THE ADEQUACY OF INTROSPECTION. We assume that there are different valid domains of inquiry. We would like intersubjective, subjective & spiritual experience to take their place alongside material experiences. But we must demand more of our self-reporting into to raise it to the degree of the external sciences. We also know that there are elements of our psychological experience that are hidden from ordinary consciousness. They may be neurotic patterns, they be archetypes, they may be our participation in the ideological assumptions of our society. We contain systems and structures that we may not be able to easily inspect or report upon. That much is clear. However the situation is even worse. Our direct inspection of ordinary consciousness is slippery and precarious. How good is our inner vision? How clear, reliable, nuanced is it? How well do we interpret what we find? Are the words and labels that feel true... justified? And when we speak about them can we say what we really mean? We need to trust some information about the interior -- but are people adequate self-observers & self-reporters? Are we not often happy with technically inaccurate descriptions? Do we not reserve the right to speak imaginatively, irrationally and vaguely about our interiors? It is one thing to say that the feeling of truth is a valid subjective experience. But who can be trusted to know which of their feelings feels true -- and under what conditions? It seems obvious... but obviousness is not enough to build a science. The non-integration and public skepticism toward spirituality and interiority in modern society is -- to a large degree -- the fault of people who accept inadequate, primitive, traditional and clumsy ways of retrieving internal information. As developmental thinkers we might frame the problem differently: What forms of introspective are appropriate to which levels of society & cognition? For example -- the use of popular traditional concepts (orthodoxy) to describe our thoughts, feelings and intuitions may be perfectly valid at the orthodox stage of cultural development. But not at subsequent levels. At an unknown higher stage we might require a tight correlation between intricate brain scan data and rigorously nuanced, non-contradictory, deeply experienced self-observers who agree on a scientific terminology for the sub-components and energetic connections of subjective phenomenology. Any thoughts (sic)?
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:27:46 +0000
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