3 Research Program

3.1 Core Research Idea

3.1.1 Extrospection: Epistemology and Evidence
Higher cognitive states like beliefs, desires, and emotions, or processes like perception,
mind-reading, or belief-formation play a key role in philosophy, psychology, neurosci-
ence, and psychiatry. It is however, quite controversial, whether these states can be cap-
tured adequately with objective scientific methods. Many philosophers believe in what
can be called an introspective privilege regarding these states: In their view, introspection
is the ultimate authority when it comes to one’s own beliefs, desires, emotions, and
thoughts. Who should know better than I do what I believe, what I want, feel, or how I
reason about another person? By contrast, extrospection, that is external access to an-
other person’s higher cognitive processes including consciousness, apparently suffers
from a basic disadvantage compared to introspection: It lacks direct access to the mental
phenomena it is about.
However, not everyone accepts the existence of an introspective privilege. Many psy-
chologists and philosophers have argued for long that introspection, due to its subjectiv-
ity, its inherent lack of external control, and experimental subjects’ notorious tendency
for confabulation and faulty reports is not epistemically superior at all. Interestingly
though, many critics of an introspective privilege are even more suspicious regarding
extrospection. One of their reasons is that extrospective methods are restricted to indi-
rect access to mental phenomena. That is why extrospection fails to meet the standards
set by third-person methods in other areas of natural science – although indirect methods
are quite pervasive even outside mind and brain research.
Many philosophers believe that these deficits are among the main reasons why an
adequate scientific understanding of consciousness is impossible in principle. The prob-
lem affects research in cognitive science as well. Even if behavioral paradigms like re-
action-time experiments are well-established, the alleged deficits of extrospection raise
severe problems for psychological and neuroscientific research on many higher cognitive
phenomena, like emotions, and mind reading or psychiatric disorders like autism or
schizophrenia, just to name a few.
Examples are debates about mindreading capabilities in non-human animals and chil-
dren with autism. Empirically testing for mindreading in non-human animals has been
discredited because of the so-called “logical problem” or “Povinelli’s problem” (Hurley
and Nudds 2006; Povinelli and Vonk 2003) to experimentally separate mind reading from
behavior reading, i.e. associative learning of pure behavioral contingencies (Harman
1978; Bennett 1978). It is controversial whether more recent approaches are able to
solve the logical problem (Povinelli and Vonk 2006). Also when used in young toddlers
and non-verbal children with autism, the validity of extrospective methods has been se-
riously doubted. Interestingly, false belief tasks have been further questioned as perfor-
mance in them also heavily relies on executive functioning and language skills (Pyers
and Senghas 2009).
In fact, if the first-person perspective is crucial for the determination of a given mental
state, then how can we make sure that a young child or a non-human animal entertains
a certain thought, experiences a specific feeling, or uses a particular cognitive strategy,
given that they cannot be asked?
Surprisingly though, we still lack a systematic account of the epistemic potential but
also of the limitations of third-person access to higher cognitive phenomena – occasional
discussions (e.g. about the “logical problem”) and several recent more systematic efforts
(Dennett 1991, 2005; Jack and Roepstorff 2003; Velmans 2007; Smithies and Stoljar
2012) notwithstanding. Consequently, vastly divergent views on the epistemic merits of
introspection and severe doubts regarding extrospective methods significantly impede
theoretical work in philosophy, and experimental work in psychology, neuroscience, and
psychiatry.

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3.1.2 Working Hypothesis
This is, precisely, why the current proposal aims at a systematic theoretical, empirical,
and historical assessment of extrospection. In order to make sure that our project has a
clear focus that brings together quite a number of different disciplines and methodolo-
gies, we have formulated a working hypothesis. The working hypothesis is based on
evidence from previous research, it will be subject to discussion during our monthly meet-
ings and academic retreats, and it will be refined and revised as new evidence comes
in. Every contribution to our project is expected to provide evidence, positive or negative,
bearing on this hypothesis. However, we explicitly welcome projects and contributions
disagreeing with our hypothesis, because we think that a lively and even controversial
discussion is essential for a full picture of our subject.
Claim. Our working hypothesis, in a nutshell, claims that there is an epistemic sym-
metry in principle not only between extrospection and introspection, but also between
extrospection and standard third-person methods in the natural sciences.
