Sunday, May 10, 2009

Titchener's Introspective Training Manual

... Chapter 5 of my book in draft Perplexities of Consciousness, is now up on my homepage.

This chapter does not presuppose any particular knowledge of Chapters 1-4 (and Chapter 4 still isn't in circulatable shape, anyway), so if you're curious feel free just to dive in.

Here's a brief abstract:

The unifying theme of this book is people's incompetence in assessing their own stream of experience, even in what would seem to be favorable circumstances. In this chapter I consider the possibility that old-fashioned "introspective training" in Titchener's style might help produce more accurate reports. In particular, I examine Titchener's treatment of auditory "difference tones" heard when a musical interval is played, his treatment of the "flight of colors" in afterimages following exposure to bright white light, and his treatment of subtle visual illusions.
As always, comments welcomed and appreciated, here on this post or my email to my academic address!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

there is a typo at the very end of section ii of chapter 4.

"It explores the promises and pitfalls of introspective training with a concreteness and attention to detail impossible in a journal article or in a book focused on primarily on psychological results."

The word on is repeated.

I would have emailed, but I couldn't figure out if the word "domain" was a use or a mention.

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks!

(BTW, the "at domain-" is a replacement for the "@", intended to put off spambots.)