Commentary: Can Inner Experience Be Apprehended in High Fidelity? Examining Brain Activation and Experience from Multiple Perspectives

Hurlburt et al. (2017) argue that they can potentially produce high-fidelity apprehensions of pristine inner experience that are radically non-subjective. In so doing, they claim that inner experience is an important topic and, contrary to almost unanimous scientific consensus, a method of introspection may be reliably used to directly apprehend it. In this and related articles (e.g., Hurlburt and Heavey, 2001; Heavy and Hurlburt, 2008), Hurlburt et al. reverse a general trend in psychology over the past 100 years toward studying behavior and away from studying subjective experience. In this commentary, I offer a logical and explicitly behavioristic (i.e., Skinnerian) critique of some of Hurlburt et al.'s points. By " pristine experience, " Hurlburt et al. mean phenomena (e.g., thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, etc.) that at a given moment appear directly " before the footlights of consciousness, " to use William James' words, which I take to mean when individuals become aware of the experience. Notwithstanding the problems inherent in defining the terms " thoughts, " " feelings, " " sensations, " and " perceptions, " what does it mean to become aware of something? There are likely many phenomena that occur when people speak of " awareness " or " consciousness. " For example, we speak of " consciousness " when organisms are awake, when they sense the environment, and when they talk about the environment and themselves (see Schlinger, 2008). The latter usage of " conscious " or " aware " seems most relevant in critiquing the concept of pristine experience. Likewise, what does it mean to say that someone " observes " or " apprehends " inner experience? The person is clearly not seeing or hearing the experience. We typically say that people " observe " inner experience when they talk (to themselves) about the experience. On this view, both observing and being aware of the experience are evidenced by the same behavior—talking about it. If by " observe " or " apprehend " we mean talking to oneself, then on the analogy of the observer effect in physics it may not be possible to separate the act of observing the inner experience from the actual experience. Finally, what do we mean by " inner experience " ? The term obviously refers to something private. Hurlburt et al. offer no operational definitions of these terms and, without knowing exactly what they are referring to, we must be …