“Epistemic Symmetry”: Saying that there is an “epistemic symmetry” means that
extrospective methods are in principle neither less valid nor less reliable than introspec-
tive and standard third-person methods in the natural sciences. We also see no reason
to believe that there are entities (e.g. qualia) that are accessible to introspection but may
be inaccessible to extrospection.
“In Principle”: Saying that this symmetry holds “in principle” accounts for the obvious
insufficiencies in our current third-person knowledge and methodologies regarding
higher cognitive states, particularly conscious experience. Our hypothesis is solely that
these insufficiencies are not due to basic limitations of extrospection. Rather, they can
be explained by contingent facts like the extreme complexity of the subject (i.e. higher
cognitive states) together with current deficits regarding knowledge, methodology and
technology. There is, however, no reason why future developments in science and tech-
nology should not be able to overcome these deficits.
Preliminary Evidence. Our working hypothesis is based on research and theoretical
work of our own, but also on data and arguments from the literature. Among them are
philosophical studies undermining the alleged inaccessibility of first-person subjective
experience to extrospective methods (Pauen 2017), historical research showing that the
idea of an introspective privilege was motivated by concerns that are completely unre-
lated to today‘s interests in the epistemology of introspection let alone extrospection
(Perler 2009, Pauen 2016) and empirical findings showing the limitations of introspection
and the prospects of extrospective methods. Among them are brain-reading experiments
indicating that extrospective data might provide more reliable information for subjective
experience than subjective reports themselves (see 3.3.8), psychological methods that
can help to assess autism in children and patients with limited communicative skills, and
research on metacognition showing that data on motor activity can reveal metacognitive
processes with high precision even in the absence of subjective reports (Fleming 2015;
Faivre, Filevich, Solovey, Kuhn, et al. 2017). Additional evidence can be found in the
literature showing how the limitations of working memory affect subjective reports
(Sperling 1960; Landman, Spekreijse and Lamme 2003) thereby revealing parts of the
mechanisms underlying introspective reports. Other studies have shown that first-person
reports are quite unreliable (Nisbett and Wilson 1977), affected by external factors
(Schwitzgebel 2002b) and have limited access only to first-person experiences (Warnes
1986) – while all these shortcomings can be detected with extrospective methods. Fi-
nally, there is evidence showing how even qualitative subjective color experience can be
captured in systematic multi-dimensional quality-space models that provide information
about first-person experience that goes far beyond subjective reports (Rosenthal 2010;
Young, Keller and Rosenthal 2014; Churchland 2005).
While our project tries to establish the epistemic merits of extrospection both with
respect to introspection and to third-person scientific methods, we have a clear focus on
the comparison between introspection and extrospection. The reason is that there is a
stronger systematic and historical relation between introspection and extrospection,

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though, critics have questioned almost any of the reasons that seem to support the in-
trospective privilege. Behaviorists have argued that the subjectivism of introspectionist
methods and the absence of external control are incompatible with the demand for ob-
jectivity, control, and replicability that is essential for scientific methodology. According
to behaviorism, scientifically relevant insights about humans and – as far as possible –
the human psyche can only be gathered via objective behavioral methods. Similar views
have been put forward by authors like Carnap (1932) and Ryle (1949) or, more recently,
by Dennett (1993) and Churchland (1993).
Systematic Background. One of the reasons why even introspectionists had meth-
odological worries regarding their own method was the incomplete picture of higher men-
tal cognitive states: Subconscious processes are not accessible to introspective reports
(Ziche 1999). When asked for verbal reports, subjects may either automatically confab-
ulate the missing information (Gazzaniga and LeDoux 1978; Nisbett and Wilson 1977)
or ignore its absence. Both reactions will lead to systematic distortions and biases of
verbal reports (Pronin 2009). Limitations for introspection based-science are even more
severe in the case of psychiatric patients whose reports might be severely biased by
their clinical conditions (see 3.3.10 below). The problem is even more severe for small
children, animals, or coma patients who cannot provide introspective reports at all.
