Promotional Information

Describing Inner Experience? is scholarly writing at its best: clear and accessible without being condescending or over-simplifying. The discussion is civil and intelligent, and, most of all, engaged. That is, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel resist the urge to write their own separate position papers; instead, they actively engage in constructive dialogue. One gets the impression of two very smart and open-minded people, seriously devoted to finding the truth. -- Paul Bloom, Department of Psychology, Yale University This is a genuinely original book, a thorough going investigative and scholarly collaboration between two leading researchers with diametrically opposing views on the core topic -- the nature of inner experience. The detailed and powerful interviews and conversations at the center of the book probe the accuracy of one person's accounts of her own momentary mental life. Where many works in consciousness studies gesture at cross-disciplinary appeal, the meeting in this book of psychologist and philosopher on specific common ground puts this promise into practice. -- John Sutton, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University In the Socratic Dialogue tradition employed by Plato and by Galileo for examining scientific questions and the suitability of new methods for data collection, this is a challenging contribution. Can we move beyond the discredited introspectionism of early studies of conscious experience with a procedure like the systematic experience-sampling methods that have emerged in the past four decades? Investigators of the issues of measuring ongoing thought and neuroscientists using brain imaging technology to study the nature of human planning, wishing, and reminiscing will appreciate the careful analyses presented by the authors. -- Jerome L. Singer, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Yale University This is a genuinely original book, a thoroughgoing investigative and scholarly collaboration between two leading researchers with diametrically opposing views on the core topic the nature of inner experience. The detailed and powerful interviews and conversations at the center of the book probe the accuracy of one person's accounts of her own momentary mental life. Where many works in consciousness studies gesture at cross-disciplinary appeal, the meeting in this book of psychologist and philosopher on specific common ground puts this promise into practice. -- John Sutton, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University

About the Author

Russell T. Hurlburt is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Eric Schwitzgebel is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of Perplexities of Consciousness (MIT Press). His short, accessible essays on philosophical topics have appeared in a range of publications and on his popular blog, The Splintered Mind.

Reviews

... anything but boring... In my own soundless inner-speech, I kept saying, 'This is so good!'—Bill Faw, Journal of Consciousness Studies

In Describing Inner Experience, Russell Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel address the question of whether the resurrected science of consciousness is doomed... Hurlburt's answer is 'no,' Schwitzgebel's is 'quite possibly,' and the volume takes the form of a debate between them.—Tim Bayne, The Times Literary Supplement

... Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel produced [a] remarkable book...— Gary Wolf , Salon.com

This book is a treat.... It offers a new model of productive interdisciplinary cooperation. And reading it is a pleasure. It deserves a wide audience among both psychologists and philosophers.—Gualtiero Piccinini, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

This is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.—Edouard Machery, Psychology Today