"So often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events. And in today already walks tomorrow." - Coleridge. By such words are we reminded to review the past, evaluate the present, and to contemplate the future. This South Carolina is doing in celebrating her three-hundredth birthday. It is altogether fitting that the State Board of Health should pause in introspection. We salute those who have preceded us and left to us a heritage rich in public health accomplishments. The next century will not be an easy one. This is the penalty that must be exacted if we are to meet the tremendous challenge of a world involved in explosive scientific growth, social change, and health needs. The dedication of South Carolinians to progress in past centuries is a source of pride and inspiration as we plan for the future -- for "in today already walks tomorrow." - E. Kenneth Aycock, State Health Officer - p. 3.

In Introspection, Peter Kaufman, changes focus and starts out by giving readers a major volume of his poetry concerning the ever changing variety of communication, thinking and philosophy, of all kinds, in human life today; included is the assistance of an exceptional artist who again adds her illustrative talent to the printed word. C P Snow, a great writer, wrote in Th e Realist, Preface, 1978, ----a writers life is not just connected with his work; it cannot be separated from his life. Introspection illustrates Snows thoughts dramatically.

Sydney Shoemaker is one of the most influential philosophers currently writing on philosophy of mind and metaphysics. The essays in this collection deal with the way in which we know our own minds, and with the nature of those mental states of which we have our most direct conscious awareness. Professor Shoemaker opposes the 'inner sense' conception of introspective self-knowledge. He defends the view that perceptual and sensory states have non-representational features - 'qualia' - that determine what it is like to have them. Amongst the other topics covered are the unity of consciousness, and the idea that the 'first-person perspective' gives a privileged route to philosophical understanding of the nature of mind. This major collection is sure to prove invaluable to all advanced students of the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

The topic of introspection stands at the interface between questions in epistemology about the nature of self-knowledge and questions in the philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness. What is the nature of introspection such that it provides us with a distinctive way of knowing about our own conscious mental states? And what is the nature of consciousness such that we can know about our own conscious mental states by introspection? How should we understand the relationship between consciousness and introspective self-knowledge? Should we explain consciousness in terms of introspective self-knowledge or vice versa? Until recently, questions in epistemology and the philosophy of mind were pursued largely in isolation from one another. This volume aims to integrate these two lines of research by bringing together fourteen new essays and one reprinted essay on the relationship between introspection, self-knowledge, and consciousness.

Offering a pluralist framework for understanding the nature, scope, and limits of self-knowledge from the first-person perspective, Rethinking Introspection argues that, contrary to common misconceptions, introspection does not operate through inner perception but rather develops out of a diverse array of mental states and cognitive processes.

The topic of introspection stands at the interface between questions in epistemology about the nature of self-knowledge and questions in the philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness. What is the nature of introspection such that it provides us with a distinctive way of knowing about our own conscious mental states? And what is the nature of consciousness such that we can know about our own conscious mental states by introspection? How should we understand the relationship between consciousness and introspective self-knowledge? Should we explain consciousness in terms of introspective self-knowledge or vice versa? Until recently, questions in epistemology and the philosophy of mind were pursued largely in isolation from one another. This volume aims to integrate these two lines of research by bringing together fourteen new essays and one reprinted essay on the relationship between introspection, self-knowledge, and consciousness.

What is introspection? Does introspection deliver theoretically valuable information about the mind? There is a long history in philosophy and psychology of using introspection to gather data about the mind. Introspection is often held to constitute our best and only direct access to consciousness and hence to be essential to any investigation of the conscious mind. Equally longstanding and widespread, however, are critical concerns that introspection is highly susceptible to interference, which, together with its privacy, renders it unreliable as a source of data about the mind. Maja Spener offers an understanding of introspection that clarifies its epistemic importance in theorising about the mind. In particular, seemingly overwhelming concerns about the reliability of introspection are transformed into something methodologically more tractable. Central to the approach put forward in the book is the distinction between introspection as inquiry and introspection as mental capacity - between introspective method and introspective access. The first part of the book articulates, defends, and applies a novel framework for the systematic assessment of the potential and limitations of introspective methods. The framework is historically motivated, drawing on insights from key figures in early scientific psychology (especially Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Georg Elias Müller) whose used and discussed introspective methods extensively. The second part of the book develops a composite pluralism about introspective access, showing how different modes of introspective access fit into the common sense and scientific pictures of our minds. Key to this pluralist account is the explanatory role introspection plays in our agency.