of the dissertation and some methodological
preliminaries.
In chapter 2, I address the claim that phenomenal judgements
are far less reliable than perceptual judgements (Schwitzgebel,
2011). I argue that the main errors and limitations in making
phenomenal judgements are due to domain-general factors, which
are shared in the formation of perceptual judgements. Phenomenal
judgements may still be statistically less reliable than
perceptual judgements, though I provide reasons for thinking that
Schwitzgebel (2011) overstates the case for statistical
unreliability. I also provide criteria for distinguishing between
reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgements, hence defending
phenomenal judgements against general introspective scepticism.
Having identified the main errors in making phenomenal
judgements, in chapter 3, I discuss how first-person experiments
can be used to control for these errors. I provide examples, and
discuss how they overcome attentional and conceptual errors,
minimise biases, and exhibit high intersubjective reliability.
In chapter 4, I investigate size experience. I use
first-person experiments and empirical findings to argue that
distant things looking smaller cannot be explained as an
awareness of instantiated objective properties (visual angle or
retinal image size). I also discuss how an awareness of
uninstantiated objective properties cannot adequately account for
the phenomenal character of size experience. This provides
support for a subjectivist account of variance in size
experience.
In chapter 5, I investigate the sense of self. I distinguish
between a weak sense of self (for-me-ness) and a strong sense of
self in which there is a polarity between subject and object. I
use first-person experiments from Douglas Harding to demonstrate
an explicit strong sense of self, specifically when I point at
where others see my face. I also argue that this sense of self is
not explained by inference, thoughts, feelings, imagination nor
the viewpoint. Rather, it is part of the structure of experience
that I seem to be looking from here.
Even if there is a sense of self, there may be no self. The
question of chapter 6 is whether there can be a direct experience
of the self. I argue that to function as a bearer of experience
the subject must be single and lack sensory qualities in itself.
I use Harding’s first-person experiments to investigate the
visual gap where I cannot see my head. I argue that it conforms
to the above criteria, and hence is a candidate for being the
subject. This finding, in conjunction with the fact that I seem
to be looking from the same location, provides prima facie
evidence for the reality of the subject. I hold then that
contrary to Hume and most philosophers since, that there can be a
direct self-experience, if one knows which direction to attend.

Psychoanalysis and autobiography are both projects of self understanding. In both, the attempt to understand oneself reaches a limit. What is the nature of the limit to self-knowledge? The first chapter, "Mors" of Michel Leiris's Scraps (Fourbis), the second volume of his The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu), richly explores the limits encountered in the attempt to understand oneself, and the circumstances in which it runs into opacity. There are two kinds of obstacles to self-knowledge, and both can be read in Freud's famous metaphor of the navel of the dream. We could either think of a well-hidden, inaccessible nucleus of meaning or of a network that spreads infinitely, its edges impossible to trace. These two images of obstacles each support a certain structure of meaning and inquiry. Leiris's text oscillates between the two models.

Nightly transitions into sleep are usually uneventful and transpire in the blink of an eye. But in the laboratory these transitions afford a unique view of how experience is transformed from the perceptually grounded consciousness of wakefulness to the hallucinatory simulations of dreaming. The present review considers imagery in the sleep-onset transition— " microdreams " in particular—as an alternative object of study to dreaming as traditionally studied in the sleep lab. A focus on microdream phenomenology has thus far proven fruitful in preliminary efforts to (i) develop a classification for dream-ing's core phenomenology (the " oneiragogic spectrum "), (ii) establish a structure for assessing dreaming's multiple memory inputs (" multi-temporal memory sources "), (iii) further Silberer's project for classifying sleep-onset images in relation to waking cognition by revealing two new imagery types (" autosensory imagery, " " exosensory imagery "), and (iv) embed a potential understanding of microdreaming processes in a larger explanatory framework (" multisensory integration approach "). Such efforts may help resolve outstanding questions about dream neurophysiology and dreaming's role in memory consolidation during sleep but may also advance discovery in the neuroscience of consciousness more broadly.

This study investigated the relationship between public and private self-consciousness and social and personal aspects of identity. As predicted by self-consciousness theory, public self-consciousness correlated significantly more strongly with social than with personal aspects of identity, and private self-consciousness correlated significantly more strongly with personal than with social aspects of identity. Implications for the psychology of identity are discussed. [This was the first publication in the development of the Aspects of Identity Questionnaire.]

This essay argues that programs for the “repair of the world” (tikkun olam) are often marked by arrogance, overzealousness, and injustice. I consider the biblical interpretations of Meir Kahane and Yitzchak Ginsburgh and point to the need to acknowledge our human limitations as we develop our visions for tikkun olam.  Part of what this essay suggests is that figures like Kahane and Ginsburgh participate in the musar tradition through their arguments about the nature and application of various virtues and vices.  The improvement of the musar tradition, I think, requires guarding against the sorts of moral and intellectual errors that are exemplified in their teachings.