it is the law that makes you free. — alcontali

While that conforms to general consensus, nevertheless, with respect to Kantian deontology, it is freedom that makes one lawful.
————

People can decide if they will keep religious law or not. If they do, it will set them free. — alcontali

Here though, again with respect to Kantian deontology, while it is true people can decide on a (moral) law, they are immediately obligated by that law, the true test of moral constitution. I’m not sure how an obligation would set them free, however. Maybe you mean free from the trials and tribulations of having to wonder about what to do next?

I explained my rejection of the very idea of introspection primarily because it is only rationality anyway, and secondary to that, it is redundant to understanding.

I know I reject it because I cognize something else as having greater logical justification, re: understanding. None of that tells me introspection is worthless in and of itself, but only that I am, as a stand-alone rational entity, no better off with it than without it.

It being the very idea of introspection. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

If moral philosophy made sense, it would name its basic assumptions. — alcontali

“...We have finally reduced the definite conception of morality to the idea of freedom. This latter, however, we could not prove to be actually a property of ourselves or of human nature; only we saw that it must be presupposed if we would conceive a being as rational and conscious of its causality in respect of its actions, i.e., as endowed with a will; and so we find that on just the same grounds we must ascribe to every being endowed with reason and will this attribute of determining itself to action under the idea of its freedom....”
(Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785, from Abbott, 1895)

There ya go....a basic assumption, and a moral philosophy based on it.

TA-DAAAA!!!!

Nahhhh....I got respect enough for your comments here to never mock them. I’m partly agreeing, insofar as I acknowledge your belief in introspection, but at the same time, I’m rejecting the very idea of it.

Fine. No problem. I shall have to trust your belief in the explanatory power of anthropology and empirical psychology. But seriously, I do understand how introspection as a mental exercise holds so much attraction.

Philosophy is not based on statistics or knowledge, it's based on interpretations. How we interpret has everything to do with us and what kind of person we are, what kind of life we've lived and are living. What we're paying attention to and what answers we've come to in the past. — Judaka

Pretty much what I’ve been saying all along. One’s personal philosophy manifests as the summation of his experience in relation to his conscience. One cannot NOT have opinions, what you label as interpretations, which are merely the cognitive biases and prejudices of his intrinsic subjectivity, whether from the world’s affect on him empirically, or his affect on the world morally. Given this extant condition, and given its necessary employment every moment of conscious awareness, there is simply no need for superfluous introspection.

If no one existed in sec 1, how would they do anything in sec 1?

Doesn’t matter. You’re perfectly entitled to think what you like, interpret Kant any way you wish.

Kantian moral philosophy relates to present rational beings endowed with a will, and nothing else.

“.... rational beings, on the contrary, are called persons....”

End of story.

It is a source of information about how you are and how people are. — Judaka

Introspection is a source of information that shows.....
.....how I am, absolutely:
.....how other people are, I can’t accept. Well, introspection show them how they are, but it won’t show me how they are.

As an addition, I can say understanding is a source of information that shows me how I am. Understanding is a faculty that exists necessarily, so if I gain something from that which already exists, why do I need to invent a supplemental faculty that does the same thing? Does’t everyone generally understand himself? And even if he doesn’t in some case, wouldn’t he need to come to some understanding, even if he drew his information from introspection?

Redundancy is usually a good thing in physical systems, but not so much in rational systems.

Thanks, and, don’t be too sorry; I can get.....er.....obscure, shall we say?

I don’t care about any of this. It is absurd that one would consider that Kant thinks procreation to be an immoral act, and one who uses Kant to justify his ignorance is even worse than absurd.

“....It might deserve to be considered whether pure philosophy in all its parts does not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it would not be better for the whole business of science if those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed in all sorts of proportions unknown to themselves, and who call themselves independent thinkers, giving the name of minute philosophers to those who apply themselves to the rational part only-if these, I say, were warned not to carry on two employments together which differ widely in the treatment they demand, for each of which perhaps a special talent is required, and the combination of which in one person only produces bunglers....”

Close enough.

Which presupposes you think that Kant thinks no one should procreate. I mean, if it’s immoral, right?

