Introspection and Belief

Abstract

Introspection is necessary for knowing what conscious mental events a person has in his or her mind. This is all the feeling theory of belief asks it to do. Denying or neglecting this is one source of eliminativism. The explanations we offer for our own thoughts, emotions, preferences, choices, beliefs, desires, motives, statements, and actions, which seem to come from introspection, are unreliable. Introspection also gives us a set of potent intuitions, which include some of philosophy’s most intransigent problems — that time flows, that mind and body are dual, that mental events are immaterial, and the intuition on which this book depends, the intuition that conscious mental events cause behaviour. The chapter ends with a comment on the uniqueness of mental events, and their difference from a computer output.

Keywords: Belief, Introspection, Intuition.

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