Proponents of the introspective privilege might grant these limitations as well as sub-
jectivism and the lack of control and replicability but still might insist that introspection is
more reliable due to its direct access to mental states. This argument is based on two
assumptions: First, that direct access is an epistemic advantage; second that introspec-
tion is direct in the sense required. Both assumptions can be challenged, though. First,
directness, particularly in the sense that many proponents of the introspective privilege
assume, is incompatible with a broad range of methods that play an important role in
science and philosophy, e.g. the control of scientific claims by criticism and ex-post eval-
uation or the use of measuring instruments and measuring variables. We will also inves-
tigate the role of indirect measures in natural science (see 3.1.1 below). Second, even if
these worries are set aside, it is unclear whether introspection is direct (see 3.3.8 below).
In order to recognize a pain experience as a pain experience, we have to remember the
experience, distinguish it from other such experiences, and categorize it. All these are
cognitive processes and each of them can fail for whatever reasons. Second, experi-
mental data like the famous iconic memory studies by Sperling (1960; Landman,
Spekreijse and Lamme 2003) show that introspective reports critically depend on work-
ing memory and thus may suffer from its well-known limitations. Moreover, brain-reading
studies indicate that primary experience involves activity in peripheral areas while intro-
spective reports require central activity (Haynes 2009) and thus can be dissociated from
the primary experience. Moreover, studies on introspective reports regarding color-ex-
perience in dreams (Schwitzgebel 2002b) seem to show that these reports are substan-
tially affected by background information.
Empirical Evidence. All this raises suspicion regarding the reliability of introspective
reports and the arguments brought forward in its support. In fact, there is increasing
evidence that introspection is much less reliable than it is usually thought. In a landmark
paper, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) collected ample evidence showing that first-person
claims are quite likely to be false. Subjects may give erroneous reports about their own
mental states and they have a considerable tendency to confabulate, e.g. if they are
missing relevant pieces of information. This is remarkable also insofar as this suggests
that third-person evidence can prove first-person claims wrong. More recently, Eric
Schwitzgebel (Schwitzgebel 2002b, 2002a, 2008, 2010, 2012) has presented a number
of studies corroborating Nisbett and Wilson’s point: First-person claims can go wrong,
partly because contextual information can influence our seemingly direct first-person re-
ports. E.g. reports about the color of dream experiences seem change along with the
dominance of black and white (1920s-1950s) or color (1970s-today) in the visual media.
And again, extrospective evidence can disclose the lack of reliability of first-person intro-
spective reports.

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approaches, a discussion of empirical findings and psychophysical approaches like the
quality space-model. Finally, we will ask whether the obvious deficits of extrospection
today betray a fundamental limitation of this kind of knowledge acquisition or just a tem-
porary shortcoming that can be overcome in the future.
3.2.2 Philosophy – Historical Issues
Epistemological questions come up also when we consider the development of concepts
like “consciousness” and “introspection” in the 17th and early 18th century by philosophers
like Descartes (Descartes 1897; Perler 2006), Locke (Locke 1748; Thiel 1983), Cudworth
(Cudworth 1678; Thiel 1991), or Pseudo-Mayne (Pseudo-Mayne 1728; Pauen 2016).
How did “introspection” become a specific epistemic category? Why has it been assumed
that this category guarantees a distinct form of epistemic reliability, and how was it re-
lated to consciousness? What was the role of consciousness in the theories of mind that
were developed by 17th-century philosophers? In sum, these investigations do not only
aim at a clarification of historical developments, rather, they are supposed to provide a
better understanding of current systematic problems of introspection and extrospection.
3.2.3 Psychology and Neuroscience
As already mentioned, psychological and neuroscientific findings are indispensable if we
want to improve our understanding of both introspection and extrospection. This includes
psychological studies regarding the limitations of introspective knowledge, as they have
been pursued in significant numbers ever since George Sperling (1960) and Nisbett and
Wilson’s classical paper (Nisbett and Wilson 1977) have demonstrated the deficits of
first-person reports. More recently, Eric Schwitzgebel (2005, 2002b) has worked on this
issue. These investigations have produced considerable evidence speaking against a
basic privilege for introspective knowledge. Moreover, they allow for inferences on the
mechanisms underlying introspective knowledge.
