Trust your inner voice [updated]

A reader was asking me recently about introspection.  Just as we use “extrospection” to know the external world, we use introspection to gain information about the “internal” world – to get a handle on our emotions; to learn our responses to music and art; to understand and validate subjects like free will – without introspection we’re blundering blindly.  Explained simply, introspection is simple the process by which we become aware of our own conscious experiences.

Basically, introspection is as evidential as any other form of evidence-gathering – it simply requires more honesty to collate and communicate the evidence we’ve gathered. There’s nothing mystical about introspection.  Psychologist Edith Packer explains in this excerpt [pdf] that

    Introspection is a cognitive, intellectual process directed inward, focusing on and identifying the internal processes of one's consciousness.  Just as extrospection requires a focus on the various aspects of the external world, so introspection involves an awareness of and focus on one’s intellectual and emotional life. The requirements of mental health include both—the objective
knowledge of both external and internal reality. . .
    The process of introspection covers wide and varied areas of man’s inner life. It can include an examination of the conscious mind’s efficiency in thinking, the discovery of subconscious connections in making evaluations, the discovery of intermediate or core evaluations, the identification of defense mechanisms, and the discovery and identification of one’s values of
every kind, from fundamental to trivial.

Introspection is not a wholly internal process. It is inward directed, focussing on our reactions outward. As Ayn Rand explains, it is

a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated.

Introspection is not a “continuous defensive observation of one's behavior and feelings
(usually of anxiety) in anticipation of real or imagined disapproval.” It is not a neurotically self-conscious internal focus which “amounts to asking ‘How am I doing?’ during  all of one's interactions with other people.”  As Packer explains, introspection instead seeks answers to the questions of "What am I doing?" and "Why am I doing it?"

Getting to know our own emotions is one primary goal of healthy introspection.  Emotions are not causeless, however the failure to identify the nature and causes of our emotions can make them seem so.  Suppose then that we want to understand our emotions, and we’re ready to introspect. How do we go about it?  Edith Packer offers six steps to follow:

1. Identify the type of emotion or emotions which you are experiencing.
2. Identify the universal evaluation underlying each of those emotions.
3. Identify the personal evaluations underlying each of those emotions—the particular form in which you hold the universal evaluation.
4. Judge the correctness of the underlying evaluations, both universal and personal, against the facts.
5. If the evaluations underlying the emotions are incorrect, identify the reasons for making them.
6. Consciously reinforce correct evaluations, in order to correct automated inappropriate thinking methods stemming from your psychological problems.

Emotions are our rewards for living.  Honest introspection does more than just give us evidence for philosophical treatises, it does more than just refute the claims of behaviorists and positivists: by giving us a handle on our emotional life and what causes it, it helps us “tune up” the faculty by which we are rewarded for living well.  As Tom Lahti explains at the Focus Foundry blog, “introspection is the primary psychological tool by which man improves his character, integrates his knowledge of the world around him, and increases his own happiness.”

Why wouldn’t you want to do that well?

UPDATE:  Reader “Bez” recommends what look to be two interesting books along these lines by neurologist Antonio Damasio: Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, and Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain . Anyone know any more about these?

And of course there’s Edith Packer’s ‘Art of Introspection’ and other work, which you can get hold of here.