Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
I've been thinking about this question. I've joked that I'm a "seems to me" philosopher. Sometimes people have criticized me for that. I rarely quote well-known philosophers. When I do it's generally Emerson's "Self-reliance" and Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" or sometimes maybe William James' "Pragmatism" and R.G. Collingwood's "Essay on Metaphysics." I include feelings, values, impressions, and personal experience - both internal and external - in my arguments. I'm not sure how this relates exactly, but I also am a broken record (if you remember or ever knew what that means) for the distinction between questions of metaphysics and epistemology and questions of fact.
I depend mostly on my own introspection for my positions on philosophical questions. I try to be very self-aware about my own internal experience, especially for questions of knowledge, which is very important to me. I'm not sure if that's because I'm an engineer or if I became an engineer because knowledge is so important.
I think most people probably will agree that introspection is valuable. We'll see. There's more to it than that - should we depend less on introspection than on ratiocination? Love that word. Means, more or less, rational thinking. If so, how do they compare in terms of their credibility? It should be clear where I come down.
I depend mostly on my own introspection for my positions on philosophical questions. I try to be very self-aware about my own internal experience, especially for questions of knowledge, which is very important to me. I'm not sure if that's because I'm an engineer or if I became an engineer because knowledge is so important.
I think most people probably will agree that introspection is valuable. We'll see. There's more to it than that - should we depend less on introspection than on ratiocination? Love that word. Means, more or less, rational thinking. If so, how do they compare in terms of their credibility? It should be clear where I come down.
Comments (201)
I do not think there is a relationship between knowledge being important and engineering as an occupation. I think engineering has financial incentives, but knowledge is acquired through many different occupations, none of them being superior to the other, as can be seen in the raging debates between philosophers and physicists.
I think while rationality attempted to be parsimonious with regards to categorizing "truth" from our own biases, the fact is, this rationality is also traveling through the filters I mentioned earlier. From your point of view, you may have a dispassionate evaluation of "just the facts," but your biases, beliefs, culture, etc, will automatically preclude some "facts" from even being an option to you.
So overall I think introspection is valuable, but I am skeptical that "rationality" and introspection can really be two separate categories when armchair philosophizing. When building a bridge, yeah of course they are different, but when pondering philosophical questions, that becomes much less clear.
I would go further, and say introspection is INvaluable. Like the man said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
I honestly respect a philosophical view built from within and on ones own than the regurgitation of historical philosophy if I had to choose, although a mix of both is ideal.
Introspection is a useful tool, it's necessary to understand yourself, others and the world. Introspection always yields results, you can learn about others by knowing yourself and you can start to put things together. Knowing things like intelligence, ambition, laziness, focus, emotion and the list goes on without introspection might be just an exercise in theory, I don't believe you can really know them without introspection. Rationality, on the other hand, does not only not always yield results and it can lead one astray.
Lots of things make sense, seem good on paper and are 100% false. There are psychological factors like cognitive dissonance, cognitive biases like the dunning-kruger effect, confirmation biases. Incomplete information, incorrect premises, logic unreasonably applied and using argumentation that seems good but fails.
I think introspection should be a large component of any philosopher's understanding of the world. Philosophers who fail to utilise their understanding of themselves and others and rely on rationality instead fail and end up in their own little world.
I don't understand and I understand. :smile:
I don't understand because rationality is mandatory and not an option you can deny. I read somewhere that to be irrational is to fail or, worse, die a premature death. There's a youtube video:
In other words introspection has to be done rationally. Otherwise you'd be schizophrenic, right? Of course there are times when I think it's better to be insane than normal but that's another topic.
I understand because you read Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching is, in my humble opinion, a different type of philosophy. It's replete with what are normally considered fatal errors in philosophy - vagueness, paradoxes, etc.
You probably mean that you think for yourself and use external material/sources simply as a good place to start an investigation. That's wonderful but how do you deal with frustration? I mean some philosophical ideas are notoriously difficult. Wouldn't it be illogical to go into the wilderness without a guide/friend who knows the trails?
Anyways, good luck!
Yes, I think I agree with what you are saying. When I made the distinction, I was ...maybe projecting is the right word - anticipating what others might say. To me they are both just part of the package of what goes into knowledge. Maybe it's that self-awareness in this context is something I feel good at, while a rational approach doesn't feel as natural. I think it comes back to this quote from Kafka, which I haven't used in a week or two:
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
It's all right there in front of us. We only need to pay attention.
Quoting rlclauer
I was speaking personally here, as an engineer. I wasn't making comparisons. Working as an engineer, I have been, needed to be, tried to be, very, self-consciously, aware of how knowledge works in the specific situations where I used it. I had to get it right. I wasn't saying that others don't do the same things.
Sounds like you and I agree. How aware are you of how your mind is working while you think? Is it something you pay attention to?
Yes, I practice meditation and have spent alot of time in deep reflection which becomes habit while thinking.
Seems a different sort of question than the titular question :D. I don't think they are separable, even in matters of fact, as you put it. So there's an interesting bundle of alternating answers in there, between yourself and myself, while still agreeing that they are not separable.
But is introspection a kind of knowledge at all, or if it be a kind of knowledge is it a valid one? I don't think that I'd agree that introspection is a kind of knowledge, but rather is way of thinking. We look into ourselves, and try and identify -- make into words -- different parts of our mind. This is the belief that is based on a gut feeling. This is the belief that is based on an observation. The terms "gut feeling" and "observation" are products of a way of thinking about our beliefs and classifying them -- the introspective way.
But then you say this:Quoting T Clark
And I wonder -- is this more of what you mean by introspection? Because the inclusion of feelings, values, impressions, and personal experience within an argument -- so I would say -- does not invalidate it as knowledge. Knowledge is made by people, after all, and people are motivated by feelings. So the inclusion of what moves us to make knowledge is only honest -- and in fact is often asked after when someone does make an argument or provide some chain of reasoning.
Which is a dizzying sort of way to say that I think there's a lot to untangle.
I can deny that rationality is mandatory. Not that I don't ever use it, but most of what I do and know is not rational. It's not irrational either. It's non-rational. I have a lot of experience collecting, organizing, evaluating, and using data - specifically data regarding properties and bodies of water with contaminated soil, groundwater, surface water and sediment. Most of the upfront work we do is non-rational. Rationality mostly comes in when we have to explain conditions at the site to others and justify planned future work.
Quoting TheMadFool
No. Introspection is observing yourself the same way you observe the rest of the world. You see what's going on. That's mostly non-rational. Then rationality comes in when you explain what's going on - to yourself and others. The experience itself - the observation - can easily be made more difficult by rationality.
Quoting TheMadFool
So, 3,500 years of Chinese philosophy is wrong? I don't think so. Your "humble opinion" seems to be presumptuous and based on ignorance or misunderstanding. There's only one world. There are lots of ways of looking at it, but they're all describing the same thing. Eastern philosophy may be unfamiliar, but it's often sophisticated, subtle, and clear headed. Perhaps some western philosophers see see it as replete with fatal errors, vagueness, paradoxes, but it's not. Schopenhauer read Indian philosophy and acknowledged that many of his ideas are, if not influenced by it, at least consistent with it. Many of the vague ideas you talk about are also found in western philosophers. Kant's noumena have a lot in common with Lao Tzu's Tao as does Schopenhauer's will.
Quoting TheMadFool
In my experience, many western philosophical ideas are difficult because they are inflated to ten times their actual size by adding unnecessary words that are more likely to hide reality than uncover it. I recognize that many people feel differently and get great value from western philosophy. I have been impressed with how they use it to understand how things work, but I have no patience with what I see as dead weight verbiage. I am very lazy which, by the way, is something I recognize because of introspection.
Quoting Judaka
You and I seem to agree. I would add to your list of mental experiences that can be known with introspection our experience of knowing, feeling, being conscious, and perceiving.
God, that's a terrible version. Maybe I can find a better one later.
But my point is that introspection is a process, whereas knowledge is more like a product - some belief or assertion about the world that we think is likely to be true.
That said. Without introspection there can be no knowledge.
Anyway, I don't understand this non-rational stuff you're talking about.
The way I make sense of non-rational is that it doesn't involve thinking of any kind at all, not even irrational thinking. Reminds me of the quote made by someone "you're not even wrong".
Non-rational, the third wheel, unnecessary they say but you always need one when you blow a tire.
Good point. I don't really think I'd say introspection is a way of thinking, but maybe I should have said that it is a good way of gaining knowledge.
Now that makes sense to me. We could possibly divide all knowledge into two - internal (self) and external (physical world). Introspection is an inquiry into the former.
Imagine one of your favorite foods - for me it's, let's say, a nice creamy fish chowder. I picture the bowl. Imagine the smell and the feel of it on my tongue - the warmth, the flavor, the feel of the chunks of haddock in my mouth. Don't label it, put it into words, think about it. Just experience it. That is non-rational.
Yes. I agree.
No.
Introspection is a type of reflection, which is a type of problem-solving, not a type of knowledge.
Quoting T Clark
Why not depend on both?
Seems to me they are different types of problem-solving tools.
Introspection examines mental events.
Reason creates and/or develops arguments.
Quoting T Clark
Mental faculties don't have credibility, people do.
