Describing Inner Experience?
Proponent Meets Skeptic
Russell T. Hurlburt
Eric Schwitzgebel
In Press
The MIT Press
Anticipated Summer 2007
Prepublication version
Do not quote without permission
of the authors.
Part One
Proponent Meets Skeptic
Chapter One
Introduction
On a remarkably thin base of evidence –
largely the spectral analysis of points of light – astronomers possess, or
appear to possess, an abundance of knowledge about the structure and history of
the universe. We likewise know more than might even have been imagined a few
centuries ago about the nature of physical matter, about the mechanisms of
life, about the ancient past. Enormous theoretical and methodological ingenuity
has been required to obtain such knowledge; it does not invite easy discovery
by the untutored.
It may seem odd,
then, that we have so little scientific knowledge of what lies closest at hand,
apparently ripe for easy discovery, and of greatest importance for our quality
of life: our own conscious experience – our sensory experiences and pains, for
example, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotion. Scientists know quite
a bit about human visual capacities and the brain processes involved in vision,
much less about the subjective experience of seeing; a fair bit about
the physiology of emotion, almost nothing about its phenomenology.
Philosophers
began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe and
classify our patterns of conscious experience. John Locke (1690/1975), for instance,
divided experienced “ideas” into those that arise from sensation and those that
arise from reflection, and he began to classify them into types. David Hume
(1739/1978) distinguished what we would now call images from perceptual
experiences in terms of their “force” or “liveliness.” James Mill (1829/1967) attempted a definitive
classification of sensations into the traditional five senses (sight, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell) plus muscular sensations and sensations in the
alimentary canal. However, despite such efforts, not even the most basic
taxonomy of experience was agreed upon; and it is still not agreed upon.
The study of
conscious experience acquired a more scientific look with the introspective
psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Researchers
such as Gustav Fechner (1860/1966), Wilhelm Wundt (e.g., 1896/1897), and E. B.
Titchener (1910/1915), presented carefully measured stimuli to subjects who had
been trained to “introspect” – to take careful note of their immediately
occurring (or just passed) experiences. These psychologists aimed to understand
how these introspected experiences covaried with changes in stimulation. However,
as is well known, after a few decades, behaviorism (which stressed measuring
relationships between stimulus and behavioral response rather than stimulus and
introspected experience) won the day in mainstream experimental psychology,
driving out or marginalizing the study of consciousness. Subsequent
elaborations of behaviorism, and later “cognitivism,” allowed more room for the
postulation of internal states and mechanisms mediating behavioral responses;
yet these internal states and mechanisms were generally assumed to be
nonconscious.
Central to the
behaviorists’ complaint about the introspective study of consciousness was the
unreliability of the introspective method, the fact that several decades of
work yielded little consensus on even the most fundamental issues. John B.
Watson, the early standard-bearer for behaviorism, in his seminal 1913 article
“Psychology as the behaviorist views it,” criticized the lack of consensus in
introspective psychology as follows:
One psychologist
will state with readiness that the attributions of a visual sensation are quality,
extension, duration, and intensity. Another will add clearness.
Still another that of order. I doubt if any one psychologist can draw up
a set of statements describing what he means by sensation which will be agreed
to by three other psychologists of different training…. I firmly believe that
two hundred years from now, unless the introspective method is discarded,
psychology will still be divided on the question of whether auditory sensations
have the quality of ‘extension’, whether intensity is an attribute that can be
applied to color, whether there is a difference in ‘texture’ between image and
sensation and upon many hundreds of others of like character…. The condition in
regard to other mental processes is just as chaotic… (p. 164-165).
The considerable truth in this complaint
partially explains the success of the behaviorist overthrow of introspective
methodology. The fact that introspective psychologists had failed to reach
consensus about such issues revealed a serious weakness in their methodologies.
Furthermore, much of the consensus they did manage to reach was undermined by an
early 20th-century shift, among those still interested in
consciousness, away from the early introspectionists’ focus on the basic
“elements” of experience in favor of a more holistic conception of a sensory
“Gestalt,” indivisible into individual elements. Thus, despite the obvious
importance of conscious experience to our lives, and its apparent ready
availability for research, conscious experience had largely resisted systematic
attempts at scientific description, and its study fell into disrepute.
Although
research on consciousness has enjoyed a considerable resurgence since the
1990s, the most basic structural and methodological questions remain unanswered.
With little examination, introspection has re-entered psychology and philosophy.
Even hard-nosed cognitive neuroscientists ask their subjects about their subjectively
felt experience while in the fMRI magnet. However, it should be clear from the
history just described that such casual and haphazard introspection cannot be
trusted to yield robustly replicable results and accurate generalizations. Furthermore,
it seems to us that the introspective methods employed by most current
researchers in consciousness studies are less careful than the methods used by
introspective psychologists a century ago. Unless better methods can be found,
we fear that the scientific study of consciousness may again stall. And if
there simply are no better methods, the scientific study of consciousness may prove
wholly impossible in principle: vacuous without introspective report,
intractably conflictual with it. Scientists could perhaps elude this difficulty
if they found a way to study consciousness without the help of introspective
report. We doubt such an enterprise makes sense, but we will not argue the
point here. We will assume that any science of consciousness must take, as a
fundamental source of data, people’s observations and descriptions of their own
experience. Thus a re-examination of the adequacy of introspective reports is
of central importance to consciousness studies.
That leads us to
the question that stands at the heart of this book: To what extent is it
possible accurately to report conscious experience? One author of this book,
Russ Hurlburt, has argued that we can profit from the demise of classical introspection
and create methods for reporting conscious experience that largely avoid the
old pitfalls. He has developed one such method, Descriptive Experience Sampling
(DES), to be described in the next chapter, that he has claimed (Hurlburt,
1990, 1993; Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006) does provide largely accurate
descriptions of experience. The other author, Eric Schwitzgebel, without
addressing DES in particular, has argued that introspective reports in general
are greatly prone to error, even in what would seem the most favorable of cases
(Schwitzgebel & Gordon, 2000; Schwitzgebel, 2002a-b, 2004, forthcoming, in
preparation-b).
In this book,
Russ and Eric confront each other directly and concretely on the adequacy and accuracy
of introspective reports, using the particular reports of an actual subject as
the starting point. Throughout the book, we will use the term “introspection”
to refer only to the observation of particular instants of experience as they
occur, or immediately thereafter. Sometimes, but not in this book,
introspection refers to chewing over, musing, reflecting – to a certain type of
self-oriented, retrospective or prospective contemplation. Our usage is quite
specific: we wish to discuss whether, or to what extent, it is possible for
people to report what is ongoing in their experience as it is currently
happening.
