Abstract

This chapter focuses on the idea that you can know by introspection not only that you are in a conscious state, but why you are, that is, what inferences or transitions you perform in arriving at it. Nisbett and Wilson argued empirically for a negative answer to this question. The chapter defends an interpretation of their observation on which it entails that most inferences are unconscious, and so are unavailable to introspection. It argues that the rationalist account may accommodate this by assuming that introspectable inferences are conscious, when they are, in a higher-order sense—an assumption consistent with the view that conscious inferences are unusual.