:ok:
Ratiocination without introspection: I'd love to see an example of that. You'd not be able to notice your own internal evaluations of the semantics of the terms in your argument. You'd not be able to notice the 'there, I these premises seem correct' quale. You'd have no way of noticing if it seemed right to you that your argument was sound. And so on.
Introspection without ratiocination: that could lead to knowledge via intuition. You might have a sudden insight, with some black boxed process leading to it.
I’d be very interested in how that would work, if someone wishes to help me out.
How is reason (the construction of an argument) related to these types of reflection (examinations of experience)?
1) An introspection: I had a certain emotion when something happened to something I am concerned about.
2) An observation: I saw the cat run across the road.
Then throw that remembered observation into an arguement and if you dig into the phenomenology of your process of coming up with that argument, you will find many, often fleeting, instances of introspection, without which you wouldn't be able to mount that argument, know when it is over, know that you think it makes sense, know that the semantics of the terms used fit your memory or whatever is refered to and so on.
Thing is, about being old and all....I already have answers to both those questions. But it seems my answers aren’t in accord with current thinking. So because I got two questions rather than an answer to my one, I haven’t learned anything.
But thanks anyway, for getting back.
Mmmm....yeah, me too. Wait. Are you old too?!?!? Bet I got you beat: my first new car was actually made in Detroit, and had fins!!!
Maybe introspection and rationality aren’t categorically distinct. Just, you know, kindasorta distinct.
It's a bit like when people contrast intuition and reason. I think that is meaningfull also, but you cannot reason without intuitive processes.
Does reflection necessarily lead to reasoning?
If not, reflection and reasoning are different types of mental events.
Could reflection lead to other types of mental events (e.g., categorisation) independent of reason?
I was working with introspection rather than reflection. And no, it doesn't necessarily, but it is necessary for reasoning. There is overlap between these processes. They are not completely distinct. One can blend them. I have argued above that one cannot reason without introspecting. So I think that introspection is a part of reasoning. It is not the part we tend to focus on or think of, but it is in there.
I asked you one question in answer to one of yours, here (in case you forgot). As far as "learning anything", I guess it's true what they say about old dogs. So we are done for now.
Can one reason from observation independent of introspection?
Cool. I think this speaks to a lot of underlying disagreement, where I was more than happy to agree with some of your conclusions -- because now I think I'd say definitely no. :D Even self-knowledge, I think, is better understood in conjunction with other ways of gaining knowledge. Not that you could have self-knowledge without introspection, but rather that speaking to others -- be it friends or priests or therapists -- helps one to gain self-knowledge better than introspection alone.
I'm not sure to what extent I'd include introspection in other kinds of knowledge. And some of this comes down to the big buggaboo: knowledge, and its characterization.
All that being said I do agree that introspection can be valuable. I also think that we can get a bit too caught up in ourselves by introspecting, though perhaps you'd call that something other than introspection.
These observations will be in memory, not in the now. We have to access them. Place them in contexts, all this requiring all sorts of intuitive checking where we 'go inside' as it were and check these and their placement, similarity, relevance. We cannot stay just on the surface so to speak with the words.
Psychobabble.
Different aspects, yes; different processes, not so much. Different processes implies different methodologies. If one methodology is established as rationality, in which a subject concerns himself with an object. Current thinking holds that introspection is the case wherein a self thinks about itself, which is the same as a thing being simultaneously both subject and object. The only logical way around this catastrophic violation of the Law of Identity, is to re-phrase introspection as that wherein a subject thinks about his thoughts. Which gets us right back to rationality, where the self as subject thinks about the contents of itself as objects, but not itself as an object.
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Quoting Coben
But is mere noticing really an introspective procedure? Surely there’s a given relational hierarchy between noticing the mind has content, which can have only one of two possible conclusions, as opposed to noticing the contents of the mind, which can have a multiplicity of conclusions. Regardless, a relational paradigm must have taken place, and all relations absolutely arise from the thought of them.
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Quoting Coben
From the directly above, I would counter with......
The theorem:
Introspection is more a mode, or kind, of rationality, rather than a separation from it.
The proof:
Noticing anything at all presupposes the antecedent of not noticing. In this view, noticing itself is neither rationality nor introspection, because as yet nothing has been noticed, noticing so far being nothing but a succession in time. As soon as noticing incorporates, say, the content of our minds, a relation over and above simply a relation in time, becomes immediate, which requires rationality in order to distinguish the act (subject = notice) from what is being acted upon (object = content).
Because I’ve already instantiated rationality in order to grant noticing the content of mind in the first place, I can either leave it at that, or I can call that rationality in what I just did, the introspection in what I am enabled to do because of it. But I cannot call it introspection first, hence independent of rationality, for I would then have no (gasp!!) concrete idea of what I’m introspecting about.
The conclusion:
Introspection examines relations; rationality gives the relations introspection examines.
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All that to say this.....
Quoting Coben
.......is absolutely the way the average human seems to do things. Daydreaming. Flights of fancy. That is what we think introspection to be, yes. Without reasoning or self-contained argument. I submit this is not what’s happening at all. Keyword: mull. To mull is to examine relations. And we’re right back where we started.
Now.....wasn’t that fun???
Exactly right. Technically, that procedure is called judgement, but what judgement is, is in effect just what you say.
Of course it is.
I still have to get to our big post.
Introspection involves rationality, for sure, it's rationality that doesn't necessarily involve introspection. Rationality without introspection becomes something like ungrounded theorycrafting when it comes to understanding people and the systems that involve people. That's my view.
I do want to say that may not always be true but it's usually true. I know that psychology for example, tries to limit introspection as a tool for understanding people in favour of statistics and that has its place too.
It seems to me very important. :wink:
But I worry one can get lost in it, almost to the point of solipsism. Like the Jourdain’s paradox, it is almost inevitable that introspection becomes self-referential and circular.
Agreed, to a point. Rationality doesn’t necessarily involve introspection. I think it important to reduce the idea one step further, insofar as when a thinking subject examines his feelings, he is the less using his rationality and the more using his introspection. This is because we are allowed a much narrower field of judgement with respect to empirical experience, which are always cognitions, than we are with judgements with respect to aesthetics, which are not. In other words, it is much harder to explain the reasons we are affected by an emotion, than it is to explain the reasons we are affected by, say, a building.
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Quoting Judaka
While I grant fallacious speculation, or ungrounded theorycrafting, isn’t such a good thing, I’m not sure how personal introspection relates to a theory regarding people and systems that involve people, usually considered the purview of ethics. Interpretations of the Golden Rule, on the other hand, suggests one should have foreknowledge of himself in order to know how to treat others, which presupposes introspection, but is hardly theoretical. But you’re correct, in that I got no business sitting here thinking up an ethical theory on how everybody else should act predicated solely on how I myself act.
Hopefully I didn’t misunderstand what you’re trying to say.
...another ironic thing about the act of introspection is, once one decides to embark on the self-discovery process, something completely novel can be uncovered. And that sort of begs the question(s) of whether that new knowledge always existed; it just required you to uncover it. And then in turn that could lead to other questions about, say, the Will and its function in our consciousness.
Didn't Aristotle say the greatest gift we can give to ourselves is to 'know thyself' (?)
In a previous post, @TheMadFool pointed out that, as you say, introspection is not a type of knowledge. I agreed that it made more sense to say it is a good way of gaining knowledge.
Quoting Galuchat
I do use reason, but people here don't usually doubt the value of it, while it seems to me that introspection is often distrusted. That's why I started the discussion.
Quoting Galuchat
Sources of information have credibility. You believe some more than others.
I'm going to have a bowl of fish chowder for lunch today. Thanks for the inspiration.
I don't think most people observe their thinking while they are thinking. I think they just think. That requires that they be aware of the issues being discussed, but not of the mental processes themselves. I often experience being aware of my mental processes while I'm thinking, feeling, perceiving. So, I'm aware that I'm aware of my thinking.
Quoting Coben
Yes, that happens to me all the time. Most of my ideas just pop up. For me, that's where rationality comes in - when I try to explain them to myself and others.
In my experience, all the ways of gaining knowledge are generally working together all the time. In my experience a good therapist or a friend who knows you well helps you improve your self-awareness, make your introspection more effective.
Quoting Moliere
Funny. I would say the same thing about rationality. Just look at all the people who tangle themselves up with their words here on the forum and elsewhere. I can't deny I've done it myself.
You do that. I do that, but I don't think most people do that, or at least I'm not sure they do. You can just think without thinking about thinking.
Yes, I think we can.
Introspection is a mode of observation, not rationality. Or do you think observation is a rational process? I don't. First you observe, then you think about what you've seen. Rinse and repeat.
I disagree.
Quoting rlclauer
Don't psychoanalyze me. Respond to my statements.
[edit] Let's make that "Respond to my fucking statements."
Absolutely.
Quoting Coben
I have to grant that because I can’t argue otherwise. At the very least, I might say you’re not putting assertions in logical arrangement because it’s already been done, and introspection of this nature is merely a review. But if your dialectical co-respondent happened to be a cognitive reductionist.......
And if this be the case, then, regarding the OP, introspection is not a valid type of knowledge, for a review presupposes the arrangement wherein the knowledge actually resides.
