Books
The Landscape of Introspection: What Forms Could Introspective Systems Take?
£19.95
We can introspect. We can look inwards, as it were, at our own minds and represent what is occurring there. Philosophers and psychologists have speculated about how we do this, but there has been little exploration of the wider theoretical landscape in the area. Could other beings, such as non-human animals and artificial intelligences, introspect too? What forms might their introspection take? Do some humans introspect in nonstandard ways, and can humans develop new introspective powers through techniques such as meditation?
This book, a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, explores this neglected landscape. It opens with a target article by the editors, which proposes an ambitious research programme on possible forms of introspection and provides maps and conceptual tools to get the project under way. This is followed by fifteen commentaries from leading philosophers and cognitive scientists. Topics discussed include the experimental study of introspection, introspection in animals, LLMs, and group minds, and the effects on introspection of meditation and certain psychiatric conditions. The volume concludes with a reply by the editors, which revises and extends their original proposal.
The Landscape of Introspection offers an informed, contemporary, and challenging view of what introspection is – and could be.
PUBLICATION DATE 1st APRIL 2025
Paperback
275 pp.
£19.95
We can introspect. We can look inwards, as it were, at our own minds and represent what is occurring there. Philosophers and psychologists have speculated about how we do this, but there has been little exploration of the wider theoretical landscape in the area. Could other beings, such as non-human animals and artificial intelligences, introspect too? What forms might their introspection take? Do some humans introspect in nonstandard ways, and can humans develop new introspective powers through techniques such as meditation?
This book, a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, explores this neglected landscape. It opens with a target article by the editors, which proposes an ambitious research programme on possible forms of introspection and provides maps and conceptual tools to get the project under way. This is followed by fifteen commentaries from leading philosophers and cognitive scientists. Topics discussed include the experimental study of introspection, introspection in animals, LLMs, and group minds, and the effects on introspection of meditation and certain psychiatric conditions. The volume concludes with a reply by the editors, which revises and extends their original proposal.
The Landscape of Introspection offers an informed, contemporary, and challenging view of what introspection is – and could be.
Axel Cleeremans, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Université libre de Bruxelles –
“In this lively volume, introspection—the human capacity to represent one’s own mental states as objects of further representation—is argued to be neither exclusively human nor necessarily conceptual. Instead, in asking what introspection could be, Frankish and Kammerer fathom a vast space of possible introspection devices, spanning from humans and animals to artificial intelligence. Their exploration is enriched by 15 interdisciplinary commentaries that collectively invite us to profoundly rethink what it means to introspect.”
Jorge Morales, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Philosophy, Northeastern University –
“Kammerer and Frankish introduce a novel programmatic approach to studying actual and possible introspective systems, offering tools to evaluate theories about the self-reflecting minds of humans, non-human animals, artificial intelligence, and even entities yet to be discovered or created. Their ambitious conceptual framework comes to life through carefully curated companion articles by leading researchers in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. These contributions not only demonstrate the framework’s potential but also illustrate how it can be tested and further developed in rich theoretical and empirical directions.”