I think you miss the point of the linked article, which is not that we are “not very good” at introspection, but that introspection is literally impossible. We don’t have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons. We don’t have little instruments hooked up to our internal mental mechanisms telling us what’s going on. I fear that people who think they do are somewhat fooling themselves.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have models of ourselves, or think about how the brain works, or notice patterns of mental behavior and make up better explanations for them, and get better at that. But I think calling it introspection is misleading and begs the question, as it conjures up images of a magic eye that can be turned inward. We don’t have those.
That’s not entirely true. The various kinds of rationalization, for example, each have their own distinct feeling once I learned to recognize when I was doing them. I suspect the analogy to biofeedback training is a good one; I would guess the experience of e.g. learning how to control your blood pressure, is a similar sort of thing.
We don’t have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons
The point of the linked article is that when naively thinking that we are good at introspection, we fail at it. For example, “When presented with the idea of cognitive dissonance, they once again agreed it was an interesting idea that probably affected some of the other subjects but of course not them.”
That only weakly implies “We don’t have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons.” We not only don’t know how trained people can do, we don’t even know how untrained people who would agree they are subject to biases would do!
If you define introspection as magically perfectly accurate self-knowledge gleaned without thinking, or even training, that is idiosyncratic.
I exaggerated a bit. The points I was trying to make: we can only weakly introspect; the term “introspection” is misleading (I think “reflection”, mentioned by another commenter, is better); we are in a strong sense strangers to ourselves, and our apparent ability to introspect is misleading.
I am only a dabbler in meditation and Buddhism, but I think an actual Buddhist would NOT characterize meditation as introspection. The point of it is not to have a self more aware of itself, but to reveal the illusory nature of the self (I’m sure that is a drastic oversimplification, at best).
I agree that “reflection” is the best term for what people can do. It does make sense to associate the strongest term, “introspection”, with the strongest belief, the naive one.
After posting that I felt even more unsure about my assertion about Buddhism and introspection than I had indicated, so did some Googling...here’s some support from an actual Buddhist, though I’m guessing there is a wide variety of opinion on this question.
To me, it seemed like the article said only that we were unexpectedly bad at introspection when actually trying it in practice, not that it was impossible for anyone ever to do any kind of introspection.
We can’t open the box and see what is inside directly, but we do have more info than we do about other people. We have partial access to the outputs of different parts of the brain.
We can simulate how we’d respond in circumstances in addition to the circumstances we actually find ourselves in. Of course, we can think we’re simulating what we’d actually do but actually simulate what we think we should do, but that’s a self deception problem and not a problem fundamental to introspection.
For example, I can ask someone “Why did you buy that car?” and they can answer the first thing that comes to mind (which may be wrong, and may be selected because it makes them sound good), or they can think “hmm, would I have felt the urge to buy the car if it was not blue? No? I guess color was important”
I think you miss the point of the linked article, which is not that we are “not very good” at introspection, but that introspection is literally impossible. We don’t have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons. We don’t have little instruments hooked up to our internal mental mechanisms telling us what’s going on. I fear that people who think they do are somewhat fooling themselves.
That doesn’t mean we can’t have models of ourselves, or think about how the brain works, or notice patterns of mental behavior and make up better explanations for them, and get better at that. But I think calling it introspection is misleading and begs the question, as it conjures up images of a magic eye that can be turned inward. We don’t have those.
That’s not entirely true. The various kinds of rationalization, for example, each have their own distinct feeling once I learned to recognize when I was doing them. I suspect the analogy to biofeedback training is a good one; I would guess the experience of e.g. learning how to control your blood pressure, is a similar sort of thing.
The point of the linked article is that when naively thinking that we are good at introspection, we fail at it. For example, “When presented with the idea of cognitive dissonance, they once again agreed it was an interesting idea that probably affected some of the other subjects but of course not them.”
That only weakly implies “We don’t have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons.” We not only don’t know how trained people can do, we don’t even know how untrained people who would agree they are subject to biases would do!
If you define introspection as magically perfectly accurate self-knowledge gleaned without thinking, or even training, that is idiosyncratic.
I exaggerated a bit. The points I was trying to make: we can only weakly introspect; the term “introspection” is misleading (I think “reflection”, mentioned by another commenter, is better); we are in a strong sense strangers to ourselves, and our apparent ability to introspect is misleading.
I am only a dabbler in meditation and Buddhism, but I think an actual Buddhist would NOT characterize meditation as introspection. The point of it is not to have a self more aware of itself, but to reveal the illusory nature of the self (I’m sure that is a drastic oversimplification, at best).
I agree that “reflection” is the best term for what people can do. It does make sense to associate the strongest term, “introspection”, with the strongest belief, the naive one.
After posting that I felt even more unsure about my assertion about Buddhism and introspection than I had indicated, so did some Googling...here’s some support from an actual Buddhist, though I’m guessing there is a wide variety of opinion on this question.
To me, it seemed like the article said only that we were unexpectedly bad at introspection when actually trying it in practice, not that it was impossible for anyone ever to do any kind of introspection.
We can’t open the box and see what is inside directly, but we do have more info than we do about other people. We have partial access to the outputs of different parts of the brain.
We can simulate how we’d respond in circumstances in addition to the circumstances we actually find ourselves in. Of course, we can think we’re simulating what we’d actually do but actually simulate what we think we should do, but that’s a self deception problem and not a problem fundamental to introspection.
For example, I can ask someone “Why did you buy that car?” and they can answer the first thing that comes to mind (which may be wrong, and may be selected because it makes them sound good), or they can think “hmm, would I have felt the urge to buy the car if it was not blue? No? I guess color was important”