1. The Origins of This Book
In April, 2002, Russ presented a paper
titled “Describing inner experience: Not impossible but also not trivially
easy” at an interdisciplinary conference in
At the same
meeting, Eric presented a paper titled “Some reasons to distrust people’s
judgments about their own conscious experiences.” In this paper, Eric argued
that the introspection of emotion, sensory experience, imagery, and thought –
which together comprise much if not all of our experiential life – is
unreliable, and that even in favorable circumstances of extended reflection on
these aspects of our mental lives as they transpire, we often make gross
mistakes regarding their basic features. Thus, he advocated a skeptical
position that seemed to be considerably at odds with Russ’s cautious optimism. Eric
was in the midst of publishing a series of papers defending this view (see the
citations above).
Prior to the
Tucson 2002 convention, we had never met, but the papers and our conversations
showed that we shared a substantial intellectual history, despite Russ’s
training in psychology and Eric’s in philosophy. We had both independently
encountered the introspective literature on conscious experience and concluded
that there was good reason for skepticism. We had both examined the methodology
of the early introspectionist school and had written criticisms of those
practices (Hurlburt, 1990; Schwitzgebel, 2002a). We had both written criticisms
of the armchair introspections that underlie philosophical and psychological
thought about consciousness (Hurlburt, 1990; Schwitzgebel & Gordon, 2000;
Schwitzgebel, 2002a-b, 2003a-b).
However, despite
these similarities, we had by 2002 reached opposing positions. Russ had
responded to the methodological inadequacies of introspection by creating, in
the late 1970s, a method of exploring inner, conscious experience that sought
to avoid the pitfalls that had doomed earlier introspective attempts. This
method came to be known as Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), and the
project had culminated in two books (Hurlburt, 1990, 1993). Russ argued in
those two books, as well as in the paper at Toward a Science of
Consciousness, that his method solved enough of the methodological problems
that DES could be taken as providing largely correct descriptions of inner
experience (and perhaps other methods could as well). Russ will describe DES
more completely in Chapter 2, but for now it is enough to know that DES uses a
beeper to signal the subject to pay attention to the “inner experience” that
was ongoing at the moment of the beep. Subsequently, the subject and
investigator meet to discuss the details of such beeped moments.
Eric was not won
over. Over the centuries, many people had made enthusiastic claims about the
accuracy of their introspections, and most if not all of them had not proven
credible. Why should he regard Russ’s claim about DES any differently? He
agreed that the DES beeper did seem likely to overcome some of the difficulties
involved in introspective report, but it appeared to aggravate other
difficulties, and he thought it likely that, all things considered, substantial
doubt would still be warranted. Yet at the same time, he had never examined the
DES methodology closely.
We both
recognized that it was crucial to determine whether it was possible to provide
trustworthy accounts of conscious experience. The pressure was rising both in
psychology and in philosophy to explore inner experience, consciousness, the
phenomenology of thought and emotion. If Russ was right, then we should
redouble our efforts to explain to psychologists and philosophers how it is
possible accurately to observe conscious experience. If Eric was right, even
the most apparently credible reports of inner experience should not be accepted
at face value without substantial independent support from non-introspective data.
We agreed that
Eric would serve as a DES subject for a few days, right there at the Toward
a Science of Consciousness conference. This would give Eric the opportunity
to explore Russ’s approach from the inside, to gain a more direct and intimate
knowledge of it. Furthermore, it would provide a series of concrete occasions
on which to discuss introspective methodology. We would thus move from the
realm of general statements to the realm of concrete particulars. Eric’s being
a subject would turn Russ’s method inside out, would let the fox explore the
chicken coop from the inside. It would also test Eric’s commitment to
skepticism when his own experiential report was the one on the table.
We recognized
that Eric was by no means a typical subject. He was open to participating in
DES, but at the same time he had already thought extensively about the
difficulties of introspection and was on the public record as a harsh critic of
it. Thus, whereas most of Russ’s subjects are simply trying to report the
features of their experiences, Eric was trying both to report and at the same
time to examine the limits of that reporting.
These interviews
initiated a conversation that was continued by email over the next six months. We
wrote each other at length, discussing the history of introspection, examining
Eric’s experience as a subject, considering and reconsidering both of our
skepticisms and Russ’s explanations of how DES attempts to limit the risks
inherent in earlier methods. That correspondence could be simplified as
follows: We agreed that the history of introspection showed that most
introspective reports were not to be trusted. But we disagreed about the extent
to which the failure of earlier methods reflected general, ineliminable
difficulties in introspection. Russ was optimistic. He argued that an
interviewer like himself, carefully avoiding bias and focusing the interview on
individual moments of experience, could often generate largely reliable reports.
Eric remained relatively pessimistic, even when he himself was the subject.
2. Sampling with Melanie
To continue the
conversation usefully, we felt that Eric needed more experience with interview
techniques where his roles as skeptic and investigator wouldn’t be complicated
by his also simultaneously serving as the subject. So Russ proposed a new
endeavor. We would jointly take the role of investigator and interview a naive
subject, someone who had not previously been interviewed by Russ. In these
interviews, Eric would be free to cross-examine the subject in whatever way he
found useful, probing the subject’s opinions about her sampled experiences
without being confined to DES interviewing principles. For the role of subject,
Russ found Melanie, a friend of a friend. Melanie had just graduated from
college with a joint degree in philosophy and psychology and was new in town,
looking for a connection to the local psychology scene. Before coming to town,
she had had no prior direct contact with either Russ or Eric or their views.
Until then, our
conversations had been either about introspection in general (“should we trust
introspective reports?”) or about Eric’s own (atypical) DES experience. The
first kind of question was too broad. The second was confounded by Eric’s dual
role and prior investigations. Now, however, the questions would be specific,
concrete, and relatively straightforward: Should we believe Melanie’s report
about her experience at 11:34:21? We could explore the question in any way we
wished. To what extent would we agree, when faced with specific, individual
reports? Would we disagree broadly about all the reports, or would the
disagreement be concentrated on just a few reports, or a few aspects of them? We
would be faced throughout with a concrete person, Melanie. It would not be
adequate to say the impersonal, “I don’t believe introspective reports”. We
would have to be concretely personal: “I don’t believe Melanie’s report”.
