Abstract

The last chapter involves circumventing the difficulties raised in the previous chapter. The commitment to observation as a two-term relationship will be relaxed by adopting a special form of sensation--kinesthesis-proprioception--as the exemplary model. A more technical version of introspection--the concept of which is garnered from the experimental uses of introspection--is considered and the adaptability of experimental introspection to the requirement of a kinesthetic-proprioceptive model of observation is examined. The causal features of the former is used to reinforce positive results from the examination. In the course of this discussion, it becomes clear that the defense of an observation model of introspection is strengthened once the failure to acknowledge introspection's causal features is repaired. ;As a result of adopting consciousness as distinctive of mental phenomena, a host of other problems with regarding introspection as a variety of sense observation arises. The paradigm for observation, sensation, involves a relationship between two disparate entities. Efforts to model introspection on sensation is deemed inadequate insofar as introspection does not also involve two entities. In presenting the various ways in which consciousness is supposed to be an obstacle to introspection in the third chapter, we find that they are all variations on a single theme: Consciousness undermines introspection as a form of observation by allowing the involvement of only a single entity. The first set of objections point to the absence of the introspecting subject. The second set of objections deny the presence of an introspected object. ;The second chapter is devoted to an investigation of introspection's supposed failure to produce descriptions of the mental on par with the descriptions of the physical yielded by sensation. The failure is attributed to the alleged conflict between characterizing mental phenomena as private and referring to such phenomena, a conflict expressed by Wittgenstein's private language argument. Efforts are made to reinstate descriptions of the mental. These efforts involve abandoning privacy as characteristic of the mental in favor of consciousness and incorporating behavior into the concept of the mental. The causal relations in which mental phenomena participate are employed to cement consciousness and behavior into a unified concept of the mental. ;The first chapter consists of an examination of Locke's theory of introspection. The traditional understanding of introspection as a variety of observation does not include causal features. However, in this thesis, we discover that Locke, one of the precursors of this traditional view, does give introspection a causal role. For what Locke does is model introspection upon sensation . The parallels that Locke draws between introspection and sensation are traced. Furthermore, it is shown that a proper perspective on various alternative accounts of Locke's notion of introspection can be gained only within the context of introspection's causal role. ;The basic problem discussed in this thesis is to determine whether introspection is a variety of observation. This involves investigating whether there are any features of the concepts of introspection or observation which militate against subsuming the former under the latter. The investigation proceeds by way of the presentation of a theory of introspection conceived as a type of observation followed by a defense of this theory against criticism