And how can a thing with no will be a member of the kingdom of ends? How would you know what the benefit is to a merely possible person? And who would formulate an imperative based on a universal law that obliterates the species?

All I wanted to show was Kant wouldn’t consider the act of procreation, in and of itself, as immoral.

The words we are using seem to mean different things to each of us. — T Clark

LOL. Yeah....you shoulda seen all the stuff I backspaced out on “perception”.

Thanks for the interesting foray into the sublime.

Peace.

That is non-rational. — T Clark

Ehhhh....maybe, maybe not. Philosophically, reason is just skipping all the steps from which the experience arose, and bringing the end result back into your attention. If you’d never ever had a bowl of chowder, or anything like it, you wouldn’t have any of those feelings to draw from, but you could still manufacture them from imagination.

On the other hand, there is an explanation over and above rationality. It states that feelings are not cognitions, hence are not governed by the logical laws or rules for it. Pain or pleasure, which are what all feelings reduce to, are not judged as experience is judged. So it is not philosophically incorrect to say that bowl of chowder illicited certain feelings, which are not themselves governed by rationality, so could be called non-rational in the strictest sense.

Can you give an example of something the knowledge of which is impossible? — T Clark

Not a chance. The proposition only defines a negative logical boundary.
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that's exactly what it is. Imagination. — T Clark

It being introspection. Therein lay the whole problem. Imagination, and by default, introspection, has no content of its own. A posteriori, perception has the content of real objects; sensibility has the content of appearance; intuition has the content of representation; understanding has the content of conceptions; cognition has the content of judgement; experience has the content of knowledge. A priori, reason has the content of logic; logic has the content of law. Imagination imports its content from any of those, which makes explicit the possibility that such content does not belong to it, hence the assertion it has no certain ground.

Which reverts right back to the original difficulty. We do introspect, but what are we really doing when we introspect? If we introspect from the arena that lacks experience, we are merely imagining; if we introspect from the arena that has experience, we are merely reviewing. Not drawing the line between them, is where the conventional meaning of introspection gets bogged down.
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I can observe myself imagining ...... — T Clark

Careful, there, my friend. Getting awful close to positing the dreaded homunculus. Cartesian theater, even. If I tell Daniel D. he’ll come for you tout de suite. How many observers you got between your ears anyway? You already got two. How do they ever get along with each other?

"Reason" is no more a reification of an abstract thing than "digestion" is a reification of the process my digestive system uses to break down food for use in my body. — T Clark

I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

It is possible to know, or at least experience, how you know what you know. — T Clark

Of course, but possibility can only be shown theoretically. It is impossible for any theory to attain to an empirical proof. We don’t KNOW how we think. We don’t even KNOW if it’s thinking we’re doing. We just call it that because we don’t know what it really is, and just like any good theory, all it has to do is be internally consistent and non-contradictory with itself, which in turn can serve as no more than a mere logical justification.
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You share your subjectivity with people all the time. — T Clark

Conventionally speaking, yes. Or so it would seem. But in fact, when you read my words, you relate them to your understanding of them. The very best you can do with that relation, is grant a commonality between what I meant when I wrote them and what they mean when you read them. There is nothing whatsoever given by the words you read that categorically and necessarily represents what I think, from the simple fact that two separate and distinct subjectivities are responsible for all meanings in general.

That’s why I say, just because we attempt to understand each other, does not thereby give me the right to assert that what you want me to see perfectly represents what you think.

Doesn’t matter if I agree with your terminology or not. Even so, if you don’t think reason, consciousness, plays any part in the perception of your internal states, first, what part do they play other than that, and second, what does play a part in the perception of your internal states.

Absolutely.

Just try introspecting about something the knowledge of which is impossible. Can’t be done.

Try introspecting about something the knowledge of which is possible, but you have no experience with it. That can be done, but it is no different than imagining, and imagining has no certain ground anywhere, which makes explicit such introspection has no certain ground, and anything of uncertain ground has no business defining a subjective paradigm, which is what introspection is supposed to do.

