The paper argues that current philosophers of perception rely on introspection in two distinct ways—introspective access and introspective method—without clearly distinguishing them. Concerns raised over a century ago by Introspectionist Psychologists about using introspection to gather data on consciousness apply to these contemporary philosophical uses but remain unacknowledged. Applying this distinction reveals that arguments based on introspective phenomenal descriptions are methodologically flawed. The critique does not reject introspection entirely but calls for more careful application in philosophical theorizing.
Subjective measures of consciousness, often called introspective measures, are widely used but face criticism due to potential response bias. This chapter reviews the main types of subjective measures in consciousness science and examines whether they truly involve introspection. The author finds no clear answer, as proponents lack a worked-out notion of subjective access, which makes the problem of response bias harder to resolve.