Introspection and phenomenological method

Author: Thomasson A.L.

Source: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 2, Number 3, 2003 , pp. 239-254(16)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

It is argued that the work of Husserl offers a model for self-knowledge that avoids the disadvantages of standard introspectionist accounts and of a Sellarsian view of the relation between our perceptual judgements and derived judgements about “appearances.” Self-knowledge is based on externally directed knowledge of the world that is then subjected to a cognitive transformation analogous to the move from a statement to the activity of stating. Appearance talk is (contra Sellars) not an epistemically non-committal form of speech, but talk to which we are fully committed. However, it is a commitment to a certain kind of claim about our experiences, viewed as cognitive phenomena, after a process of transformation. Such reductive and hypostatizing transformations can exhibit the intentional structure of consciousness. Phenomenology thus gives a form of knowledge about our mental states that is first personal but not introspective knowledge in any philosophically problematic sense. The account offered is also, in key respects, dissimilar to Sellars's “outer directed” view of the origin of self-knowledge.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248054, Coral Gables, FL 33124-4670, USA, Email: athomasson@mail.as.miami.edu

Publication date: 2003-01-01