Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This is Prof. Matt McCormick's lecture for Philosophy of Mind on Nisbett and deCamp Wilson's paper, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. We consider some of the empirical evidence that Cartesian introspectionism is wrong. Human subjects are often unaware of what they believe, why they believe, what caused them to change their minds, or even that they changed their minds. We don't appear to have the sort of transparent, accurate, reliable access to our own thoughts that Descartes presumed.
This is Prof. Matt McCormick's lecture for Philosophy of Mind on Nisbett and deCamp Wilson's paper, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes. We consider some of the empirical evidence that Cartesian introspectionism is wrong. Human subjects are often unaware of what they believe, why they believe, what caused them to change their minds, or even that they changed their minds. We don't appear to have the sort of transparent, accurate, reliable access to our own thoughts that Descartes presumed.