Gonna have to object to that; I can safely say I’ve never seen myself think. I can imagine myself sitting on a rock, appearing to ponder this or that, but nothing concerning the this or that can arise from it, that isn’t actually me doing it.
Truth be told, I don’t know how to respond to the idea that observation has something to do with that which is not of the senses, without invoking the absurdity of a categorical error. This is not to reject the idea out of hand, but merely to object to it, as the means to alleviate possible self-contradictions. If I can say I observe myself with respect to something as abstract as objects of thought, I have no means to claim any certainty with respect to objects of the world I perceive by sight.
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Quoting T Clark
No, observation proper, in and of itself, is not a rational process, but everything consequential to the mere appearances given from observation, certainly is. Cognitive neuroscience aside, of course.
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Quoting T Clark
Correct. A posteriori, anyway. One can still think without observing anything, a priori. Which supports the disassociation of observation from introspection, for introspection is always a priori.
I admit, despite all that, it is much easier to think of introspection as observing the self.
Self-knowledge is real knowledge, though it is knowledge that only the subject person can possess in detail, and introspection is the essential process of gaining it.
A question: How much of our self-knowledge can a benign interrogator (not the water-boarding type) gain through long-term discussion (such as that with a psychoanalyst)? Can one unpack somebody else's mind, with their cooperation? (Not now. if there is no willingness to share.).
I've engaged in intense self-examination / reflection during the last third of my life (so, starting about 23 years ago). I've written many pages of the results (now lost on dead hard-drives, which is probably just as well). One of the shortcomings of self-examination is that one must be both advocate and adversary: "Is that really what happened 60 years ago?" "How sure can you be that the memory of your first love in college is accurate, now?" "What happened in years where there are no clear memories, compared to the year before when there are more memories?" (Second grade is kind of a blank. Did bad things happen in that room?)
There is a paradox in "the unexamined life is not worth living" and that is that most of us can not do mature self-examination until much of our life has been lived. At 25 or 45 I did a lot of ruminating, but it wasn't very informative. Of course I may have been an unusually uninsightful schmuck when I was a young man. (There is some evidence that I was.).
My soundest advice is this: Never engage in introspection while riding a bike in downtown traffic.
Quoting T Clark
....then you say.....
Quoting T Clark
Which seems to say you think we can reason from observation independent of a mode of observation. Which is a perfect example of why I insist (to myself, to be sure) on assigning observation to the empirical domain alone.
If you’d said you think we can reason from observation independent of introspection, I wouldn’t object. But saying introspection is a mode of observation makes the correctness of that proposition quite suspect.
Dunno.....maybe it’s just me exercising overly-critical thinking. I do that a lot, I must say.
I think that rationality is more likely to lead to circular, even chaotic, discussions than introspection is.
Cool. Then I think our main disagreement is just in our characterization of introspection. I don't really think of it as a method for gaining knowledge because knowledge is a social phenomena -- it's something we produce together. Whereas introspection is looking in at the self, so it necessarily could not be knowledge (if my characterization of knowledge is held to, at least -- obviously there's other ways of parsing knowledge).
Quoting T Clark
I'd agree with this, though I don't think I'd pit introspection against rationality either. But yes we can get a little too caught up in the rational mode -- to a point that one might even claim that a person is behaving irrationally.
How am I?
You're fine, how am I?
Some of us are so radical as not only to rely on our own introspection, but also on that of others.
It is very common for me to become aware of something about myself that was always there but which I was not previously aware of. Example - I practice Tai Chi at a beginner level. Every time I go through the movements, I become more aware of my body. The movements draw my attention to what's going on inside me. Sometimes something my instructor says will do the same thing. Another example - I normally have pretty even moods. I'm very high energy and rarely depressed. Recently I found myself being really down for a couple of weeks. Then, it happened again a month later. Looking at the episodes, I realized that in both cases I had been very angry at someone I cared about. That connection - depression and anger - was a new one for me. It opens up a lot of possibilities that I'll need to explore.
That much of our mental processing takes place below the level of consciousness awareness is not news. William James, Freud, and others were realizing that in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some of that unconscious processing can be brought into our awareness. It seems likely to me that a lot, probably most, cannot.
I don't think knowledge is necessarily a social phenomenon. Also, what I know from introspection can be social. This thread is good evidence for that.
All in all, I don't think you and I are far apart.
I don't know why you would object. I've tried to make it clear that I am describing my own experiences, although I do know that those experiences aren't unique to me. Apparently you have different experiences. Why is that a problem?
Quoting Mww
I assume you have been aware of your own mental life. I don't see how that is different from being aware of the dog sitting on my lawn. They both have come to your attention by way of mental processes.
Introspection is one mode of observation. Another is paying attention to what is happening in the world using your sense of sight. Introspection exists in the empirical domain as much as observation using the sense of touch or smell does.
Quoting Mww
It seems your experience is different than mine. I don't see why that is a problem. It doesn't bother me. You now know that some people experience introspection as a form of observation even though you don't. That seems like an interesting thing for you to know.
It is interesting, and I appreciate exposure to it.
The objections are strictly from a epistemological philosophy, not a psychological character evaluation.
I think I may disagree with this. Let's see. This thread is a very good example of me trying to communicate my mental life to others. Others are doing the same thing. Of course it's easier for external experience because others can participate in the observation directly. Then again, how is that different from me communicating my experiences during my trip to the Netherlands, a place you've never been. Unless you have been to the Netherlands, in which case the trip was to Zimbabwe. Or was it Zambia. Tell me why the only two countries in Africa that start with a "Z" are next to each other. By the way, the Netherlands is a wonderful place. I don't know about Zambia or Zimbabwe.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I have no trouble learning things about other people - how they think or feel, their attitudes and motivations, through listening to what they say and observing their behavior. Of course it should be easier for them than it is for me. On the other hand, I have often found that I can be aware of something going on in the mind of another that they are not aware of themselves. You're a perceptive, empathetic person. I'm sure you have experienced that too.
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's true, as we both know well, but old guys know a lot of things that other people don't. Self-knowledge is a gift given to us now as compensation for what is being taken away. Or some bullshit like that.
Yes, I understand that. Although we are talking about psychological phenomena, we are talking about them from a philosophical, as you say, epistemological, point of view. For me, that's the whole point of this thread, which, by the way, I'm finding very satisfying.
A lot of good stuff to unpack there for sure. Just some quick comments.
Ironically enough, my best friend who is an engineer , we have yearly mantra's and one of them was Awareness. We learned so much from the concept of awareness that we extended it another year. We would get together and 'pontificate ' our experiences from both our personal and professional activities. It was very revelatory. We made a joke and asked each other from time to time, any 'awareness ' today ?
My other comment relates to the information age and the virtues of drawing from many sources of information. As a generalization, I believe post-modernism was partly a movement that looked to go beyond analytic philosophy, almost in a psychological way... . Part of it sought to uncover human motivation(s) and how important that was in seeking objective truth about a concept.
Case in point when we study all the domains of philosophy a common theme seems to rear its head. And that usually has something to do with the existence or non-existence of a Deity. It seems to have something to do with of our sense of wonder about the mystery over causation, the nature of things, and our intrinsic needs to ask why.
Anyway my point there is, it's important to have awareness and practice awareness. And my intuition tells me to draw from, in this case, classical philosophy, post modern Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, science, etc. etc. This is the twenty-first century, we need to allow ourselves to use the appropriate tools that are now and have been available.
I would propose that the modern-day philosopher should allow themselves to become ' a hybrid' much like the moderate independent in politics who draws good from both sides of the aisle.
As you were
Empirical knowledge, yes. Observation is another good way of gaining empirical knowledge. Both introspection (self-report) and observation have been used by Psychologists as a way of gaining empirical knowledge of the human mind.
Quoting T Clark
I agree.
Observation can be verified by others. Introspection cannot. Each tool has its proper use. Other problem-solving tools (besides introspection, observation, and reason) include:
Heuristics
Analysis
Creative Thinking
Mind Wandering
Empathy
Quoting T Clark
Mental events are sources of information (the result of intrinsic mental communication, or communication within a mind), hence; a type of organism function. So, I think assigning a property of credibility (believable or trustworthy condition) to a mental event is a category error.
Which is, of course, what we are all trying to do. Can we do it?
One of the great limitation in sharing our minds, mental life, inner being... with others is the enormous volume of content that amounts to even brief experiences. For a good deal of experience we have no words. There are odors, for instance that we find attractive, disgusting, appetizing, and so forth which we would be very hard-pressed to describe beyond saying "Mint smells like mint". How does one describe the odor of a ripe pear? Or a spoiled tomato? Or a quite dead squirrel? Or rain on a warm concrete road? Or the sensation of swallowing a spoonful of haddock chowder? The feel of a very dry, cold wind? A twitching muscle? The sensation of suddenly remembering something important you forgot?
Then there is the connectedness of memories. When I see ground cherries at the farmers market (never see them anywhere else) I remember seeing ground cherries growing in our neighbor's garden; that memory is at least 60+ years old. There is the memory of offering ground cherries to people who have never seen them before, and being puzzled at their suspicions -- you'd think I was offering them a mushroom that was quite possibly poisonous. (Ground cherries belong in the nightshade family of potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, eggplant (aubergines) and peppers. The leaves of these plants are poisonous.).