Introspection with meaning can only arise from that which has its ground in either experience or possible experience. Which, coincidentally enough, is exactly the same conditions required for knowledge itself. It’s a short hop from that, to the reality that introspection only attains its meaning from one’s own knowledge.

Theoretically.......

Since I am reifying knowledge. — Coben

Yes, I do that as well, after a fashion. I hold that knowledge is a condition of (the intellect), not an abstraction for (something to be gained).

Reason, too. Reason the verb is the reification of the abstract thing we do; reason the noun is the reification of the abstract thing describing how it is being done.

Reification is dangerous, nonetheless. Sometimes necessary for communication of ideas, sometimes self-contradictory. But we all do it, sooner or later, in other than the more mundane circumstances.

I can see all that. I understand people think that way. Me...I keep my anthropology and empirical psychology away from my epistemological philosophy. If I don’t know how I know what I know, I have no ground for apodeictic judgements whatsoever with respect to anyone else.

If something worked for you or was true for you then it's probably going to work for others or be true for others too. — Judaka

Then why are we not all the same?

I have no right to suppose anything of the sort, within the context of internal musings. Subjectivity is private, by definition, hence entirely inaccessible to any other subjectivity. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to claim manifestations of subjectivity in others, is grounded in, or predicated on, my own, to whit, I have witnessed a guy accidentally hit himself with a hammer, in the course of events under which a hammer would normally be used, and continue on as if it never happened.

We’ve never communicated before, so just let me say....I work from the point/counterpoint dialectical method. I’m not ever saying you’re wrong, unless sufficient proof should be objectively available for it, but only that from another perspective, things look different.

I am not sure that "reason" is the right word here. — Bitter Crank

I know, huh? Leave it to a human to confuse himself. It’s not really his fault though; Mother Nature endowed him with reason, and it is reason he must use to reason about himself. The epitome of circularity, and for which he must be careful to avoid as best he can. But ultimately, he won’t be able to remove himself from it entirely.

The contents of your mind include the capacity to look at and reflect on the contents of your mind. — Bitter Crank

Technically true, yes. A possible mitigation of reason’s intrinsic circularity is to say there is a content of the mind that looks at and reflects on the remaining content of the mind, given from the certainty that normative rationality has but one internal observer. From there.......it’s off to the metaphysical races.

The foundation proper of Kantian deontology has to do primarily with the transcendental freedom of the will necessarily, the conditional lawful moral action itself as secondary to it.

1.) law can have no exception whatsoever, otherwise it be merely a rule;
1A.) every human is endowed with a will, therefore every human is a moral agent;

2.) if procreation were deemed an immoral act, the imperative corresponding to it for any moral agent must be as if it were in accordance with a universal law for all moral agents;
3.) the universal law must be that no moral agent shall make the immoral procreatic act;
4.) that no moral agent, re: no human, shall make the procreatic act leads necessarily to the extinction of the human species;
5.) it is contradictory that the extinction of the human species shall follow from a universal law;
6.) it cannot be in accordance with a contradiction that cessation of the act of procreation be a moral imperative;
7.) the procreatic act, in and of itself, cannot be deemed immoral.

Can introspection as a process lead to knowledge? that makes sense to me. — Coben

Ok. I would say introspection as a process leads to understanding of some knowledge we already have.
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Is using introspection as a source of information epistemologically justified? — Coben

Sure, I would go along with that. Because it is introspection, the information being sourced is already present in the mind, or in consciousness, or in experience, however you want to look at it. As such, it belongs to the subject, justifies any of those as a source, and information extant in any of those is knowledge, thus justifies the source epistemologically.

Which supports the position that introspection is not knowledge, just as rationality is not knowledge. If introspection or rationality is a process, but knowledge is the ends of either process, or the justification for either process, then knowledge cannot be either process itself.