More recently, so-called “Brain Reading” studies have proven extremely helpful be-
cause they do not only determine the global activity level in one area of the brain but
rather use multivariate analyses that permit more specific conclusions regarding the dis-
tribution of activity in a given area of the brain. This, in turn, provides information as to
how specific contents make their way through the different stages of processing in the
brain. As a result, important conclusions regarding the functions and the mechanisms of
introspective knowledge and its relation to direct experience can be made (Haynes 2014;
Haynes et al. 2007). Moreover, Brain Reading provides a form of extrospective
knowledge, which has already yielded significant results in this area. These results raise
new fundamental questions regarding the precise interpretation and the limitations of
extrospective investigations, e.g. can these data tell us anything about qualitative expe-
rience and how can we handle conflicts with introspective reports?
3.2.4 Psychology/Social Neuroscience/Metacognition
Extrospective knowledge plays an important role in everyday life (e.g. in folk psychology)
as well. In everyday interaction, humans need a fairly clear idea of what others believe
and desire. The underlying abilities have been subject to vigorous debates for quite some
time now. From a philosophical point of view, the second-person perspective is of spe-
cific importance here (Pauen 2012). More recently, it has also turned out that disorders
of everyday extrospection, as they can be found in individuals with autism, allow for im-
portant conclusions regarding the underlying mechanisms: If we had a clear idea regard-
ing the deficits in autism, then we could conclude which abilities are needed by healthy,
socially competent adults (Dziobek et al. 2008). It deserves to be mentioned that impair-
ments in introspection of one’s own mental states like emotions, desires, etc. have also
been reported for autistic individuals. Autism thus represents a well suited model for in-
vestigating the relation between extrospective and introspective access to mental states
(Carruthers 2013).
The study of autism is specifically interesting because it invites extrospection to be
studied on two different levels: As a disorder of extrospective belief inference in everyday

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life it may help to improve our understanding of folk psychological extrospection in
healthy individuals. In addition, given the lack of introspection of affected individuals, the
investigation of autism requires specific methods of scientific extrospection. This is spe-
cifically challenging given that autism involves aberrant styles of cognition such as a
detail oriented processing style (Frith 1989) or impairments in cognitive flexibility and
fluency (Russo et al. 2007), which have biased results in tests of mental state inference
in the past in autism (Pellicano 2007) as well as other neurological and psychiatric dis-
orders (Aboulafia-Brakha et al. 2011). This yet again points to the limits and shortcom-
ings of scientific methods of extrospection.
Recent approaches, moreover, argue for a “second-person social neuroscience” and
the need for investigating the neural correlates of social cognition in real-time social en-
counters (Schilbach et al. 2013). Following this interactive view, intro- and extrospection
influence each other and cannot be considered in isolation.
The relation between introspection and extrospection plays also an important role in
research on metacognition, that is, second order cognitive processes evaluating first or-
der cognition. One typical metacognitive paradigm concerns experimental subjects’ (sec-
ond order) confidence regarding their (first order) perception of a somewhat ambiguous
stimulus. We want to show that current research on metacognition can improve our un-
derstanding of extrospection. According to a standard view, confidence-ratings in per-
ceptual tasks are based on introspective evidence, mainly about the quality of the per-
ceptual stimulus. Recent evidence, however, suggests that motor responses to the stim-
ulus in question (e.g. a button press) may play an important role for the confidence rat-
ings as well. As this information is available extrospectively, related experiments would
support our symmetry claim. Moreover, they could improve our understanding of the
neural mechanisms underlying introspective metacognitive judgments like confidence
ratings.
3.2.5 Psychiatry
Important contributions for a better understanding of the prospects and limitations of ex-
trospective knowledge can also be provided by psychiatric research. In addition to au-
tism, mental disorders like schizophrenia and depression may reveal important insights
into the relation of extrospection and introspection in healthy subjects as well.
Another important issue will be alexithymia, a subclinical phenomenon with a preva-
lence of 10% in the general population and approx. 20% in individuals with psychiatric
disorders (e.g. depression, autism, anxiety disorders, personality disorders etc.) (Leweke
et al. 2012).
Individuals with alexithymia, despite having emotional experience, are unable to iden-
tify and describe their own emotions. Interestingly, while individuals high in alexithymia
seem to have deficits in various tasks of emotion processing such as empathy and recog-
nition of emotions in others, their defining reported lack of verbal access to their emotions
is at odds with reports of grossly intact emotional experience as indexed e.g. by express-
ing emotions (Sonnby-Borgström 2009) and recognition of emotional semantics in spo-
ken sentences (Swart, Kortekaas and Aleman 2009). This indicates a dissociation of
first-person experience and introspection.