Something as simple as a husked tomato has a lot of baggage. How much more baggage does the topic of God have. Or thoughts about your wife and children? Or... 250,000 other topics.
Then there are all sorts of ambiguous thoughts. I officially do not believe in God, but there is nothing else that I do not believe in that is so much in my thoughts. Some of our brave convictions do not hold up well on close (self) examination and we are probably loath to expose these convictions to the unfriendly examination of others.
Some of our actions are just too embarrassing to talk about, and I wasn't even thinking about sexual misadventures.
So, to make a long story short, we may over-estimate just how much of our selves we can or will actually reveal.
Rest assured it is not. Better not be; different experiences are all that’s available to us as different humans.
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Quoting T Clark
All that’s true, there’s no difference in the being of aware per se, as ends, but the being of aware is not what we talking about. We’re talking about the examination of what we are aware of. Whether we’re examining the contents of our own minds via introspection or examining the content of our knowledge by reason, whatever those contents are that we are aware of, are already presupposed as given. The negation of which is impossible, or at least absurd, for otherwise we’d be attempting the examination of something that isn’t there.
The difference in the mode of being aware of these respective contents, as the means by which we arrive at them, is quite marked. The dog on your lawn comes to your attention by sensibility; the contents of your mind come to your attention by reason alone, no matter that they were put there beforehand by sensibility, or by sheer imagination.
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Quoting T Clark
Again, that is true, but it isn’t the issue at hand; our philosophies are different, which we use to explain the relative differences in experience. Or, more accurately, the affects of them on our relative mentalities.
It’s all good. Philosophy never was about being more right than the other guy.
Ok. I would say introspection as a process leads to understanding of some knowledge we already have.
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Quoting Coben
Sure, I would go along with that. Because it is introspection, the information being sourced is already present in the mind, or in consciousness, or in experience, however you want to look at it. As such, it belongs to the subject, justifies any of those as a source, and information extant in any of those is knowledge, thus justifies the source epistemologically.
Which supports the position that introspection is not knowledge, just as rationality is not knowledge. If introspection or rationality is a process, but knowledge is the ends of either process, or the justification for either process, then knowledge cannot be either process itself.
So we know thoughts, feelings, sensations, bodily states etc interoceptively, and we know everything external to the body exteroceptively. Of course there are "crossovers" involving touch and taste (at least). Conceptual knowing and affective responses to the world also seem to be "crossovers". We read a book or perceive worldly things in general exteroceptively, and the thoughts and feelings evoked by reading and perception of worldly things are known interoceptively. There are ways in which the distinction could be considered to be artificial or at least not cut and dried, but I think it is more or less useful nonetheless.
I agree and I do think that the distinctions are artificial. I think of babies. At a certain age, maybe 5 months, they start touching parts of their bodies. They get very interested in their feet and love to play with them. There is a yoga position where you lie on your back and reach up and grab your toes. They call the position "happy baby."
The babies see their feet. Then they touch them and feel the touch. I always think that is when they learn that their feet are part of themselves. I don't know if that is correct in terms of developmental psychology, but it seems plausible, and it gives me pleasure to think it.
I am not sure that "reason" is the right word here. The contents of your mind include the capacity to look at and reflect on the contents of your mind. Maybe "probing" (reasonable or not) is the key. Freud thought that dreams were the royal road into the unconscious mind. Dreams are a road -- these days more like the decertified route 66 than the Queen's Highway. Introspection, rumination, free-association, combing one's memories about specific things, unbidden memories, unbidden thoughts (unbidden by the conscious mind, anyway; who knows what devious purposes some neuronal cluster had in sending that excruciating memory from 7th grade to the Big Screen, just now...).
In a very narrow sense, we all experience the "locked in" syndrome. There is just so much we can't access and express, even to ourselves, much less to all or any others.
I'm not really talking about empathy or ethics but knowing the world by knowing yourself. When I am trying to understand someone's actions, I use introspection. I believe what drives other people is also within myself and when the actions of others baffle me, I usually at least find out why I am not similar. An example, a wise spender may ask himself why he spends wisely or doesn't spend foolishly and within those questions, he can find some clues as to the mentality of the foolish spender.
Truly understanding others might be impossible but there's usually a no better way to access their minds than through your own. What is true for you is more likely to be true for others than making up potential reasons, though of course, you can use experience with others as well.
As a philosopher, introspection keeps you grounded, at least you're talking about things which have some validity. If something worked for you or was true for you then it's probably going to work for others or be true for others too. Whereas rationality can explain actions through any number of explanations.
Quoting MwwSure.
I know, huh? Leave it to a human to confuse himself. It’s not really his fault though; Mother Nature endowed him with reason, and it is reason he must use to reason about himself. The epitome of circularity, and for which he must be careful to avoid as best he can. But ultimately, he won’t be able to remove himself from it entirely.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Technically true, yes. A possible mitigation of reason’s intrinsic circularity is to say there is a content of the mind that looks at and reflects on the remaining content of the mind, given from the certainty that normative rationality has but one internal observer. From there.......it’s off to the metaphysical races.
I can see all that. I understand people think that way. Me...I keep my anthropology and empirical psychology away from my epistemological philosophy. If I don’t know how I know what I know, I have no ground for apodeictic judgements whatsoever with respect to anyone else.
Quoting Judaka
Then why are we not all the same?
I have no right to suppose anything of the sort, within the context of internal musings. Subjectivity is private, by definition, hence entirely inaccessible to any other subjectivity. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to claim manifestations of subjectivity in others, is grounded in, or predicated on, my own, to whit, I have witnessed a guy accidentally hit himself with a hammer, in the course of events under which a hammer would normally be used, and continue on as if it never happened.
We’ve never communicated before, so just let me say....I work from the point/counterpoint dialectical method. I’m not ever saying you’re wrong, unless sufficient proof should be objectively available for it, but only that from another perspective, things look different.
Yes, I do that as well, after a fashion. I hold that knowledge is a condition of (the intellect), not an abstraction for (something to be gained).
Reason, too. Reason the verb is the reification of the abstract thing we do; reason the noun is the reification of the abstract thing describing how it is being done.
Reification is dangerous, nonetheless. Sometimes necessary for communication of ideas, sometimes self-contradictory. But we all do it, sooner or later, in other than the more mundane circumstances.
Awareness has become more and more important to me as I've gotten older. There are so many things to be aware of - body, emotions, thought processes, skills, perceptions, ideas, others. Maybe the most interesting thing I've found is that the process of becoming aware is the same for all these different types. So, yes, I try to be aware of my awareness too.
Quoting 3017amen
In another recent thread, I wrote about what I think of as my body of knowledge. It's everything I know, feel, see, experience, learn, think about - all jammed into one package. I see that as the source of my intuition. I see introspection, awareness as the most important component of that body of knowledge. I guess it's the cement that holds them all together.
Yes. Sort of. Sometimes. To a certain extent. Yes dammit!!!
Quoting Bitter Crank
Sure, but I have had experiences that are the same or similar to those you have described. You don't have to create them for me from scratch. We have great stores of common experience even with people who are very different from us.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I had never heard of ground cherries before. Now I have. I looked them up on the web. This is what "Smithsonian" says - "..tastes like a cherry tomato injected with mango and pineapple juice, and looks like an orange pearl encased in a miniature paper lantern." That seems like a pretty good sharing of your introspection to me.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Have you been talking to my wife?
Quoting Bitter Crank
I can't say that I don't hide parts of myself from others. As I've said, I hide parts of myself from myself. I've been known to lie to avoid admitting something shameful. On the other hand, with me, what you see is pretty much what you get. I've felt lonely and alone, depressed, but I've never felt cut off, alienated, from other people. I always feel a connection with the people I meet and humanity as a whole. I can see people as they are, at least sometimes, imperfectly. Of course I'm often wrong, but I'm often wrong about everything.
Absolutely.
Just try introspecting about something the knowledge of which is impossible. Can’t be done.
Try introspecting about something the knowledge of which is possible, but you have no experience with it. That can be done, but it is no different than imagining, and imagining has no certain ground anywhere, which makes explicit such introspection has no certain ground, and anything of uncertain ground has no business defining a subjective paradigm, which is what introspection is supposed to do.
Introspection with meaning can only arise from that which has its ground in either experience or possible experience. Which, coincidentally enough, is exactly the same conditions required for knowledge itself. It’s a short hop from that, to the reality that introspection only attains its meaning from one’s own knowledge.
Theoretically.......
I don't see it that way. I don't think reason, consciousness, plays any part in my perception of my internal states. I don't know if you agree with my using "consciousness" as a fill-in for "reason" in this case.
It is possible to know, or at least experience, how you know what you know.
Quoting Mww
You share your subjectivity with people all the time. You are doing it right here. Don't you ever hear of someone else's experiences and recognize them as similar to experiences you've had - sadness, happiness, pain, the taste of a hotdog? Of course the sharing is imperfect.
"Reason" is no more a reification of an abstract thing than "digestion" is a reification of the process my digestive system uses to break down food for use in my body.
Can you give an example of something the knowledge of which is impossible? I can't think of any. Or do you just mean something that doesn't exist - like unicorns or magic.
