Introspective Knowledge and Displaced Perception :: science

Introspective companionship and Displaced PerceptionDretske remarks that there are two important differences between introverted companionship and other forms of displaced perception (p. 60). What are these differences? Are they enough to chatter into question his view of introverted friendship as displaced perception? The game chapter of Naturalizing the Mind is in the main an attempt to fork over an account of introspective knowledge consistent with the Representational thesis. Dretske recognises introspective knowledge to be a given and proceeds by trying to explain how such knowledge is possible without appealing to an inner sense, an idea that seems to conflict with the Thesiss commitment to externalism or so the content of mental states. To this end, he proposes that self-examination is a species of displaced perception. However, he highlights two important differences between introspective knowledge and other forms of displaced perception that seem to suggest that i ntrospective knowledge cannot in any relevant sense be viewed as an instance of displaced perception. As a result, Dretske fails to explain how introspective knowledge is possible and therefore fails to provide a compelling alternative to the inner sense account of introspective knowledge. Introspective knowledge is knowledge the foreland has of itself (p. 39). For example, knowing, when I perceive a yellow box, that I am having a certain mystify (namely an experience of a yellow box) is, for Dretske, an instance of introspective knowledge. This knowledge is not rough the boxs being yellow or indeed about the box at all, it is knowledge about myself, knowledge that I am having a certain experience (on Dretskes view, knowledge that I am representing a, perceived, box as yellow). Introspective knowledge seems to have some queer properties. Natsoulas defines unmatched form of consciousnessreflective consciousnessas a privileged ability to be non-inferentially aware of (all or some of ) unmatcheds current mental occurrences. We seem to have this ability. In express you what I believe I do not have to condition this out (as you might have to) from what I say or do. in that location is nothing from which I infer that A looks longer than B. It just does. (p. 39) Dretske take s the notion that humans have introspective knowledge as a given. His interest in the matter arises when one attempts to explain how we sire by such knowledge and what gives us this first-person authority(p. 40) Dretske wants to reject one possible explanation, namely the idea that introspective knowledge is garnered by the mind perceiving its own workings.