Recently, it has been argued that the problem consists not just in the disability to
name emotions (affective anomia) but rather in a deficit of mentally representing them
(affective agnosia) (Lane et al. 2015). Alexithymia thus allows for an investigation of the
failures of introspection, including a dissociation of first-person experience and introspec-
tive knowledge: Patients are not only unable to provide verbal reports about the feelings
they actually have, but even cannot access them introspectively. Still, their feelings can
be detected by extrospective means. It would thus seem that alexithymia raises paradig-
matic questions regarding the prospects and our understanding of extrospection.
This problem seems to affect psychiatric practice and clinical neuroscience in general.
In both cases, subjective states have to be measured with objective means. This requires
the connection of subjective data (from interviews or standardized reports) with objective

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question how to resolve discrepancies, particularly in clinical contexts. Interestingly,
many psychiatric disorders (e.g. alexithymia, blindsight) require that the patient’s intro-
spective report be put into question. In fact, psychiatrists use a differentiated system of
assessing introspective reports. Patients suffering from both the Anton-Babinski- (ABS)
as well as patients with the Charles-Bonnet-Syndrome (CBS) are (partially) blind but
report having visual experiences. But while diagnosticians treat the reports of CBS pa-
tients as veridical, explaining them by visual hallucinations, they distrust ABS patients,
treating their reports as results from cognitive delusions. The consistency and de-
tailedness of the CBS patients’ reports seem to be an important reason for this distinc-
tion. We will collect similar cases from clinical practice and research in psychiatry where
a difference is made either between trustworthy and suspicious introspective reports or
between introspective and extrospective methods. In close cooperation with project
3.3.1, we will then analyze factors relevant for these distinctions.
Contribution to topic and working hypothesis. The project will collect internal and
external factors affecting the reliability and validity of introspective reports and extrospec-
tive findings. The identification of these factors is crucial for our claim that current insuf-
ficiencies of extrospective methods may be accounted for by contingent factors and thus
do not demonstrate a basic disadvantage of extrospection in general (compare 3.3.5 and
3.3.10).
First advisor: Sascha Benjamin Fink (Philosophy, U Magdeburg). Second advisor:
Holger Lyre (Philosophy, U Magdeburg) Third advisor: Henrik Walter (Psychiatry, Neu-
roscience, Philosophy).
3.3.5 Psychology/Social Neuroscience I (Isabel Dziobek)
Reading mental states of others versus self – the case of autism. Autism is a develop-
mental disorder that involves core deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the understand-
ing of others’ mental states even in the absence of language impairments and intellectual
disability (e.g. (Dziobek et al. 2006; Dziobek et al. 2008; Rosenblau et al. 2015). Re-
cently, research has started to investigate self-knowledge about mental states and its
relationship to other-knowledge in autism, which has been taken to inform the question
whether reading mental states of others’ and self represents a common process. More
specifically, scholars suggested that knowing one’s own mental states results from turn-
ing our mindreading abilities on ourselves (Engelbert and Carruthers 2010), i.e., the
same mental capacity that is in place for mindreading others is understood as producing
knowledge of own mental states when turned to oneself. By doing so it draws on infor-
mation from the same sensory channels that allow mindreading in others. While the latter
involves observations of others’ behavior such as their affective displays or speech, min-
dreading the self requires e.g. inner speech, felt affect, or visual imagery (Carruthers
2011). One way of following up on such a conceptualization is to ascertain whether self-
and other knowledge converge in individuals with known impairments in extrospection
as is the case in those with autism or schizophrenia. It could then be predicted that dis-
sociations should not occur in these conditions if indeed the same mindreading mecha-
nisms are employed. Thus, the aim of this project is to ascertain whether intro- and ex-
trospective mindreading are mediated by a common mechanism. We hypothesize that
there will be no dissociations between capacities for self vs. other mindreading and the
same neuronal networks will be implicated in each, as there is preliminary evidence to
suggest this (Williams and Happé 2010; Lombardo et al. 2011). If evidence is found
which speaks for the same underlying processes this will be related to other common
coding phenomena (e.g., shared representations for perception and action). Various
tasks of self and other mindreading will be contrasted between individuals with autism
and controls on the behavioral and the brain level. A special focus will be placed on the
network of brain regions, which has been specifically implicated in third-person min-
dreading. This network includes medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, su-
perior temporal sulcus, and the temporo-parietal junction (Frith and Frith 2003). So far,
a very limited number of studies have been performed on mindreading the self. These

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studies, however, have provided evidence for involvement of the same network (Ochsner
et al. 2004).