Our aims were
also personal. Russ wanted candidly to
expose his views to Eric, who seemed an open-minded but unsympathetic audience,
to gain a skeptic’s perspective on his methodology, to refine his own
skepticism, to reconsider how much skepticism about Melanie’s reports might
indeed be warranted. Eric was exploring the limits of his skepticism, wavering
between the radical pessimism about introspection with which he was flirting in
his papers and a more nuanced caution that admitted the possibility of progress
and discovery. Our collaboration was intended to be a private conversation
between the two of us, facilitated by Melanie’s willingness to be questioned. We
did not begin with the intention of making our conversations public.
After half a
dozen sampling interviews with Melanie, spread over a month or so, we felt we
had sufficient material to drive our discussion to the next phase, so we
thanked Melanie for her participation and had the interviews transcribed by
Sharon Jones-Forrester, one of Russ’ students. The transcription was intended
to serve as the basis for our continuing personal conversation about the
trustworthiness of Melanie’s reports in particular, and about DES reports and
introspective reports in general. We independently read the transcripts and emailed
comments about specific details to each other. We then replied to each other’s
comments and replied to those replies and so on, back and forth until we judged
we had reached a point of diminishing returns. Over the course of the
interviews and subsequent discussions, we gradually came to think that our
concretely based considerations of the limits of skepticism, designed
originally to be a private and candid conversation, might have value to others
facing some of the same issues. Thus this book was born.
3. The Format of This Book
The sampling interviews that form the
heart of this book were thus intended to be a personal confrontation between
Russ and Eric. Because these interviews were real-time exchanges, we
occasionally meandered, repeated ourselves, misunderstood each other, assumed
shared knowledge unavailable to an outsider, phrased things poorly. In making
these interviews available to the reader, therefore, we cut such portions of
the transcripts; these cuts were never made unless we both agreed the remaining
interview material stayed faithful to the original whole. We also slightly
eased the remainder, removing some of the vocalized pauses and false starts,
for example, again only where we jointly agreed to the fidelity of the
alterations. Our aim in editing was to remove unnecessary distractions, thus
focusing the remainder more sharply on what we took to be the issues of
greatest general interest. We will make the complete, unaltered interview sound
files and their transcripts available on the World Wide Web (see www.mit.edu/hurlburt-schwitzgebel.html)
for those who wish to compare.
The heart of
this book is therefore the transcripts of our interviews with Melanie along
with 88 boxed discussions of issues raised in those interviews. To a large
extent, those boxes are streamlined versions of the personal e-mail exchanges
between Russ and Eric as we tried to hammer out our similar or differing takes
on the adequacy of some particular aspect of our interviews with Melanie. We
could have presented our views in the more traditional format for a co-authored
pro-and-con book, each writing a discursive essay and reply. However, we felt
that the presentation of a verbatim transcript, with inserted comments and
replies, would have substantial advantages over the more standard format. The
transcript format forces the reader to begin with, and constantly confront, the
particular. By contrast, most other discussions of introspective method begin
with abstractions and general considerations, invoking particular instances, if
at all, only selectively for the advancement of the author’s more general
thesis. While there is nothing inherently wrong with such an approach, we feel
that there is something salutary in presenting the reader with randomly obtained
particular reports, one at a time, prior to reaching general conclusions, with
each report confronted on its own terms before proceeding to the next. Russ’s
and Eric’s reactions and comments, both in the course of the original dialogue
and in their later amplifications, may help the reader get some bearing on the
kinds of doubts that may reasonably be raised and the resources available for
responding to them.
Although this
book looks wholly at the reports of one subject, Melanie, the reader will
swiftly discover that the issues it raises are quite general. If the reader
finds some of Melanie’s claims about her experience to be believable and others
to warrant doubt – as we think most readers will – this book invites
consideration of what might drive these evaluations, and it offers different
and sometimes conflicting suggestions on that topic. Temporarily replacing the
factious and general debate about the trustworthiness of introspective reports
with a personal and particular look at the details of Melanie’s reports will,
we think, take us a long way toward honing or refining, trimming or amplifying,
shifting or otherwise altering the skepticism that is desirable when
encountering reports about conscious experience.
Thus this book
is not a debate between opposing partisans, each trying to convince the other. Instead,
it is a forthright collaboration between opposing partisans, each
genuinely seeking to refine his own level of skepticism and to replace, as much
as possible, partisanship with balanced critical judgment. The result, we hope,
is an illumination of some of the major issues from two sides at once.
Our
confrontation and dispute has also produced one potentially very useful
byproduct: an examination, in unprecedented detail, of random moments of one
person’s experience. To the extent readers accept Melanie’s reports, they will
find a wealth of information about imagery, emotion, self-awareness, inner
speech, and so forth, as experienced by a particular individual at particular moments
in time. In the upcoming chapters we comment frequently on general issues
pertaining to such experiences, such as the bearing of Melanie’s reports on
various psychological or philosophical theories, and the apparent similarities
and differences between Melanie and other subjects we have read about or
studied, including ourselves.
A Note to
the Reader
Chapter Two
presents the general rationale behind Russ’ belief that satisfactory
introspective methods may exist; Chapter Three presents Eric’s general
rationale for doubting such claims. We’re ambivalent about including these
chapters here. On the one hand, this background seems worth presenting, and
this is the natural place. On the other hand, we’ve just argued for the value
of starting with concrete instances instead of theoretical generalities, and on
that logic it would be better for you to dive right into our interviews with
Melanie beginning with Chapter Four. The interview transcripts don’t assume
knowledge of Chapters Two and Three, though you may have a fuller sense of what
we’re up to if you read these chapters first. We encourage you to follow your
inclinations in this matter.
Chapter Two
Can There Be a Satisfactory Introspective Method?
Russ Hurlburt
Eric’s and my interest in introspection stem from
the same source: we agree that most attempts at the observation of inner
experience have not been successful. But we have diverged in our response to
that source. I have tried to capitalize on earlier introspective failures and
build a better method than was used in the previous attempts; so far, the best
method I have discovered is Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES; Hurlburt,
1990, 1993; Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006). Eric has publicized the skeptic’s
position, criticizing all attempts at introspection without excluding new and
perhaps better ones. In a nutshell, I want Eric to examine DES (or any other
method that avoids earlier pitfalls) on its own merits without damning it by
association with other not-so-sophisticated attempts; he wants me to recognize
that history includes many enthusiastic supporters of introspective methods
that have ultimately proven to be problematic. What makes this conversation
engaging is the fact that we both recognize the legitimacy of the other’s point
of view, and are both pretty darn honestly trying to figure out the appropriate
balance of these necessarily confrontational positions. Neither of us is trying
to win the argument; both of us are as happy to hone the other’s position as
our own in the service of more adequately answering the Can we believe
people’s reports about their inner experience? question.
