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Nov 2007
ISBN 0262083663
326 pp.
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Describing Inner Experience?
Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel

Can conscious experience be described accurately? Can we give reliable accounts of our sensory experiences and pains, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotions? The question is central not only to our humanistic understanding of who we are but also to the burgeoning scientific field of consciousness studies. The two authors of Describing Inner Experience? disagree on the answer: Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist, argues that improved methods of introspective reporting make accurate accounts of inner experience possible; Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher, believes that any introspective reporting is inevitably prone to error. In this book the two discuss to what extent it is possible to describe our inner experience accurately.

Table of Contents
 Contents
 Preface
I Proponent Meets Skeptic
1 Introduction
2 Can There Be a Satisfactory Introspective Method? (Hurlburt)
3 Descartes Inverted (Schwitzgebel)
II Interviews
4 The First Sampling Day
5 The Second Sampling Day
6 The Third Sampling Day
7 The Fourth Sampling Day
8 The Fifth Sampling Day
9 The Sixth Sampling Day
III Reflections
10 Eric's Reflections (Schwitzgebel)
11 Russ's Reflections (Hurlburt)
12 Eric's Response to Russ, and Some Parting Thoughts (Schwitzgebel)
 Appendix A: Lists of Boxes and Threads
 Appendix B: Summaries of Beeps
 References
 Index
 
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