ITROSPECTION (print and put this in your folder)

(From Latin introspicere, “to look within”), the process of observing the operations of one’s own mind with a view to discovering the laws that govern the mind. In a dualistic philosophy, which divides the natural world (matter, including the human body) from the contents ofconsciousness, introspection is the chief method of psychology. Thus, it was the method of primary importance to many philosophers—including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain—as it was to the 19th-century pioneers ofexperimental psychology, especially Wilhelm Wundt, Oswald Külpe, andEdward Bradford Titchener.

To all these men, the contents of consciousness appeared to be immediate experience: to have an experience was to know that one has it. In this sense, introspection appeared to be self-validating; it could not lie.

Wundt and his disciple Titchener believed that introspection finds in consciousness a dynamic mixture of essentially sensory materials—sensations proper, images, and feelings that closely resemble sensations. Known asclassical introspection, this view remained popular only as long as Titchener continued to expound it. Many other psychologists found different kinds of content in consciousness. The German philosopher Franz Brentano saw consciousness as constituted of both sensory contents and more-impalpable acts.

Introspection generally provides a privileged access to our own mental states, not mediated by other sources of knowledge, so that individual experience of the mind is unique. Introspection can determine any number of mental states including: sensory, bodily, cognitive, emotional and so forth.

Introspection has been a subject of philosophical discussion for thousands of years. The philosopher Plato asked, "…why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?" While introspection is applicable to many facets of philosophical thought it is perhaps best known for its role in epistemology, in this context introspection is often compared with perception, reason, memory, and testimony as a source of knowledge.