This chapter makes the case that there might well be
introspective methods that deserve the scrutiny of even the most skeptical
observer of introspection. I use DES as an example of such a method, not
because it is the best method, but because it is the best method that I know
of. I will show why it is reasonable to suppose that it is enough different
from previous attempts to escape from the broad criticisms that have been
leveled against introspection repeatedly over the last century. My attempt in
this chapter is not to argue that DES actually does provide accurate
descriptions. Here I simply wish to demonstrate why I think it possible that
introspective methods can be devised that avoid the earlier pitfalls.
This chapter is in many ways a reconstruction for the reader
of the extended conversations that Eric and I had prior to deciding to sample
with Melanie. The reader will recall from Chapter 1 that the outcome of those
conversations was that Eric came to see that introspective methods might be
able to be improved upon and to see DES as potentially interesting,
sufficiently worthy of his skeptical attention to devote a substantial chunk of
his professional time. In this chapter I have the same aim for the reader.
The chapter has the following organization: First, I survey a
century of psychological science to discover what the characteristics of a good
method might be. Then I describe DES, a method that embodies those
characteristics. Then I describe ten reasons that DES reports might be
considered plausible, and then describe a few compelling idiographic cases.
[See
Eric: Russ, you’ve called the
subject matter of your work “inner experience.” I don’t like that term, because
I think it favors experiences like thoughts and feelings (which are generally
thought of as inner) over things like sensations (which are more outwardly
directed). I prefer to call it “conscious experience” or even just
“experience.” I’m also concerned about how the phrase seems to build in the
idea of the mind as interior and the world as external. I’m sympathetic with
recent trends in cognitive science that reject a strict inner/outer division
(sometimes called “embodied” views of the mind, or “externalism” or
“contextualism”).
Russ: I agree that the “inner” in “inner experience”
has the disadvantage that you point out – it does seem to favor thoughts over
sensations. But DES subjects don’t seem to be affected by that; and it avoids
the psychological and philosophical traditions in ways that I find highly
desirable.
“Experience” (unmodified) can refer not only to inner experience,
but also to “external” or “environmental” or “surrounding” experience, as in “I
was affected by the space-shuttle-disaster experience” or “I took the job to get management
experience.” Thus I think we need some kind of an adjective to indicate that
“experience” refers to thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the like.
“Conscious experience” seems to awaken either (a) the contrast to
the “unconscious” in Freud and many others’ sense awaken the existence of
“states of consciousness”; or (b) the contrast to sleeping, dreaming,
drug-altered, and so on experience.
“Attention” and “awareness” have an implication of a
meta-awareness that I do not intend.
There is thus no nonproblematic terminology to refer to what might
variously be called inner experience, conscious experience, experience,
awareness, attention, or whatever. I have preferred “inner experience” as the
being the least misleading, but it is far from perfect.
The good news is that in DES it simply doesn’t seem to matter what
you call it, and therefore, I alternate quasi-randomly between all those
terminologies in the attempt to distance myself from any one particular
connotation. For example, in the set of interviews that we will display in
Chapters 4-9, we use the term “inner experience” a total of 5 times,
“experience” about 250 times, “awareness” about 100 times and “attention” about
70 times.
Eric: I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t matter what you call
it, but I do agree that every terminology has shortcomings. ”Conscious
experience” also suggests a possible contrast to “unconscious experience” – a
phrase that sounds incoherent to me. And does the phrase “conscious experience”
invite the idea that we’re normally conscious of our experiences, in
some self-observational way? Though some philosophers appear to endorse such a
view (e.g., Rosenthal, 1986; Lycan, 1996), I’d prefer not to be committed to
simply by the terminology. So maybe the phrase “inner experience” isn’t worse
than any other. The reader will notice that I’ve reconciled myself to having it
in the title of this book.
Thread: Loose language.
Next:
1. Toward a Better Introspective Method: 15 Guidelines from a
Century of Science
The question this book is exploring is whether it is possible
(or the extent to which it is possible) to obtain accurate descriptions of
inner experience. Chris Heavey, Todd Seibert, and I (Hurlburt, Heavey, &
Seibert, 2006) surveyed the last century or so of psychological science
research to ascertain what that literature (most of it not introspective) has
to say about the characteristics of a good introspective method. That paper
extracted 15 guidelines for any good introspective method; this section
paraphrases those guidelines; the reader is referred to the original article
for amplification.
Guideline 1: The Stakes Are High. Bluntly stated,
introspective methods failed and non-introspective methods came to dominate
psychology largely due to introspection’s failure. Should psychological science
reawaken an interest in introspection without adequate discussion and
improvement of introspective method, there may be an even more severe reaction
(if that is possible) to a reawakened introspective era.
Guideline 2: Skepticism is Appropriate. Except perhaps
for think-aloud procedures, all introspective procedures require memory to
greater or lesser extent. [For a brief description of think-aloud procedures,
see
Russ: For comparison
purposes, here is a brief description of some current methods that attempt to
explore inner experience.
Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES; Hurlburt, 1990) uses random
beepers to trigger the qualitative description of experience. DES differs from
all other sampling methods in that it is descriptive, not quantitative.
Thought sampling (or cognition sampling; Hurlburt, 1979) uses
beepers to trigger subjects to fill out questionnaires. These questionnaires
examine a variety of features of thought and mood.
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM; Larson &
Csikszentmihalyi, 1983) is predominantly a quantitative methodology that
collects standardized data about internal and external aspects of experience
and situational/contextual variables. ESM differs from thought sampling
primarily in its interest in situational variables and in the standardization
of the questionnaires.
Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA; Stone & Shiffman, 1994)
is also a quantitative time-sampling method that differs from ESM in that it is
not exclusively a random time
sampling method; instead EMA sampling may occur at regular intervals (every
hour, for example) or triggered by specific events (while jogging, for
example).
Think-aloud procedures (Ericsson & Simon,1980) ask subjects to
verbalize their ongoing inner processes while performing some particular tasks
(solving an anagram, for example). Sometimes these methods are called “verbal
protocol analyses.”
Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations Paradigm (ATSS;
Davison, Robbins, & Johnson, 1983) is a verbal protocol analysis approach
where subjects listen to audiotapes describing “stimulus scenarios” designed to
elicit particular responses (social anxiety, for example). Subjects are to
imagine actually being involved in the scenarios; immediately after hearing
each scenario, they verbalize what they were thinking and feeling during the
simulated situation.
