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Learning to Report One's Introspections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Arthur E. Falk
Arthur E. Falk*
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
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Abstract

The author argues for a purely naturalistic underpinning of the linguistic practice of reporting one's introspections. In doing so he avoids any commitments about the ontological status of entities referred to in introspective reports. He also presents evidence of the inadequacy of peripheralistic behaviorism as a naturalistic underpinning of introspective reports. The paper includes (a) a definition of ‘introspection’ and criticism of alternative definitions, (b) a classification scheme that sorts introspections into six different types, and (c) a presentation of evidence that the reporting of certain of these is based on such fundamental psychological phenomena as stimulus generalization, and possibly also conditioning to covert mediating responses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 223 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to psychologists Richard Malott and Kay Malott for our discussions on stimulus generalization, and to John Dilworth and Michael Pritchard for our discussions on Wittgenstein. I wish to thank Gregory Sheridan and J. J. C. Smart for their comments on the paper. The project was supported by a fellowship from the Faculty Research Fund, Western Michigan University.

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