Quoting Mww
Yes, that's exactly what it is. Imagination. I can observe myself imagining something that doesn't exist. That's introspection. What do you mean when you say "imagination has no certain ground anywhere." Maybe things I imagine have no certain ground, but imagination itself does. Imagination is a mental process just like reason, or feeling, or perception, or memory. It can be observed, again, by introspection.
Doesn’t matter if I agree with your terminology or not. Even so, if you don’t think reason, consciousness, plays any part in the perception of your internal states, first, what part do they play other than that, and second, what does play a part in the perception of your internal states.
This is what I wrote in a previous post to try to describe what it feels like to experience an internal state in a way that isn't rational.
Quoting T Clark
Of course, but possibility can only be shown theoretically. It is impossible for any theory to attain to an empirical proof. We don’t KNOW how we think. We don’t even KNOW if it’s thinking we’re doing. We just call it that because we don’t know what it really is, and just like any good theory, all it has to do is be internally consistent and non-contradictory with itself, which in turn can serve as no more than a mere logical justification.
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Quoting T Clark
Conventionally speaking, yes. Or so it would seem. But in fact, when you read my words, you relate them to your understanding of them. The very best you can do with that relation, is grant a commonality between what I meant when I wrote them and what they mean when you read them. There is nothing whatsoever given by the words you read that categorically and necessarily represents what I think, from the simple fact that two separate and distinct subjectivities are responsible for all meanings in general.
That’s why I say, just because we attempt to understand each other, does not thereby give me the right to assert that what you want me to see perfectly represents what you think.
I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
Reading through both of our comments made me think of, how to articulate ineffable experiences:
" But perhaps we can pinpoint the nature of the thing that can’t be expressed, or find a way to describe what it consists of. I believe that there are at least four possible candidates for a non-nonsensical answer: ineffable objects, ineffable truths, ineffable content, and ineffable knowledge."
"From Kant onwards, philosophers’ interest in ineffable objects gave way to the idea that ineffability is a symptom of the insufficiency of language as a tool for capturing the ultimate truths of the world. Søren Kierkegaard suggested in 1844 that humans are trapped in the ‘ultimate paradox of thought’, wanting to discover things ‘that thought itself cannot think’. The arch-skeptic of reason and the Enlightenment, Friedrich Nietzsche, said in 1873 that truth was akin to an army of metaphors on the march – a host of powerful illusions, which we humans have forgotten are illusions."
So from the above/and you-all's comments, I think that language does have its limits too. Take for example formal logic. If I say the apple is red, but upon further observation it is a mottled color of red, we don't have a specific word from language that captures that specific color (from the color wheel). So in theory it becomes logically described as red and not red, and therefore becomes a half-truth.
Similarly, it follows that in consciousness we can impart our subjective experiences, but you could say they are too, only half-truth's because of the limitations in language.
And the more interesting analogy would be as we change and learn about the world and our perceptions thereof, our definitions of events changes also. Kind of like listening to music. You might get something completely different out of the same song a year later... .
When I say it's possible to experience how I know what I know, I mean that I can do it. I have done it. I'm doing it right now. I guess you can deny my experience, but it's not just me.
And what do you mean "we don't know if it's thinking we're doing." I can't figure out what that means. That's like saying "we don't know if it's swimming we're doing." As Louden Wainwright III sang:
This summer I went swimming
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around
Yup, that's swimming.
You say reification is dangerous. I say it's the way we make give things meaning. We do it all the time. It's our normal way of operating.
Not a chance. The proposition only defines a negative logical boundary.
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Quoting T Clark
It being introspection. Therein lay the whole problem. Imagination, and by default, introspection, has no content of its own. A posteriori, perception has the content of real objects; sensibility has the content of appearance; intuition has the content of representation; understanding has the content of conceptions; cognition has the content of judgement; experience has the content of knowledge. A priori, reason has the content of logic; logic has the content of law. Imagination imports its content from any of those, which makes explicit the possibility that such content does not belong to it, hence the assertion it has no certain ground.
Which reverts right back to the original difficulty. We do introspect, but what are we really doing when we introspect? If we introspect from the arena that lacks experience, we are merely imagining; if we introspect from the arena that has experience, we are merely reviewing. Not drawing the line between them, is where the conventional meaning of introspection gets bogged down.
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Quoting T Clark
Careful, there, my friend. Getting awful close to positing the dreaded homunculus. Cartesian theater, even. If I tell Daniel D. he’ll come for you tout de suite. How many observers you got between your ears anyway? You already got two. How do they ever get along with each other?
There is only one thing that is ineffable. You know, it's that thing. That one thing that can't be spoken. Come on, you know.... That one, indivisible, unspeakable, unimaginable, impossible thing that is not a thing. You know - the Tao, the Will, noumena. Shit. Now it's a thing.
Quoting 3017amen
Really? You have trouble describing things that include more than one color or shade? You have trouble talking about, telling the whole truth about zebras and flags? Sorry. I got a little excited there.
Quoting 3017amen
Sure, but I wouldn't say "half-truth," I'd say incomplete picture. But what's wrong with that. Our experience of everything is an incomplete picture. Plato knew that. Descartes knew that. You and @Mww know that.
We're missing each other. The words we are using seem to mean different things to each of us. I'm not sure how to take it any further. I'll just start saying the same things over again.
Hey @3017amen, any thoughts?
Using only Philosophy (logical investigation) in a discussion pertaining to the human mind, while ignoring the relevant Sciences (empirical investigation) is akin to constructing a building with only a hammer.
You may end up with a few cohesive components, but the construct will be unsound.
Ehhhh....maybe, maybe not. Philosophically, reason is just skipping all the steps from which the experience arose, and bringing the end result back into your attention. If you’d never ever had a bowl of chowder, or anything like it, you wouldn’t have any of those feelings to draw from, but you could still manufacture them from imagination.
On the other hand, there is an explanation over and above rationality. It states that feelings are not cognitions, hence are not governed by the logical laws or rules for it. Pain or pleasure, which are what all feelings reduce to, are not judged as experience is judged. So it is not philosophically incorrect to say that bowl of chowder illicited certain feelings, which are not themselves governed by rationality, so could be called non-rational in the strictest sense.
LOL. Yeah....you shoulda seen all the stuff I backspaced out on “perception”.
Thanks for the interesting foray into the sublime.
Peace.
I know I'm missing some other pieces, but here are some distinction's that emerged:
Introspection- an activity that draws from experience. That experience comes from both conscious and subconscious data [base]. This results in a kind of self-awareness. And that knowledge can still be thought of as completely novel/new to the subject-person nonetheless (but not a priori knowledge).
Intuition- a relatively abstract concept, an incomplete cognition, and thus not directly experienceable (Kant of course spoke to this). And is a type of a priori knowledge.
Subjectivity- knowledge that I have that technically know one else can have. Thus experience will always be unique to that individual due to many factors including space-time (getting older gaining experience and knowledge about the world). Loosely, thus the phrase 'you don't know till you walk in that person's shoes' is partly correct.
Objectivity-universally true regardless of what anyone else thinks. Almost has an independent existence in some ways.
That's just a cursory read lol....
I didn't really think this thread would go far when it started, but it has turned out to be really helpful for me. Having to explain, or at least try to explain, things to others really helps bring things together.
Close enough.
I would distinguish between introspection and feelings, thoughts, beliefs or other mental objects because those things are still experiential/empirical. Identifying those things internally is still an empirical process -- you are recognizing facts about your inner life. The actual reasoning process/introspection is not the same thing.
I forgot...I might add an important footnote:
Sharing subjective experiences (knowledge from introspection) with one another is not without its virtues or merit. T Clark ( and other's) you alluded to this I think. Thus we can gain knowledge through 'corroboration' or verifying similar experiences that we have, (with each other by trying to describe them).
It may not be 'Objective' knowledge in the true sense of the meaning, yet can be * inferred* as an important truth nonetheless. Nothing too revelatory or novel there lol... .
Share any thoughts if you have them... ?
When I observe the outside world with my senses, e.g. a dog sitting on my lawn, is that observation a source of knowledge or a tool for gaining knowledge? In my view, introspection is an observation that is internal rather than external. I'm going to stick with "source of knowledge," but let's not get into a back and forth about it. I don't think it really matters.
Quoting aporiap
I have been making a distinction between introspection and "feelings, thoughts, beliefs, or other mental objects." Introspection is the act of observing those mental objects in myself.
Yes, I learn more about myself when I learn from others. Then again, learning more about others is also valuable in its own right. Understanding other people is a good thing.
Excellent!!
... Hence why philosophy should allow itself not to necessarily stay pigeonholed, and to access tools from both sides of the aisle as the case may be. To that end, in some ways your OP term "introspection" almost begged parsing those kinds of concerns viz Psychology. Or at least required one to spread the love at least partially in that direction.
I hate the drop a book title but The Psychology of Being is one of my favorites... . In it, it asks certain Existential questions so that we can 'introspect' accordingly... . And brings to light the pluses and minuses of dichotomizing things too much
Life is about relationships.
True, it is not ideal to use introspection instead of statistics and science, history and politics.. etc. I value understanding and knowing about these things greatly but introspection is like these things in that the way you are is real and true. It is a source of information about how you are and how people are. Rationality is unlike those things because, without those things, you may be dealing in fantasy and hypothesis.