Guideline 6: Disturb the
Experience as Little as Possible. James (1890/1981) famously suggested that it
would be impossible to capture ongoing inner experience because the attempt to
capture it would destroy the experience:
As a snow-flake
crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal but a drop, so, instead
of catching the feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught
some substantive thing, usually the last word we were producing, statically
taken, and with its function, tendency, and particular meaning in the sentence
quite evaporated. The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in
fact like … trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness
looks (p. 158).
John S. Mill suggested that it might be possible to capture
ongoing experience through the medium of memory just after the experience has
passed: “A fact may be studied through the medium of memory, not at the very
moment of our perceiving it, but the moment after: and this is really the mode
in which our best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We
reflect on what we have been doing when the act is past, but when its
impression in the memory is still fresh” (Mill, 1882/1961, p. 64). James and
Mill were correct in pointing out we should try to disturb the targeted
experience as little as possible
Guideline 7:
Explore Natural Situations. External validity (Campbell & Stanley,
1963), “mundane realism” (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1968), and “ecological
validity” (Brunswik, 1949) concerns about generalizability indicate that
explorations should take place in the subject’s own natural environments.
Guideline 8: Minimize
Demands.
Explorations of private phenomena should seek to minimize “demand
characteristics” (Orne, 1962) or the “Pygmalion Effect” (R. Rosenthal &
Jacobson, 1968), employing double-blind testing when possible (R. Rosenthal,
1976) and scrupulously bracketing presuppositions when double-blind testing is
not possible (as is often the case in DES).
Guideline
9: Terminology Is Problematic. B. F. Skinner observed
that verbal behavior about private events may be impoverished because it is
difficult for the verbal community to shape a person’s speech about inner
experience:
The verbal response “red”
is established as a discriminative operant by a community which reinforces the
response when it is made in the presence of red stimuli and not otherwise. This
can easily be done if the community and the individual both have access to red
stimuli. It cannot be done if either the individual or the community is
color-blind. The latter case resembles that in which a verbal response is based
upon a private event, where, by definition, common access by both parties is
impossible. How does the community present or withhold reinforcement
appropriately in order to bring such a response as “My tooth aches” under the
control of appropriate stimulation? (1953, pp. 258-259, italics in original)
Thus Skinner established that talk about inner
experience, such as “I was thinking…,” “I am feeling…,” “I am depressed,” and
so on, are not likely to have the same precision as talk about external events.
My DES colleagues and I have made this observation
frequently in our sampling studies. For example, people often use the term thinking
to mean something entirely non cognitive; others use the word feeling to
refer to cognitive events (see
Guideline
10: Don’t Ask Participants to Infer Causation. Nisbett and T.
Wilson (1977), in a highly influential paper, reviewed research examining the
attribution of causality and concluded that people often cannot describe “why”
they behave/think the way they do. The moral seems clear: Avoid asking “why”
questions.
Guideline 11: Abandon
Armchair Observation. It follows from all that has gone before that casual observation
about inner experience is not likely to yield scientifically valid results.
Merely asking someone about their inner experience is simply not good enough.
Furthermore, asking someone to perform armchair observations about their own
experiences is problematic, even if that observation is done with careful
instruction or by sophisticated observers:
I have conducted this brief examination of our introspective knowledge of
visual imagery to promote the more general thesis that we can be, and often
are, grossly mistaken about our own current conscious experiences even in
favourable circumstances of quiet attention…. We must abandon not only research
paradigms in psychology and consciousness studies that depend too trustingly on
introspection … but also some of our ordinary assumptions about our knowledge
of our own mental lives and what it’s like to be ourselves. Human judgment
about anything as fluid, changeable, skittish and chaotic as conscious
experience is bound to error and confusion (Schwitzgebel, 2002, p. 50).
Guideline
12: Separate Report from Interpretation. Neuroscience has
effectively used introspective reports throughout the past century. Reports of
experience by those suffering from brain damage and disease have led
neuroscience to an ever greater understanding of brain processing. Neuroscience
has been successful because they have appropriately separated the introspective
report from the interpretation of that report. It is the patient’s job to
provide the introspective reports, and the neurologist’s job to provide the
interpretation.
Guideline
13: Don’t Require Too Much. Classical introspection observed many
or most of the above guidelines and still Titchener’s group disagreed
vehemently with the Würzburg school about the existence of imageless thought:
The Würzburgers thought they had discovered a new “imageless” element of
thinking, whereas Titchener thought that images were present but very faint.
Many observers see this lack of agreement as a primary cause of the fall of
introspection a century ago (Misiak & Sexton, 1966; but see Danziger,
1980). However, Monson and Hurlburt (1993; see also Hurlburt & Heavey,
2001) reviewed the introspectionist reports and found that Titchener and the
Würzburgers substantially agreed about the phenomena in question, even though
they disagreed about the interpretation of those observations. Had the introspections
limited themselves to the careful description of phenomena, rather than trying
to resolve an issue in their theory of mind, they would not have disagreed and
introspection might not have been discredited.
Guideline 14: Value
Prospective Research. Prospective designs offer the possibility of tapping a wide range
of information relatively irrespective of theoretical perspective, collecting
evidence that may or may not be related to some later question. Particularly at
this early stage of the science of inner experience, this ability to allow the
emergence of perhaps unexpected relationships or characteristics is especially
important.
Guideline 15: Situate
introspective observations in a nomological net. Those who would use
introspective observations should explore the relationships of those
observations to other kinds of research results.
These 15 guidelines highlight desirable features of any
introspective method. There are doubtless other ways of slicing the
century-of-psychological-research pie, which would yield a somewhat different
set of guidelines. That is, I’m not claiming that this is the only nor the best
set. Yet, it does seem to me that this set is a reasonable summary of the
desirable characteristics of introspective methods.
2. Descriptive Experience Sampling
Beginning in 1974, I began developing a method shaped by the
thinking that is embodied in the guidelines we have just reviewed. That method
is called Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), which is my best shot at an
accurate method for describing inner experience.
I emphasize that I do not think that DES is the ultimate
method, only that it is the best method that I know of at this time. Should a
method come along that I judge to be better than DES, I’d be happy to abandon
DES in its favor. That is, I am personally, and this book is specifically, much
more committed to the high quality study of inner experience than to the DES
method in particular.
I have described DES in a variety of places (Hurlburt, 1990,
1993, 1997; Hurlburt & Heavey, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006; Hurlburt &
Akhter, in press) and will discuss its basics and rationale only fairly briefly
here. Readers interested in more detail are referred to the works cited above.
DES uses a random beeper in the subject’s natural environments to signal the
subject to pay attention to the experience that was ongoing at the moment of
the beep. The subject then jots down notes about that now-immediately-past
experience. The subject collects a half-dozen such beeped experiences and then
meets with the investigator within 24 hours for an expositional interview,
whose aim is to describe the experiences that were ongoing at each of the six
beeped moments.
