Duration: 01/09/2024- 31/08/2027
Code: PID2023-151949NA-I00
Funded by: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Principal Investigator: Anna Giustina (UV)
Research Team: Virginia Ballesteros (University of Valencia) 
Work Team: Dorothea Debus (University of Erlangen), Matt Duncan Rhode Island College), Martina Fürst (University of Graz), Uriah Kriegel (Rice University), Martine Nida-Rümelin (University of Fribourg), François Recanati (Collège de France), Léa Salje (University of Leeds), Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside), Charles Siewert (Rice University), Maja Spener (University of Birmingham).

SUMARY

The aim of this project is to investigate the importance, the nature, and the applications of introspective self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is an essential component of our existence. It includes knowing what we think, what we feel, what we want, what we value, perhaps what we are. It shapes our presence in the world, our actions and interactions with others, our choices and decisions. There are different ways to achieve self-knowledge—testimony, behavior observation, inference, brain-scanning, etc.—but the most fundamental and ineliminable source of self-knowledge is introspection.
The term “introspection” is used various different ways in philosophy and beyond. For the purposes of this project, it is characterized as our distinctively first-personal way of getting information about our conscious states and experiences (emotions, thoughts, feelings, desires, pains and pleasures, perceptual states, etc.). It is distinctively first-personal in that, unlike other ways of getting information about mental states (visual awareness of facial expressions, behavior observation and inference, verbal report, testimony, brain scanning, etc.), introspection is only available to the subject of these mental states.
Introspection has traditionally been considered as the primary self-knowledge acquisition method, and the privileged one at that. However, at a closer look, the path to self-knowledge appears tangled and full of obstacles. We are often victim of self-deception, biased by expectations, confused and uncertain, or just too careless and inattentive to grasp the fine nuances of our own mind. This has motivated a growing pessimistic stance with respect to introspection: several philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued that introspection—especially naïve introspection—is much less reliable than we think.
On the other hand, though, introspection is the fundamental and indispensable ground of our knowledge of the conscious mind, both in philosophy and in cognitive science—as well as in the self-understanding that is the ground of our own personal flourishing and wellbeing. Facing the skeptical challenge is thus crucial. This project proposes a model of the introspective process that can meet the challenge and pave the way for a more optimistic stance with respect to introspection.
Doing this requires digging into the nature of introspection and articulating a theory of its metaphysical structure that can account both for its fundamental epistemic role and for its reliability. It also requires a theory of the conscious experiences that are known via introspection, as well as a deeper reflection on the nature, phenomenology, and knowledge of the subject of such experiences.
The theory here proposed promises to have important consequences and applications, both theoretical (in the areas of metaphysics and epistemology) and practical (in particular with respect to questions relative to epistemic injustice and clinical contexts).
The project partly builds on the results of the research so far pursued by its members. However, it moves the debate substantially forward, by (i) drawing new developments upon those results, (ii) exploring new applications, and (iii) making new connections between topics that are fecundly investigated together in a unified framework.