The true value of introspection is knowing your role in the creation of "the world" as it is known by you. Beyond truth is perspective as how you are is reflected in how you see the world, to try to know the world without knowing yourself is to ignore your biases and position in it. It would be an absurd undertaking in my mind. If your mood is dark then the world is a miserable place, if you're in love then the world is singing, it can be that basic but it can also be incomprehensible in complexity once factors are taken into consideration alongside each other.
Knowledge must be processed and interpreted and within this process the world once again undergoes transformations. Philosophy is not based on statistics or knowledge, it's based on interpretations. How we interpret has everything to do with us and what kind of person we are, what kind of life we've lived and are living. What we're paying attention to and what answers we've come to in the past.
It comes down a lot to context but I find ignorance is less often a result of lack of knowledge as it is people seeing the world in a particular way based on what kind of person they are without being aware of it (or possibly caring). Politically, philosophically and so on, it's easier to construct worldviews based on your biases and experiences than to know yourself and how that relates to how you see the world.
I'm sorry I misunderstood the claim here. I still would say it's a method of obtaining knowledge not a source; the 'dog sitting on the lawn', that fact, is sourced from the outside world. But I wont talk about it more.
I think you should test your introspection. How many times do you get it wrong when considering how you introspect things to be or turn out which have a matter of fact answer? I think personally it's clear it isn't a valid source because of the amount of times my introspection doesn't work for me; I typically need to modify my first intuitions or introspections with reasoning
Introspection is a source of information that shows.....
.....how I am, absolutely:
.....how other people are, I can’t accept. Well, introspection show them how they are, but it won’t show me how they are.
As an addition, I can say understanding is a source of information that shows me how I am. Understanding is a faculty that exists necessarily, so if I gain something from that which already exists, why do I need to invent a supplemental faculty that does the same thing? Does’t everyone generally understand himself? And even if he doesn’t in some case, wouldn’t he need to come to some understanding, even if he drew his information from introspection?
Redundancy is usually a good thing in physical systems, but not so much in rational systems.
Introspection is the study of the self, sometimes for the sake of understanding and sometimes self-improvement or fixing problems. I understand many things but that doesn't mean I can't study more and learn more; as it is with introspection. In that manner, are most people "experts" on themselves? If your answer is "yes" then introspection becomes a little redundant, my answer would not no and so it's a little more useful. I don't think people are good judges of themselves, I think people lie to themselves and create interpretations for reasons that they don't understand. Is that true or isn't it, I won't debate that but if you don't see it that way then your perspective will be different.
Quoting Mww
I do know about humans from science, statistics, history and so on, I also know a lot about dogs. I've owned dogs in the past, I've watched shows on dogs, I've read about them. I will never have the experience of being a dog though, so much about them is beyond what I can understand because of that. Same as how most men find men easier to understand compared to women, it's the same thing.
One reason for that is because men are men, to understand other men isn't that hard. So is introspection for a man, not also a study into all men? It can be the same for all kinds of things. It is fine if you do not see it that way, though, I think everyone has learned this way to varying extents. I find that after having any deep conversation with someone, the time they've spent looking inwards always shows. Views on things that came from within are profound, there's truth while views that come from speculation and theory often just seem idealistic and ill-founded. Not saying those are the only two options but sometimes in philosophy that's how it is.
r
Knowledge may be based on metacognition and/or experience, which entails imagination and/or reflection (introspection, observation, or empathy), respectively.
My point was that introspection offers information that can also lead to knowledge of others, but it would need to be, yes, coupled with cognitive processes that are not introspection.
It wasn't.
Pretty much what I’ve been saying all along. One’s personal philosophy manifests as the summation of his experience in relation to his conscience. One cannot NOT have opinions, what you label as interpretations, which are merely the cognitive biases and prejudices of his intrinsic subjectivity, whether from the world’s affect on him empirically, or his affect on the world morally. Given this extant condition, and given its necessary employment every moment of conscious awareness, there is simply no need for superfluous introspection.
Fine. No problem. I shall have to trust your belief in the explanatory power of anthropology and empirical psychology. But seriously, I do understand how introspection as a mental exercise holds so much attraction.
I too am an engineer. We are very much part of the "unwashed masses". We work for a living, and we make stuff. We are distinct only from those who make nothing, either supervising those who do, or living off family money.
Nahhhh....I got respect enough for your comments here to never mock them. I’m partly agreeing, insofar as I acknowledge your belief in introspection, but at the same time, I’m rejecting the very idea of it.
'it'?
The very idea of introspection? That one should believe in introspection as a source of knowledge? I love the idea that you are rejecting my belief in introspection, that you might know I don't have it, [laughing now] but I doubt that's what the ambigous 'it' represents.
It being the very idea of introspection. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
And then also: how do you know you do?
I explained my rejection of the very idea of introspection primarily because it is only rationality anyway, and secondary to that, it is redundant to understanding.
I know I reject it because I cognize something else as having greater logical justification, re: understanding. None of that tells me introspection is worthless in and of itself, but only that I am, as a stand-alone rational entity, no better off with it than without it.
This is the heart of introspection for me. It has formed my understanding of knowledge and reality. I have always thought that temperament, our built-in attitudes toward the world, has a lot to do with which approaches to philosophy we take. I tend to have a positive attitude, the world is a wonderful place. That colors everything I think. That's why I started this thread, because introspection is so important to me.
Introspection is not the same thing as intuition. Introspection, as I've said, is just observation. I've spent a lot of attention observing my internal life. How can I be wrong about what I see? I can be wrong about what I do with those observations, but that's true of everything. Generally, I'd say introspection is at least as effective for me as other types of observation.
You can't understanding epistemology without psychology. Introspection is the one process that allows us to observe psychology at the source.
Quoting 3017amen
I'll take a look. Don't be shy about referring to books. I find them very useful. A few recommendations from others have really guided my understanding of philosophy, science, and psychology.
Ahem. That's all I have to say about the law of attraction. I would be interested to hear what you have seen when you look into yourself while experiencing it though.
You don't think we occasionally confabulate, thinking sometimes we know how we felt or why we did a certain thing when in actuality the real reason, if any, was different? I think it's very possible to misattribute emotions and misunderstand feelings, specifically when there are implicit attitudes or biases hidden because of whatever discomfort they cause to ackgnowledge. I think, as with any other sort of infering, like with external observation, it's possible to not be right even with introspection.
As I wrote, introspection is observation, not interpretation, not intuition. How do I know that?....Introspection. I observe my introspection. How? Using my introspection. No inferring, no explaining, no understanding, no attribution, no acknowledgment.
For a moment, just imagine what I'm talking about. From what you've written, it seems like you don't experience things this way. But people do. I do. We're not wrong. You're not wrong either, except when you say we're wrong. People are different. Why is that hard to understand?
So, you reject @Coben's, @Judaka's, and my experience of introspection. That's pretty arrogant and it shows a lack of imagination and empathy. If you can't imagine that other people experience things differently than you do, that says something about you, not about us. When time comes time to use, evaluate, draw conclusions from the information we gather, that's open season.
I never said, nor even hinted, that I reject your collective experiences of introspection.
But don’t worry....I won’t judge you for misunderstanding me.
I'm trying to rack my brain, who quoted this:" What you are not you cannot perceive to understand, it cannot communicate itself to you".
???
Can’t help ya. Sounds about right though.
You wrote:
Quoting Mww
What did I misunderstand?
So observing or recognizing yourself as having or experiencing certain internal states, emotions, thoughts. That's introspection correct? I think the process of labeling feelings, 'recognizing' certain feelings is falliable. I didn't think about 'meta' introspection - introspecting introspections. It's true you can self correct that way but I think from implicit attitude research, there is good reason to think despite this, a large number of people may mistake what they think they believe or feel for what they actually feel or believe. It would take repeated 'introspective experiments' to see how you really feel or think about something.
Interpretations include cognitive biases and prejudices but that's not all they are but given you know what these things are, why would you pretend that people are in a constant state of awareness about them? Cognitive biases, particularly, by definition, are not something people are likely to be aware of. The nature and nurture influences on the self which moulds our interpretations aren't something people are automatically conscious of. You believe people exist in a level of self-awareness that I cannot agree with.
I think we can just agree to disagree on that, a debate on how self-aware the average person is would be difficult and unpleasant. A discussion on how introspection has helped me would just be anecdotal. All very anecdotal and I can't imagine either of us changing our minds.
I don’t like e.g., the Dallas Cowboys, but I wouldn’t disallow a friend from coming in my house because he’s wearing one of their t-shirts.
Which many people carry out.
People can be fallible with reasoning also.
Some people are terrible at reading other poker players, some are good. We would consider the ability to read people a facility, even though some are bad at it.
Do you deny the very idea of the Dallas Cowboys? If so, you are a truly dedicated fan.
If realizing means labeling, that's not what I'm talking about. As I said previously - No inferring, no explaining, no understanding, no attribution, no acknowledgment. Now we can add no labeling and, I suppose, no recognizing. An episode of the Simpsons comes to mind when they go to Australia.
In case you couldn't tell, you're the bartender.