The beep/interview procedure is repeated over a number
(usually between three and ten) sampling days. The “iterative” nature of the
procedure interviews allows the subject’s observational and reporting skills to
improve over the course of the several sampling days: Each day’s interview
informs/refines/differentiates the next day’s observations, and in turn those
newly refined observations inform/refine/differentiate the subsequent
interviews (Hurlburt & Akhter, in press).
Occasionally critics of DES have disparagingly referred to
the “magic beeper,” but whereas there is nothing magic about it, its characteristics
are important (Hurlburt & Heavey, 2004, 2006):
·
The beep is random. This makes it clear (a) that I and my subject
are on equal footing with respect to the beep (that there is no manipulation
involved); and (b) that I have no presuppositional expectations about what are
important or unimportant occasions or events.
· The beep has a rapid
onset or “rise time.” This makes it clear that I am interested in a precise
moment, measured to the fraction of a second, perhaps. A vibrator of the type
used in pagers is not adequate, for example.
· The beep should be easily
detectable. A beep that is too loud will startle the subject, and the startle
response will destroy the contents of experience. A beep that is too soft will
trigger the subject’s asking, “Is that the beep? Is that the beep? Yes! That’s
the beep!” but by now the experience that was occurring at the moment of onset
of the beep may be lost.
· The beep is unambiguous.
It means “Sample now!” and nothing else. Some critics have attempted to
simulate the DES procedure by using, for example, a telephone ring as the
signaling device. That doesn’t work, because the subject’s response must be,
“That’s a telephone ring, but I’m not supposed to answer the telephone, I’m
supposed to pay attention to my experience.” However, that response is likely
to destroy the experience that was ongoing at the moment of the beep.
· The beep should be
private. DES subjects generally use an earphone. If the beep is delivered
through an external speaker, the subject must think about what she will say to
anyone who might also have heard the beep, or must hasten to stop the beep so
as not to annoy others. Either way, the ongoing experience has been lost.
· The beeper must be easily
portable, so it can be easily used in the subject’s natural environments.
The expositional
interview asks essentially one and only one question: “What were you
experiencing at the moment of the beep?” The object is to get as complete and
detailed an answer to that question as possible, while at the same time avoiding
confabulation. We want “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” and the
interview (in fact, the entire DES project) is aimed at that result. The
interview is not structured, but instead asks that question over and over, in
as many different forms as necessary, to focus the subject on the precise
moment of the beep and nothing else. [See
Russ: Society often takes the
statement “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” to mean
substantially less than its literal meaning. In the courtroom, “nothing but the
truth” sometimes cynically means “anything that is not technically a lie.” Witnesses
are routinely admonished not to provide the “whole truth” in the sense
that they are instructed to answer only the question being asked and not to
volunteer additional information, even if that additional information seems
necessary to the understanding of the whole truth.
However, in DES, we mean “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth” to be taken as completely literally as possible. We give
subjects the explicit choice: It’s okay not to tell us anything. But if you
decide to tell us something about a beeped experience, we would like you to
tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as straightforwardly
is possible. Our intention is the opposite of an attorney’s. We want to
discover the complete truth, not to hide behind a technical truth or show only
one side of the truth. We want you to help us get to the heart of your
experience, not to lead us away from it. We want you to help us discover as
accurately as possible the details of your experience, not to blur them in the
service of hiddenness. If we overlook something in what you’ve said, bring that
to our attention. If we distort some feature of your experience, bring that to
our attention. If our questions don’t help you describe accurately your
phenomena, help us to ask better questions. If you are unwilling to expose as
accurately as possible the details of a beeped experience, then we would prefer
not to talk about that experience at all.
Thread: Interview
techniques. Next:
By
“the moment of the beep” we mean the last undisturbed moment before the beep
begins – a millisecond before the beep. That is, we are not interested in the
subject’s reaction to the beep; we are not interested in what led up to the
beep; we are not interested in what caused the experience; we are not
interested in whether the experience is typical or rare. We are interested in
the experience that was naturally ongoing at the millisecond before the beep
began. We often use the metaphor of a flash snapshot: we are interested in
whatever the flash (beep onset) happens to catch.
Of
course it would be naďve to think that we actually get to a perfectly
undisturbed moment; the beep has to have been processed by the subject to
identify the “last undisturbed moment.” One of the aims of this book is to get
a sense of how undisturbed that moment is likely to be. Most subjects report
that it seems that something like a “sensory store” for experience seems to
exist, giving them time to “freeze” the experience and then to report it. But
the believability of those reports is part of what is at issue in this book.
Russ: DES questions are
sometimes called “open-ended,” but I think it makes as much sense to call my
questions “open-beginninged” as open-ended. An open-beginninged question is one
that does not presume the content about which it asks.
“Tell me about your image” is an open-ended question, because it
allows the respondent to elaborate as much or as little as possible about
images. But its beginning is fixed: the question is about images, nothing else.
By contrast, “Tell me about your experience, if any, whatever it
happened to be” is an open-beginninged (as well as an open-ended) question,
because it allows the respondent to discuss images, speech, emotions,
sensations – whatever was occurring at the moment of the beep, including none
of the above or no experience at all.
The failure to appreciate the importance of open-beginninged
questions has been, in my opinion, one of the major problems in the development
of the science of inner experience, including most of the approaches described
in
It is possible to have a particular interest (say, in images) and
still ask open-beginninged questions. You ask, in an open-beginninged way, what
was going on at this moment. If the experience happens to include an image,
then you include that in your study. If the experience happens not to include
an image, then you discard it. Such a study is, it seems to me, the only way to
gain an accurate view of the way images are actually experienced. The argument
(as I have heard it) that such a way is too inefficient actually proves my
point. If it is inefficient, that must be because many moments do not include
images, and to ask about images at those times must have been misguided.
Thread: Interview
techniques. Previous:
Thread: Richness. Next:
We
accept that Skinner was correct in his observation that people, including our
DES subjects, are not differentiated observers or reporters of their inner
experience (see Guideline 9 above). That is, subjects say many things about
their experiences that are false or misleading, not because they wish to
deceive but because in their life encounters until now they have not learned an
adequate vocabulary to describe their experiences accurately; they have not
learned to discriminate adequately between their actually occurring experience
and their self-theories about their experiences; they have not learned to focus
on one moment. The series of DES expositional interviews must therefore provide
training on those important observational and reporting skills at the same time
as it is acquiring reports of inner experience. Therefore, the first sampling
day or two (or more in some cases) is generally considered entirely training,
not data gathering, and training continues past that time when necessary.