Apparently you have different experiences. Why is that a problem? — T Clark

Rest assured it is not. Better not be; different experiences are all that’s available to us as different humans.
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I assume you have been aware of your own mental life. I don't see how that is different from being aware of the dog sitting on my lawn. They both have come to your attention by way of mental processes. — T Clark

All that’s true, there’s no difference in the being of aware per se, as ends, but the being of aware is not what we talking about. We’re talking about the examination of what we are aware of. Whether we’re examining the contents of our own minds via introspection or examining the content of our knowledge by reason, whatever those contents are that we are aware of, are already presupposed as given. The negation of which is impossible, or at least absurd, for otherwise we’d be attempting the examination of something that isn’t there.

The difference in the mode of being aware of these respective contents, as the means by which we arrive at them, is quite marked. The dog on your lawn comes to your attention by sensibility; the contents of your mind come to your attention by reason alone, no matter that they were put there beforehand by sensibility, or by sheer imagination.
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It seems your experience is different than mine. — T Clark

Again, that is true, but it isn’t the issue at hand; our philosophies are different, which we use to explain the relative differences in experience. Or, more accurately, the affects of them on our relative mentalities.

It’s all good. Philosophy never was about being more right than the other guy.

It is interesting, and I appreciate exposure to it.

The objections are strictly from a epistemological philosophy, not a psychological character evaluation.

From Zeno’s shot arrow that doesn’t fly, to Russell’s barber shaving himself, logical paradoxes have been the bane to the dignity of philosophy for millennia.

As if reason didn’t already have the means to trick us on its own, from which we try to abstain, we turn right around and consciously use it to purposely trick ourselves.

In the words of my ol’ buddy Father Guido Sarducci, what a farging waste of brain cells.

First you say......

Can one reason from observation independent of introspection? Yes, I think we can. — T Clark

....then you say.....

Introspection is a mode of observation — T Clark

Which seems to say you think we can reason from observation independent of a mode of observation. Which is a perfect example of why I insist (to myself, to be sure) on assigning observation to the empirical domain alone.

If you’d said you think we can reason from observation independent of introspection, I wouldn’t object. But saying introspection is a mode of observation makes the correctness of that proposition quite suspect.

Dunno.....maybe it’s just me exercising overly-critical thinking. I do that a lot, I must say.

Introspection is a mode of observation — T Clark

Gonna have to object to that; I can safely say I’ve never seen myself think. I can imagine myself sitting on a rock, appearing to ponder this or that, but nothing concerning the this or that can arise from it, that isn’t actually me doing it.

Truth be told, I don’t know how to respond to the idea that observation has something to do with that which is not of the senses, without invoking the absurdity of a categorical error. This is not to reject the idea out of hand, but merely to object to it, as the means to alleviate possible self-contradictions. If I can say I observe myself with respect to something as abstract as objects of thought, I have no means to claim any certainty with respect to objects of the world I perceive by sight.
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Or do you think observation is a rational process? — T Clark

No, observation proper, in and of itself, is not a rational process, but everything consequential to the mere appearances given from observation, certainly is. Cognitive neuroscience aside, of course.
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First you observe, then you think about what you've seen. — T Clark

Correct. A posteriori, anyway. One can still think without observing anything, a priori. Which supports the disassociation of observation from introspection, for introspection is always a priori.

I admit, despite all that, it is much easier to think of introspection as observing the self.

I think reasoning/rationality includes an attempt to put assertions in a logical arrangement with conclusions. — Coben

Absolutely.

I don't think I am always doing that when I introspect. — Coben

I have to grant that because I can’t argue otherwise. At the very least, I might say you’re not putting assertions in logical arrangement because it’s already been done, and introspection of this nature is merely a review. But if your dialectical co-respondent happened to be a cognitive reductionist.......

And if this be the case, then, regarding the OP, introspection is not a valid type of knowledge, for a review presupposes the arrangement wherein the knowledge actually resides.

