Introspection and First-Person Thought

This chapter focuses on the relationship between introspection—the special way we each have of knowing about our own minds and no one else's—and first-person thought—the special way we each have of thinking about ourselves and no one else. It outlines and, to some extent, evaluates three main models of first-person thought, focusing on what each says about the relationship between it and introspection. The phenomenal concept model says that when a subject introspects, she is acquainted with the thing that she is, and this relationship of acquaintance all on its own fixes the reference of her first-person thought. The demonstrative concept model says that introspection is just one kind of acquaintance with the self, but there are others (e.g. bodily proprioception) and these play the same kind of reference-fixing role that introspection does. The token-reflexive rule denies that introspection plays any role in fixing the reference of first-person thought.