Given the reported impairments in introspection in autism, the method of scientific
extrospection on mindreading others is compromised itself in studies with affected indi-
viduals. It seems that what is needed is an especially careful characterization of behav-
ioral mindreading tasks. Thus, an effort will be made in this project to characterize tradi-
tional tasks and paradigms. Moreover we will develop new tasks that vary (a) in the type
of mind related information that has to be interpreted or (b) in the kind of response format
(e.g. verbal report, response time) and (c) in the amount of introspection needed by any
such task. This will allow us to also consider other cognitive disorders that have been
implicated in autism such as a detail-oriented processing style or impairments in execu-
tive functions (Dziobek and Bölte 2011) and might be moderating factors for mindreading
capabilities.
Contribution to topic and working hypothesis. Most importantly, the project con-
tributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying both introspection and
extrospection in everyday contexts. A common mechanism would provide additional ev-
idence for the symmetry of introspection and extrospection. Finally, the project will ex-
plore and describe ways to improve scientific extrospection in case of introspection def-
icits, thus showing how extrospection can compensation introspective deficits (compare
3.3.4).
First advisor: Isabel Dziobek (Psychology/Social Neuroscience). Second advisor:
Henrik Walter (Psychiatry/Philosophy). External advisor: Ofer Golan (Bar-Ilan).
3.3.6 Psychology/Social Neuroscience II (Laura Kaltwasser)
Extrospective assessment of emotion in self and other and their neural correlates. The
face is a mirror reflecting crucial information about a person. Not only does it reveal age,
gender, ethnicity, and attractiveness but it also serves as a medium to transmit social
signals like emotions. Dating back to Darwin (Darwin 1872/2002), the theory of basic
emotions claims that facial emotion expressions and their perception are distinct, natural,
and universal phenomena shaped by natural selection (Ekman 1992). These distinct fa-
cial expressions are externally available, hence extrospective markers of emotions. They
are assumed to co-vary reliably with subjective experience, and to belong to discrete
categories. Not only do they reveal physiological patterns of an individual’s internal af-
fective state, but they also serve a social signaling function (Kaltwasser et al. 2017;
Keltner and Kring 1998; Van Kleef 2009). On the other hand, in certain emotional disor-
ders, e.g. alexithymia (see 3.2.5), intro- and extrospective beliefs may fall apart.
The goal of this project is to disassemble the introspective (feeling) and extrospective
(expression) facets of emotion in self and other. Based on the mirror neuron theory
(Gallese et al. 2011) we would expect a common underlying neural mechanism for emo-
tion assessment in self (introspection) and other (extrospection). Neuroscientific at-
tempts to map the concept of the self have focused on self-referential processing. In
these experiments, the participants were exposed to an objectified (extrospective) ver-
sion of themselves (for example in self-face recognition) while neuroimaging techniques
were applied (Northoff et al. 2006). More recent approaches included interoceptive as-
pects of the self, as the neural monitoring of one’s own heartbeat (Babo-Rebelo, Richter
and Tallon-Baudry 2016). To our knowledge, no endeavor has so far combined both
approaches such as in emotional self-face recognition.
We suggest an experimental fMRI set-up where participants are exposed to their own
emotional face expressions as they are asked to switch between their own and a familiar
other’s perspective on themselves. The switch of perspective will be induced by their
own or their familiar other’s voice inquiring about their emotional state. The familiar other
will be a close ‘other’ of the participant such as a partner or relative. This ensures a
specifically acquired, ecologically valid assessment of introspective and extrospective
emotion. Moreover, we will quantify the integration of internal bodily signals into neuronal
markers of emotion processing by means of heart rate variability with simultaneous ECG

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