Abstract

"Introspection" in its broad sense (Shoemaker, Armstrong) is each non-inferential access a person has to his/her own current mental states and events. It includes both introspection as a conscious act and introspection as pre-introspective awareness. "Introspection" in its narrow sense (Ryle, Dretske, Dennett) excludes pre-intro-spective awareness as not self-sufficient kind of access and part of some other conscious act. Introspection as a self-sufficient conscious act can be explained as second-order thought or reduced to third person knowledge but pre-introspective awareness can not (it is left as a mystery). Author claims that either pre-introspective awareness deserves the name "experience" and in source of special first-person knowledge (even if it is part of other sources of knowing and can be brought to consciousness only by proper introspection), either introspection as an act is a kind of experience and source of knowledge (sense experience is also some very fast interpretation of stimuli). Both pre-introspective awareness and proper introspection are kinds of experience if experience equals direct acquaintance, without any inference and stages. "Perception" can be left for sense perception of external objects. The result of introspection are not incorrigible but persons have "privileged access" to their own thoughts