Generally speaking, they damn well should be. One’s interpretations, cognitive biases, prejudices form the spectrum of judgements he is going to make on a rather large range of possible situations presented to him at any given time. It is in his best interest to have some idea what those might be, don’t you think? How else is it even possible to make moral decisions, especially? Accident and reflex being the only exceptions to the rule.
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Quoting Judaka
What level is that?
What....did I over-simplify?
You accused me of being arrogant in rejecting some collective experience, when all I’m rejecting is an idea.
(Sigh)
So, you don't deny our experience, just that what we experienced exists. Is that correct?
Or is it that what we experienced isn't introspection? But that can't be right, because earlier I defined "introspection" as "observing yourself the same way you observe the rest of the world," which is what I experienced.
What?!!? Hell, no. I got no right to reject anything of the sort. If someone said they were rejecting my experiences, I’d give ‘em a funny look and just walk away.
An idea is not, and never can be, an experience. Especially the idea involving one person, and the experience involving other persons.
And what it is he says it does?
I don’t even deny introspection exists. I reject that the idea of introspection is sufficient to justify what you say it does. But if you do think it sufficient......have at it.
And, in my own mind, I can reduce the rejection of the idea of introspection a further step, to the idea that it isn’t introspection at all. It is understanding that’s actually doing all the hard work you reserve for introspection. But that’s just me.
You did previously deny that introspection exists. Have you reconsidered?
Whatever - I stand behind my judgment of arrogance.
Awww.....does that mean I don’t get a Christmas card?
I reject the idea of introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation.
————————
I’m not understanding what you’re driving at, here.
It is in their best interests, it's just that people do not become that way naturally - hence the value of introspection. You have said the employment of interpretations among other things has left people aware, it has not. Whether introspection is redundant or not depends on whether a person can learn about themselves by using it. For you to say introspection is redundant is to say that people are on a level of self-awareness that makes it redundant. I don't know exactly what that level is but seeing as we are so complex, with so many different factors attributing to our behaviour and feelings, it must be quite high.
I think it's actually super easy to tell apart the introspective from the disinterested, the notion that introspection could be redundant because people are experiencing their thought process and biases doesn't just dismiss the usefulness of introspection but also the sciences which attempts to go into detail to explain people's behaviours. Neural science alone demonstrates how many influences on our thinking go completely unnoticed. Nobody has full knowledge about the reasoning for their thoughts and actions and really most people have very little knowledge. Introspection is a component of a larger undertaking to understand just a little bit. To say it's redundant is a huge mischaracterisation of the human experience.
Science and the like are good but as you said previously, we are not the same. Currently, introspection is the only way, besides I suppose, seeing an expert or talking with someone else, to look not just into how all humans are but how specifically you are. I think introspection has value beyond a means to know oneself but from that capacity, its value is that your introspection pertains specifically to you as opposed to all people generally. On the topic of its redundancy or being superfluous, it's just like anything else. When you're playing a sport, it's a good idea to take a video recording of yourself to see what's going on. You would think you're the one playing the sport, of course, you knew what happened but actually people are like "wow thats me!?" and so it is with introspection. Simply doing and being doesn't entail understanding, I don't see a need to say more than that.
Well, introspection is self-observation of internal states. I started the thread, so it must be true. When I have been writing about introspection, that's what I've been writing about. If you're using a different definition, it would have been helpful and courteous if you'd told us that back at the beginning.
What other methods of self-observation are there?
They could. All they gotta do is think about it.
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Quoting Coben
And I will admit that people are liable to have blind spots in their understandings.
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Quoting Judaka
Full knowledge about the reasoning, probably not. But reasoning itself is a conscious activity, which makes explicit the subject absolutely must fully know the thoughts it is reasoning about.
No, you didn’t. I embellished what the idea of introspection represents to me
I didn’t change your definition of introspection; I substituted an different conception of it.
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Quoting T Clark
Generally, pure thought; specifically, as a component of it, understanding.
Thought is not introspection, it is the thing that introspection observes. Again - whatever you call it - you have redefined the terms of this discussion.
I'll give you the last word and go play with someone who will play by the rules.
Quoting Mww
I thought your position is that they don't need to, what's introspection if not "thinking about it"?
Quoting Mww
The world would be a better place if people were more like you thought they were lol.
Quoting Mww
I don't know if you're just playing devil's advocate here but reasoning is subject to influence from biases, emotions and interpretations which people are not aware of. Since you are seemingly completely in the dark about this, it's not just introspection you lack but basic knowledge about psychology and neuroscience. Honestly, even just realising that being tired or angry can influence how you think should be basic common knowledge. Reasoning is often just wrong in explaining behaviour, you are just offering explanations for why you're doing something without knowing whether or not it's true.
Even if you know why you did something, it's worth investigating your reasoning and asking how you came to your conclusions. I could actually give thousands and thousands of examples where people are ignorant of the reasons for their own reasoning and of examples where they'd be unable to give convincing explanations for their interpretations (which they adopted thoughtlessly). A good example is whether or not we trust someone. There's a whole science on what kind of people appear trustworthy from attractiveness to facial expressions and mannerisms, even beards make a difference. You think people literally have full knowledge of why they trust person A and not person B when the reasons are so illogical? How can that be? Obviously someone having a beard or being unattractive doesn't make them untrustworthy but that's how we're programmed to think.
Surely, you could come up with your own examples of this if you tried as well, there's just way too much to choose from for me to believe you couldn't do it.
Exactly. Nothing whatsoever happens between the ears that doesn’t rise to the self as pure thought, which, ironically enough, serves as a good definition of rationality. Not introspection.
What do you think the definition of introspection is?
I think the definition of introspection is whatever any decent English dictionary says it is, but I’ve never looked it up.
But here, I’m using Clark’s, from page one: “Introspection is observing yourself the same way you observe the rest of the world”, as I gave above, slightly embellished: introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation.
The point isn't that you agree with a dictionary, it's that you don't know the definition of a word while also arguing about it. Introspection entails analysing and examining one's thoughts, feelings and actions. It is not limited to self-observation and any application of rational analysis about yourself, your thoughts and feelings is considered introspection.
I argue the the propositions and conditions in support of the definition given.
You know......Socratic dialectics. Philosophy done right.
The dreaded, cursed, Cartesian theater!!! BOOOO!!!! I turned him on to that, but he missed it. Page 4.
An otherwise normal human knows his thought as soon as he has them. It’s their relation to other thoughts he may have trouble with.
[i]" I like the terms exteroception and interoception as between them they encompass everything of which we can be aware.
So we know thoughts, feelings, sensations, bodily states etc interoceptively, and we know everything external to the body exteroceptively. Of course there are "crossovers" involving touch and taste (at least). Conceptual knowing and affective responses to the world also seem to be "crossovers". We read a book or perceive worldly things in general exteroceptively, and the thoughts and feelings evoked by reading and perception of worldly things are known interoceptively. There are ways in which the distinction could be considered to be artificial or at least not cut and dried, but I think it is more or less useful nonetheless."[/i]
I was kind of hinting at the "Cartesian theatre" problem inherent in the notion of introspection. Having a thought or feeling is like looking at a tree. Just as we don't need to "look within" to know that we are looking at a tree, we don't need to look within to know that we are thinking or feeling. And we don't need to look within to know that we are remembering looking at a tree or remembering having a thought or feeling.
This relates to Kant's distinction between inner and outer sense, too. I didn't elaborate on the ways in which the distinction could be thought to be artificial (think of Heidegger or Merleau Ponty) , even though it is more or less useful.
Yes, I read that, and after looking up the terms because I had no experience with them, pretty much agreed with you. There is certainly an inner and an outer domain, and as long as the names given to them reflect the distinction, it doesn’t really matter what the names are.
IOW it's not like a ticker tape - god, I feel old - but more like voices in a diner while you're focused on eating.
So, introspection is metaphorically, a bit like rather than simply getting tense about the growing tensions between the man and woman in the next booth, focusing in on that conversation, tuning out the others even more, and noticing the effects of that conversation, for example on one's own feelings. Oh, jeez this is like Mom and Dad were like. No wonder I want to barf.
I think most people, yes, sure, notice some thoughts more clearly, that that a great mass of their thoughts are like other conversations in the diner. They notice the effects. An occasional conclusion comes into focus, like some phrase or sentence at another booth, is clearly heard, before that discussion falls back into the fog of noise again.
(there's an added complication, in that one identifies, in some flitting way, with various patrons of the diner, at various times. You are sort of all of them, but find yourself as one patron at one time and then another soon after, several patrons babbling at the same time, in the background as you flit and you often don't remember much of this)
Additionally, a positivist might not really concede that deductive and inductive reasoning involve introspection. To them, it's pejorative. Yet, much has been said about the epistemological significance of introspection. We need only look at the works of Gadamer and Merlau-Ponty. On the other hand, people such as Popper and Feyerabend have shed light on the sociological factors responsible for the valorization of certain kinds of cognitive processes and verificatory methods. This has given rise to disciplines such as Philosophy of Science and Sociology of Science. In effect, these disciplines aim to look at the ways in which a certain field or ways of making knowledge claims are legitimized. That is, they look for their conditions of possibility (Please see: Sociology: The Essentials). Foucault's work is also especially salient in this context, especially The Order of Things, which focuses on the grounds on which knowledge became possible across what he calls epistemes.