Thus
the expositional interview consists of the subject’s saying some things that
are faithful and some that are misleading about her inner experience. The
interviewer’s task is to help the subject, over the course of sampling, say
more and more of the faithful and less and less of the misleading. A metaphor
that appeals to me is that I’m standing under the chute of a thresher with
wheat and chaff pouring down. I try to grab the wheat and just ignore the
chaff. (I actually don’t know whether threshers work like that.) As the subject
finds out that I’m very interested in the characteristics of particular moments
and I’m not interested in the extra-sampling general statements, almost always
there eventually becomes more wheat and less chaff, more talk about moments and
less about general characterizations.
All
this assumes that the subject is truly motivated to provide faithful
descriptions of her inner experience. There may be some subjects who are
motivated to lie, and probably nothing can be done about that. But DES does
take seriously the attempt to enlist the subject’s interest in faithful
descriptions. First, we present ourselves as co-investigators: the subject has
something (her experience) and we have something (the DES method), and together
we can discover something that probably neither of us separately can do.
Second,
we actually are, and present ourselves as being, genuinely interested in the
faithful apprehension of her experience, as it occurred, with as few
embellishments as possible. We demonstrate that genuine interest in a variety
of ways: We question carefully to make sure we understand precisely what is
being said; we encourage the careful focus on the precise moment of the beep by
discouraging wandering away from that moment; we encourage the careful focus on
the precise moment of the beep by discouraging speculation about what might
have caused the currently experienced phenomenon; we consistently try to keep
our own presuppositions out of the picture, maintaining a focus on the
subject’s experience as the subject experiences it; we let a random beeper
choose the moment, rather than presume to know what moments are important.
Third,
we protect the subject’s privacy, telling her that we will not divulge her
experiences until she explicitly agrees that we may do so; that she should feel
free to discontinue sampling at any time without prejudice; that she should
feel free to decline to discuss any experience for any reason (we have things
that are none of her business and presume that she has things that are none of
ours). We do ask that that if she wishes to decline to discuss an experience,
that she tell us up front, and we will simply omit discussion of that beep
entirely. Then if we do discuss a sample, we can delve as thoroughly as we
desire (certainly the subject knows that she can change her mind and
discontinue reporting or sampling at any time).
The
result of all this is that the subject typically comes to realize that our aim
is actually to apprehend the reality of the subject’s experience, one moment at
a time. Most subjects, I think, find that a very powerful and quite rare event:
Someone really cares about my experience! Most subjects, I think, find it an
unusual opportunity to be as honest as possible about personal experiences.
Most subjects, I think, find it an opportunity to discover something about
themselves, and the more accurate the better. [See
Russ: Nisbett and Wilson’s
1977 criticism of introspection is so widely quoted as to require comment: “The
accuracy of subjective reports is so poor as to suggest than any introspective
access that may exist is not sufficient to produce generally correct or
reliable reports” (Nisbett & T. Wilson, 1977, p. 233).
Critics of introspective-like methods have often taken the Nisbett
& Wilson article to be an unconditional refutation of introspection in
general. However, it is not widely known that Nisbett and Wilson, later in that
same 1977 paper, recognized the possibility of accurate reports about inner
experience:
We also wish to
acknowledge that the studies do not suffice to show that people could never
be accurate about the processes involved. To do so would require ecologically
meaningless but theoretically interesting procedures such as interrupting a
process at the very moment it was occurring, alerting subjects to pay careful
attention to their cognitive processes, coaching them in introspective
procedures, and so on (p. 246, italics in original).
DES, as we have just
seen, involves precisely “interrupting a process at the very moment it was
occurring, alerting subjects to pay careful attention to their cognitive
processes, coaching them in introspective procedures, and so on.” It is thus
fair to say that Nisbett and Wilson, among the staunchest critics of
introspection, agreed that methods like DES were at least “theoretically
interesting” and might “be accurate about the processes involved.” (I think
Nisbett and Wilson were mistaken about their further claim of ecological
meaninglessness, but readers may judge for themselves by the end of this book.)
Eric: Let me go further, Russ, and point out that – despite the
mythology that Nisbett and
In general, psychologists have done a poor job separating
skepticism about the self-reports of nonconscious processes, traits, behavioral
dispositions, etc., from skepticism about self-reports of inner experience or
consciousness; and when they do distinguish the two, it often turns out – as with
Nisbett and Wilson – that they are only skeptical about the first.
Russ: I agree with all that.
3. Does DES-Apprehended Inner Experience Faithfully Mirror
Inner Experience?
At the outset, I acknowledge that DES reports about inner
experience mirror inner experience absolutely accurately only in rare cases if
ever. So the issue is not whether the mirror is perfect, only whether it is
scientifically adequate.
There
are, it seems to me, two kinds of evidence for believing that DES reports might
faithfully reflect inner experience. First, there are what I will call plausibility
arguments – characteristics of the world and the method that lead me to
think that accurate characterizations is the most plausible state of affairs.
Second, and by far more important to me personally, are what I will call compelling
idiographic observations – one-case-at-a-time observations of single
individuals.
3.1. Ten
Plausibility Arguments
Here are ten plausible reasons to believe that DES reports
accurately reflect inner experience. None of them, by themselves, carry the day
– one can argue against any of them. But all of them together are, to me,
pretty persuasive. However, I emphasize that I do not think that arguments
based on plausibility are ever an adequate foundation for science. They are
important in that they clarify issues, but one person’s plausibility is
another’s doubt. Science must be built on direct observation, not plausibility;
that is why I believe that the compelling idiographic observations that I
discuss in the next section are far more important that the plausibility
arguments discussed here. I see these plausibility arguments only as setting
the stage for what I find to be the convincing idiographic observations.
. 1.
The DES method is sophisticated. There is, historically, much good reason
to doubt introspective reports. However, those introspective reports have been
gathered in ways that I find seriously methodologically flawed. By following
the guidelines and employing the characteristics described earlier in this
chapter, DES in a sophisticated way may avoid those flaws. That of course
doesn’t imply that its introspections are necessarily successful, but it does
open the possibility for more accuracy than earlier introspections.
2.
