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Friday, 11 March 2016



Introspection is a term used imprecisely for a number of different activities. In one of them there is a shift of objective attention from the world outside as given by outward directed senses, to the world inside as given by the senses directed towards the inside of the body. Sight and hearing are the dominant outward directed senses, while proprioception, which is akin to touch, and taste are the dominant inner feelings. The world inside the body is taken, however, to be a kind of space, related to but not identical with the perceived body, as an object in the outer world. The distinction of outer and inner is taken for granted, but also acknowledged as one of the early milestone achievements of the embodied mind; it is not regarded as an absolute distinction, it is naturalised not natural. It is possible to withdraw attention almost entirely, and temporarily, from the outer world and absorb it into the inner world, causing the microcosm to be mapped into all of virtual space. This begins with the feeling of the body but the feelings give rise to their own kinds of thoughts, thoughts which may have nothing to do with the body but which are expressed through its feelings the way that a lyric is expressed through the music of a song. Another sense of introspection is closer to pure thought. It is indirect in that it is not sensory or analogous to the sensory. It is when the implicit acknowledgement of the actions of the mind are made explicit in thought, by way of a kind of noticing, a calling out of what is in the margin of attention. This kind of introspection is inner speculation, it is creative and seems unlimited. It does not spatialise and lacks any metaphor for presence, or for the distinction of inner and outer. Therefore it does not support the search for an inner self, but rather is a natural seeking of real discriminations.

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