Introspection Task

An Introspection Task is an agent analysis task that involves interaction with the conscious agent's own consciousness (thoughts and feelings).

• Context:
  • output: an Introspective Judgement
  • performance: accuracy.
  • It can be solved by a Cognitive Agent (with an instrospection skill).
  • It can be instantiated in an Introspection Event.
  • Reflect on past choices
• Example(s):
  • Meditation.
  • Journaling.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • an Extrospection Task.
• See: Self-Awareness, Self-Observation.

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References

2013

• http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Introspection
  • QUOTE: Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul. It can also be called contemplation of one's self, and is contrasted with extrospection, the observation of things external to one's self. Introspection may be used synonymously with self-reflection and used in a similar way.

2010

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/
  • Introspection, as the term is used in contemporary philosophy of mind, is a means of learning about one's own currently ongoing, or perhaps very recently past, mental states or processes. You can, of course, learn about your own mind in the same way you learn about others' minds — by reading psychology texts, by observing facial expressions (in a mirror), by examining readouts of brain activity, by noting patterns of past behavior — but it's generally thought that you can also learn about your mind introspectively, in a way that no one else can. But what exactly is introspection? No simple characterization is widely accepted.

    Introspection is a key concept in epistemology, since introspective knowledge is often thought to be particularly secure, maybe even immune to skeptical doubt. Introspective knowledge is also often held to be more immediate or direct than sensory knowledge. Both of these putative features of introspection have been cited in support of the idea that introspective knowledge can serve as a ground or foundation for other sorts of knowledge.

    Introspection is also central to philosophy of mind, both as a process worth study in its own right and as a court of appeal for other claims about the mind. Philosophers of mind offer a variety of theories of the nature of introspection; and philosophical claims about consciousness, emotion, free will, personal identity, thought, belief, imagery, perception, and other mental phenomena are often thought to have introspective consequences or to be susceptible to introspective verification. For similar reasons, empirical psychologists too have discussed the accuracy of introspective judgments and the role of introspection in the science of the mind.

2001

• http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ascribing/node5.html
  • We say that a machine introspects when it comes to have beliefs about its own mental state. A simple form of introspection takes place when a program determines whether it has certain information and if not asks for it. …

    In principle, introspection is easier for computer programs than for people, because the entire memory in which programs and data are stored is available for inspection. In fact, a computer program can be made to predict how it would react to particular inputs provided it has enough free storage to perform the calculation.

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