more on this theme     |     more from this text

Single Idea 3163

[filed under theme 16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 4. Errors in Introspection ]

Full Idea

The most dramatic phenomena undermining the absolute reliability of introspection are those of blindsight and "anosognosia" (unawareness of one's own brain damage).

Gist of Idea

Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious

Source

Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 3.2.2)

Book Ref

Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.85

A Reaction

It might depend on what you expected introspection to reveal. If you only expected it to tell you about your consciousness, it would be unreasonable to expect knowledge of blindsight information by introspection.

The 69 ideas from Georges Rey

3136 The three theories are reduction, dualism, eliminativism [Rey]
3137 Varieties of singular terms are used to designate token particulars [Rey]
3138 Arithmetic and unconscious attitudes have no qualia [Rey]
3139 Some attitudes are information (belief), others motivate (hatred) [Rey]
3140 If you explain water as H2O, you have reduced water, but not eliminated it [Rey]
3213 Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey]
3215 Images can't replace computation, as they need it [Rey]
3216 Is the room functionally the same as a Chinese speaker? [Rey]
3220 Searle is guilty of the fallacy of division - attributing a property of the whole to a part [Rey]
3221 Our desires become important when we have desires about desires [Rey]
3223 Self-consciousness may just be nested intentionality [Rey]
3224 If qualia have no function, their attachment to thoughts is accidental [Rey]
3227 Are qualia a type of propositional attitude? [Rey]
3226 Are qualia irrelevant to explaining the mind? [Rey]
3229 If colour fits a cone mapping hue, brightness and saturation, rotating the cone could give spectrum inversion [Rey]
3142 Why qualia, and why this particular quale? [Rey]
3141 Is consciousness 40Hz oscillations in layers 5 and 6 of the visual cortex? [Rey]
3143 Physics requires the existence of properties, and also the abstract objects of arithmetic [Rey]
3145 The Indiscernibility of Identicals is a truism; but the Identity of Indiscernibles depends on possible identical worlds [Rey]
3147 Problem-solving clearly involves manipulating images [Rey]
3148 Dualist privacy is seen as too deep for even telepathy to reach [Rey]
3149 Referential Opacity says truth is lost when you substitute one referring term ('mother') for another ('Jocasta') [Rey]
3150 Can identity explain reason, free will, non-extension, intentionality, subjectivity, experience? [Rey]
3162 Experiments prove that people are often unaware of their motives [Rey]
3163 Brain damage makes the unreliability of introspection obvious [Rey]
3164 Intentional explanations are always circular [Rey]
3165 Behaviourism is eliminative, or reductionist, or methodological [Rey]
3166 Animal learning is separate from their behaviour [Rey]
3167 Animals don't just respond to stimuli, they experiment [Rey]
3170 We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey]
3169 A simple chaining device can't build sentences containing 'either..or', or 'if..then' [Rey]
3171 Children speak 90% good grammar [Rey]
3172 Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey]
3173 How are stimuli and responses 'similar'? [Rey]
3175 Animals map things over time as well as over space [Rey]
3174 Good grammar can't come simply from stimuli [Rey]
3176 Anything bears a family resemblance to a game, but obviously not anything counts as one [Rey]
3179 Behaviour is too contingent and irrelevant to be the mind [Rey]
3180 Maybe behaviourists should define mental states as a group [Rey]
3181 A one hour gap in time might be indirectly verified, but then almost anything could be [Rey]
3186 If a normal person lacked a brain, would you say they had no mind? [Rey]
3188 Homuncular functionalism (e.g. Freud) could be based on simpler mechanical processes [Rey]
3194 CRTT is good on deduction, but not so hot on induction, abduction and practical reason [Rey]
3196 Free will isn't evidence against a theory of thought if there is no evidence for free will [Rey]
3195 If reason could be explained in computational terms, there would be no need for the concept of 'free will' [Rey]
3200 Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey]
3199 Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey]
3201 Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey]
3202 Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey]
3204 The meaning of "and" may be its use, but not of "animal" [Rey]
3205 Semantic holism means new evidence for a belief changes the belief, and we can't agree on concepts [Rey]
3206 One computer program could either play chess or fight a war [Rey]
3207 Simple externalism is that the meaning just is the object [Rey]
3209 Causal theories of reference (by 'dubbing') don't eliminate meanings in the heads of dubbers [Rey]
3210 If meaning and reference are based on causation, then virtually everything has meaning [Rey]
3129 Physicalism offers something called "complexity" instead of mental substance [Rey]
3127 Dualism and physicalism explain nothing, and don't suggest any research [Rey]
3128 It's not at all clear that explanation needs to stop anywhere [Rey]
3134 Human behaviour can show law-like regularity, which eliminativism can't explain [Rey]
3232 Abduction could have true data and a false conclusion, and may include data not originally mentioned [Rey]
20293 Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey]
20294 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey]
20297 Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey]
20298 The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey]
20299 If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey]
20300 Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey]
20301 The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey]
20302 An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey]
20303 Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey]