Introspection is an illusion created by the brain (Nick Chater, 2/13/26, IAI News)
Yet a synthesis of decades of research in psychology and neuroscience shows that the very idea of introspection is an illusion. And for a surprising reason. It is not merely that we find it difficult to accurately perceive our inner motives, beliefs, principles, and desires (or that these are repressed, as Freud suggested). The problem is more fundamental: there are no such stable beliefs and desires “inside” us that can be observed and reported. Instead, the human mind is a wonderfully fluent, but profoundly deceptive, improviser: spinning stories justifying our thoughts and actions as fast as we ask questions. And these invented explanations are vague, inconsistent, and often provably wrong.
You can’t even know yourself, nevermind an other.