Prospective DES subjects are skeptical too. Nearly all prospective DES
subjects think DES will be difficult or impossible, but they find it easy once
they actually engage in the DES procedure. It seems reasonable to suppose that
the subjects’ initial skepticism is somewhat similar to others’ (perhaps the
reader’s) skepticism: it is based on armchair attempts at observing inner
experience. But as I observed in 1997,
critics [should] not
dismiss the descriptive experience sampling method on the basis of informal
attempts at replicating the procedure. Informal sampling attempts such as
asking oneself on occasion, “What am I thinking right now?” are nearly always
discouraging, leading the typical critic to believe that he or she would be
unable to perform the sampling task. However, I reported (Hurlburt, 1990, p.
269) that most subjects find the actual task of responding to the random beep
to be quite easy and unambiguous, stating that “unsuccessful [informal]
attempts at thought sampling should not lead you to conclude that [descriptive
experience] sampling ... is impossible; but rather should lead you to an
appreciation of the relative delicacy of the method” (Hurlburt, 1997, p. 947).
The fact is that most subjects at the outset
believe they will have a hard or impossible time capturing their inner
experience, but over the first day or so of DES they become convinced that they
can in fact capture their inner experience. This often-repeated trajectory from
skepticism to acceptance based on their own directly-observed experience seems
an argument against unrelenting skepticism.
3.
DES subjects say they give accurate and complete reports. Despite the fact
that I, in a skillfully repetitive way, give DES subjects the opportunity to
say that there is more in their experience that they can’t quite describe, they
say the opposite – that they are giving pretty complete reports. They are
convinced of that, and I am confident that that is not the result of my asking
of leading questions.
4.
Variability in within-subject reports implies their openness to a variety of
experience. People often give quite different reports at different beeps,
for example, inner speech at one beep, an image at another, unsymbolized
thinking (the experience of thinking without words, images, or any other
symbols; Hurlburt 1990, 1993, 1997; Hurlburt & Heavey, 2006) at another, a
combination of inner speech and feelings at another, and so on. This seems to
indicate that people have a willingness and ability to report a variety of
kinds of inner experience. It is therefore not the case that these
subjects have a “favorite” kind of inner experience, or are “blind” to all
other kinds of inner experience. (Certainly they might be blind to things they
never report.)
Said
another way, if one believes that reports of putative inner experience are
purely artifactual, you’d expect the reports to be always the same. They are
not.
There
are other possible explanations for variability within subject’s reports; for
example, that a subject has a self-theory of himself as highly variable, and
therefore gives variable reports. However, in my experience most people think
of variability in content, not variability in form. A person would have to be
quite sophisticated about inner experience (to recognize the existence of
unsymbolized thinking, for example), for self-theory to influence the form in
this way.
5.
Variability in between-subject reports implies my openness to a variety of
experience. Different people have quite different patterns of responding.
For example, one person reports nearly all inner speech; another reports nearly
all images; another reports a mix of forms of inner experience. This seems to
indicate that I, as one particular DES investigator, am open to a variety of
experience. It is therefore not the case that I have a “favorite” kind
of inner experience, or am “blind” to all other kinds of inner experience.
6.
The analogy from visual perception. The phenomenology of figure-ground
perception has been well known at least since the Gestalt psychologists. Their
work was largely in the visual realm; they showed that people spontaneously,
seemingly immediately, create strongly felt patterns out of the visual arrays,
and they proposed laws that govern such perception: proximity, similarity,
closure, good continuation, and so on. Their main point was that people do not
see everything that is available to be seen; they create, as part of the active
perceptual process, a well-defined object to “see.”
It
seems likely (and this is the way it is reported by DES subjects) that a
similar process occurs across modalities. Thus, in much the same way that the
faces disappear when I pay attention to the vase way of seeing the face/vase
ambiguous figure, it seems reasonable to conclude that the sounds around me
disappear when I pay attention to the visual, and that the visual disappears
when I pay attention to the tactile, and so on. Certainly there are cases where
I can pay attention to two or several aspects of the environment, but for most
people most of the time, the number of such things is apparently small.
There
are exceptions to that, but it is the exceptions that prove the rule. Some
subjects do not “filter out” alternative modalities of alternative perceptions
in the same modality. That indicates, it seems to me, that I am prepared to
hear such reports if they are given (that is, that I am not biased against
them); because most people don’t make such reports, even when thoroughly
discussed in the expositional interviews, that I would be willing to hear more
complex accounts if experience was more complex. (See
7.
Compare the alternatives. An alternative that is sometimes advanced is that
there is always visual experience ongoing. If the DES subject doesn’t report
it, it must therefore be neglected. I am not persuaded by that as a
possibility, because the same argument can be made for other sensory
modalities. Auditory experience must also always be ongoing because if someone
says my name, I’m likely to hear it even if I’m paying attention to something
else. Therefore, the argument goes, a piece of my awareness must have been
auditory. Kinesthetic experience must also always be ongoing, because if I’m
walking down the street and the pavement suddenly becomes spongy, I
spontaneously adjust my gait. Therefore, the argument goes, a piece of my
awareness must have involved the pavement feel and my body’s reaction to it.
And I see no reason to stop there: taste, smell, and so on are equally arguably
always ongoing. So, on this model, I am always simultaneously experiencing many
simultaneous multimodal things. I just don’t think that’s true. We certainly process
input from multiple modalities at once, but most of that input does not
become a recognizable part of our stream of experience, as the response of our
immune system to invading bacteria or the expansion and contraction of our
pupils as lighting conditions change do not become recognizable parts of the
stream of experience. See also
8.
Subjects are not reluctant to report everything. As we saw in the previous
section, part of the DES method is to impress on subjects that if a feature of
their experience is none of my business, we shouldn’t discuss that sample. I
tell them that it is far easier if they just say up front, “This sample is none
of your business,” rather than try to disguise or hedge. I say that I will try
to get a complete account, and if they’re hiding something, we’ll just go
‘round and ‘round; I won’t feel a sense of completion.
Subjects
occasionally do say “None of your business,” which indicates that the message
is heard. But they don’t say it often, primarily (I think) because the beeped
moments are usually pretty mundane.
I
conclude that subjects are usually not reluctant to report as completely as
possible; if they were, they’d say “None of your business” more often. In fact,
subjects often report things that are embarrassing or run counter to their self
concept [as indicated by verbal (You’re sure this is confidential…”) and
non-verbal (blushing, stammering, etc.) evidence].
9. I myself am pretty good at bracketing presuppositions. I don’t mean to be arrogant, or to single myself out, but the ability to bracket presuppositions probably has to be evaluated one person at a time. The evidence for the adequacy of my own bracketing efficacy: (1) My reports vary dramatically from subject to subject, indicating that I am not “out looking for” my favorite characteristic. (2) I have reported many phenomena that were surprising to me myself (unsymbolized thinking, the absence of figure-ground phenome