Introspection involves rationality, for sure, it's rationality that doesn't necessarily involve introspection. — Judaka

Agreed, to a point. Rationality doesn’t necessarily involve introspection. I think it important to reduce the idea one step further, insofar as when a thinking subject examines his feelings, he is the less using his rationality and the more using his introspection. This is because we are allowed a much narrower field of judgement with respect to empirical experience, which are always cognitions, than we are with judgements with respect to aesthetics, which are not. In other words, it is much harder to explain the reasons we are affected by an emotion, than it is to explain the reasons we are affected by, say, a building.
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Rationality without introspection becomes something like ungrounded theorycrafting when it comes to understanding people and the systems that involve people. — Judaka

While I grant fallacious speculation, or ungrounded theorycrafting, isn’t such a good thing, I’m not sure how personal introspection relates to a theory regarding people and systems that involve people, usually considered the purview of ethics. Interpretations of the Golden Rule, on the other hand, suggests one should have foreknowledge of himself in order to know how to treat others, which presupposes introspection, but is hardly theoretical. But you’re correct, in that I got no business sitting here thinking up an ethical theory on how everybody else should act predicated solely on how I myself act.

Hopefully I didn’t misunderstand what you’re trying to say.

Careful what you wish for. I’m retired and pretty lazy to boot, so I got all kinds of time to occupy myself with this stuff.

We are always following intuitive feelings about what we are suggesting is logical. — Coben

Exactly right. Technically, that procedure is called judgement, but what judgement is, is in effect just what you say.

I think the words introspection and rationality are useful and each focus on different aspects of mind and its processes. — Coben

Different aspects, yes; different processes, not so much. Different processes implies different methodologies. If one methodology is established as rationality, in which a subject concerns himself with an object. Current thinking holds that introspection is the case wherein a self thinks about itself, which is the same as a thing being simultaneously both subject and object. The only logical way around this catastrophic violation of the Law of Identity, is to re-phrase introspection as that wherein a subject thinks about his thoughts. Which gets us right back to rationality, where the self as subject thinks about the contents of itself as objects, but not itself as an object.
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One can just notice the contents of our minds. — Coben

But is mere noticing really an introspective procedure? Surely there’s a given relational hierarchy between noticing the mind has content, which can have only one of two possible conclusions, as opposed to noticing the contents of the mind, which can have a multiplicity of conclusions. Regardless, a relational paradigm must have taken place, and all relations absolutely arise from the thought of them.
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I would say that introspection is more independent of rationality then rationality is independent of introspection. — Coben

From the directly above, I would counter with......

The theorem:
Introspection is more a mode, or kind, of rationality, rather than a separation from it.

The proof:
Noticing anything at all presupposes the antecedent of not noticing. In this view, noticing itself is neither rationality nor introspection, because as yet nothing has been noticed, noticing so far being nothing but a succession in time. As soon as noticing incorporates, say, the content of our minds, a relation over and above simply a relation in time, becomes immediate, which requires rationality in order to distinguish the act (subject = notice) from what is being acted upon (object = content).

Because I’ve already instantiated rationality in order to grant noticing the content of mind in the first place, I can either leave it at that, or I can call that rationality in what I just did, the introspection in what I am enabled to do because of it. But I cannot call it introspection first, hence independent of rationality, for I would then have no (gasp!!) concrete idea of what I’m introspecting about.

The conclusion:
Introspection examines relations; rationality gives the relations introspection examines.
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All that to say this.....

Sit and mull with eyes closed. Without trying to draw a conclusion or mount an argument or analyze. — Coben

.......is absolutely the way the average human seems to do things. Daydreaming. Flights of fancy. That is what we think introspection to be, yes. Without reasoning or self-contained argument. I submit this is not what’s happening at all. Keyword: mull. To mull is to examine relations. And we’re right back where we started.

Now.....wasn’t that fun???

All good; nothing in there I would argue against, even if there are a plethora of finer points I might quibble over. And even if I did, nothing I would say would necessarily contradict what you’re saying. Just the perils of cognitive reductionism run amok, to be sure.

Mmmm....yeah, me too. Wait. Are you old too?!?!? Bet I got you beat: my first new car was actually made in Detroit, and had fins!!!

Maybe introspection and rationality aren’t categorically distinct. Just, you know, kindasorta distinct.

Thing is, about being old and all....I already have answers to both those questions. But it seems my answers aren’t in accord with current thinking. So because I got two questions rather than an answer to my one, I haven’t learned anything.

But thanks anyway, for getting back.