Introspection is inevitable.
This agrees with my conception of introspection as the examination of mental events, a type of reflection (examination of experience). How would you define introspection?
Also, what do you think is the epistemological and verificatory significance of introspection?
Quoting James Laughlin
Please elaborate.
When I say introspection is inevitable, I mean that it is an essential feature of any kind of conscious thinking. Introspection has already happened when one thinks there is the need for conscious thinking in a given circumstance. As you say, reflection is the "examination of experience." So this appears to be a good (although certainly not exhaustive) definition of introspection.
Point 2: Introspection implies verification to a certain extent. Conversely, verificatory endeavors require the verifier to be introspective, even if this involves the invocation of a heuristic. This I think also reasonably explains the epistemological significance of introspection.
Thanks for your elaboration, however; I think this conceptualisation is too broad.
Yeah, Mother Nature has deemed it good to imbue us with a sensory overload protection mechanism on the one hand, and an internal trash collecting mechanism on the other.
Or Mother Nature has deemed it good to make us sensory gluttons with limited attention (spans).
I'm sorry some of this is just really subtle because it's easy to assume an 'introspection' involves a factual claim about your inner life 'e.g. 'I am feeling tired'. I think the moment you begin to try concluding something about your inner life is the moment fallibility becomes possible. Otherwise, I agree you cannot be wrong with what you are plainly observing presuming you aren't trying to make sense of it or categorize it as a type of experience.
Yes, the minute I try to put my inner experience into words, that changes everything. Of course, the same is true when I observe the dog on my front lawn.
I agree
I don't think we are far apart with respect to what I might term hyper-rationalists -- I take that to be the target of your thread. But the devil is in the details, especially when we are close. That's where the interesting disagreement lies, I think -- at least philosophically.
Here's my basic take -- introspection does not yield knowledge, but is an observation of our own thought. We come to have beliefs about ourselves, but since knowledge is a social product -- we produce it together -- the beliefs we come to have about ourselves through introspection (observing our own thoughts) cannot become knowledge just by the fact that introspection is only a self observing their thoughts and moods.
Though this line has an interesting way of throwing a wrench in my basic take:
Quoting unenlightened
And is probably related to what you say here:
So, which of these two forks sound more interesting to explore, to you? Characterizing knowledge, or intersubjective introspection?
The planet Neptune?
Let me think.....Ok, yes. But it is possible to experience the world - interior or exterior - without reasoning, without seeing it as a world of things. That's what I've been talking about when I've been discussing introspection. I've come to think that may be too narrow a view for this discussion and may have distracted from the point I am trying to make. I've said this several times in this thread and more in other threads - for me, first comes observation - no words, no reason, no processing. Then comes words, processing, reason. The words are needed when I go to explain what I've observed to myself and others.
Other people in this discussion who otherwise seem to agree with me draw the line elsewhere. They talk about introspection as including the bare, unprocessed observation and the reasoning together as one phenomenon. I assume they see it as all part of one process, as you seem to. That difference may have distracted from the main theme of this thread for me - the value of looking inside ourselves for information.
I didn't really have any targets. I wanted to talk about the subject of introspection to clarify in my mind my own personal experiences. I wanted to hear other people's opinions. This grew out of a recent thread about what it feels like to know something. There's a lot of silly talk about what knowing means (justified true belief theory as the prime example) that I find evaporates when I look at how it really works while I'm thinking. It struck me how often I talk about my experience of how mental processes work in my posts. From responses I've gotten, that appears to be alien to a lot of people on the forum and, I assume, in general.
As to where to go from here, I think I've gotten out of it what I wanted. The thread has almost 200 posts. I generally find that about 100 is the right number before all I do is repeat myself, which I have been doing for quite a while.
I don't know if it's totally alien, though of course all of our experiences are likely different to some degree too -- and its this mixture of agreement and disagreement that produces some confusions and difficulties in talking about such things as how we come to think, how we come to know, and so forth -- plus some more basic operating beliefs too, I'd wager.
I think you're onto something, though, in saying that there's a lot of silly talk that evaporates when we look at how it all really works. I like this approach a lot. But, in part why I wouldn't go so far as to call this knowledge, what we perceive doesn't necessarily have the same structure or feelings associated -- that doesn't mean it can't be insight, of course, nor that it is fruitless to share what we perceive when we just look how it works, bracketing away beliefs about the world about us.
Quoting T Clark
Cool. :) I think that my interests were perhaps more tangential to yours, then. I think I was coming at this from the perspective of "OK, having established this, that, and the other, then. . . "
It was a helpful and enjoyable thread for me.
I'll take both at once. One cannot talk about knowledge without using introspection, because knowledge is interior. I can know shit without introspection, but I cannot know that I know shit.
And you know that I know that I know, because I just told you, and vice versa, and there's the intersubjective, which is how we decide what knowing is in the first place.
Under this parsing I agree that I cannot know that I know things, and perhaps that is the absurdity -- but bear with me a moment. I hope to highlight that there are valuable aspects of the mind which are not-knowledge -- that knowledge, while valuable, isn't all that is valuable. So I might substitute something like philosophical talk about knowledge as being insightful, while not strictly being knowledge.
And I think I'd like to say that knowledge is not internal -- but our insight of knowledge is, because insight only comes from belief and introspection and sharing with one-another, through the power of language. Rather, knowledge is what we build together by acting -- so belief is clearly involved, but knowledge is a social product whereby we act together.
And, on top of all this, it would mean that there is no knowledge of the mind at all. But perhaps that's just something floating in the back of my mind that's not entirely applicable.
Well I don't know who you agree with, but it ain't me. I say a cat knows when there is a mouse in the mouse-hole. It has the belief, justified by smell. It will never make a knowledge claim though, coz it can't. I can, because I have language and insight.
Quoting Moliere
Well I think I'd like to take it that have said it, and ask you what you mean. What do you mean?
Knowledge may be stored in books, fossils, etc, but books nor fossils don't know shit.
Quoting Moliere
Well I'd start from the usual meaning of JTB rather than try and persuade folks that they mean something else, unless you want to be an internal eliminatist or something. We use knowledge to build bridges but we build them out of something more substantial.
Language allows states of mind to become abstractions that can function as elements of thought - the word "thought" there becomes an element in the thought that contains it. This is what allows for introspection. (The same can happen with other mental terms of course, knowledge, emotion, introspection, pig-headedness, etc.)
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
I hope you'll forgive some creative stretching here. These are ideas I've played with awhile without getting anywhere.
I'd like to start from a position that makes knowledge fundamental, rather than the constituent bits like JTB. Why? Because truth is redundant, so adds nothing to knowledge, belief is an intentional state towards a proposition, but knowledge is not merely propositional, and justification is a matrix of aesthetic standards which are institutionalized -- and so actually seem to take away from what we mean by knowledge in a commonsense way. Or, perhaps a better way of saying it -- it just seems to me that JTB is philosophically fraught, so it is better to simply observe knowledge and go from there in answering what it is - to use the term I used earlier, to "bracket" out the usual sort of philosophical baggage that comes with discussions of knowledge and instead just look at instances of it and come to some kind of beginning of an explanation for what it is. (Like lot of philosophical questions I have usually many lines of thought going on at once. I'm trying to hold some things still here to move forward rather than just flounder in a quagmire)
It seems to me that knowledge is invariant to belief -- I can believe true and false things, but to know is not to believe, but comes with competency. When I adjust the knob on a machine just *this* much I know that I we are likely to reduce the output of our pump by about 10 mL, which is what is needed for production today. I know within the context of doing things with others. When asked if I know something I am being asked to help guide a person through the steps of a procedure.
I am trying to frame this in a way that is not eliminative of the internal, though -- rather, preserving the internal as something beyond knowing, and something which is not knowledgable -- or, at least, if there is knowledge it is a relation to something external. Hence why I thought maybe the better word would be "insight". Not quite knowledge. But still meaningful and worthwhile.
Quoting unenlightened
I'd like to follow Levinas on this one. Language is the only tool by which we can share our interior space with another while still retaining it as ours and respecting them as theirs. Abstractions, on the other hand, allow us to subsume the other under the guise of knowledge, under categories which turn the other into a sort of tool to be used. But if there is no knowledge of the internal, then all we have left with is our knowledge of language which allows sharing, but not categorizing.
So introspection, by this, would require language -- but there'd be a kind of language-less experience that is still our own.
Quoting Moliere
If I tell you I am uncomfortable with this use of language, I don't think I am sharing my internal space with you. I'd complain to the moderators if you were getting inside my head.
Again, you say [if] "there is no knowledge of the internal", but how could you possibly know that - how could you talk at all about the internal, having no knowledge of it?
That's a good question. At least for me to ponder on. Every answer I've run through right now seems superficial. Something like poetry? But the philosopher would reply that the poet is only working and expressing what they know or have come to know. What about music? A technical capacity, which is clearly where I was coming from with respect to knowledge. And merely saying "insight" is just a rebranding of the word "knowledge" without answering this question with some sort of meaningful response, something to do with the method of talking.
I could go the other way and say there are two types of knowledge. But I want to think on this more. Just posting to say I'm not sure I'll have a response anytime soon.