Introspecting on an Award

Scientific Introspection has won the coveted BIBA award for 2020’s best independent book, nonfiction-psychology. See: (https://bestindiebookaward.com/live/)

Scientific Introspection is an essay in psychology and philosophy of science. It calls for psychologists to use introspection to investigate the mind. If you thought they already did that, you’d be wrong.

Science has no way to observe the mind. Where would you look? In the head? Maybe. Psychologists study the brain and behavior and then guess what the mind is like.

But why guess? Remarkably, all humans have the ability to look inward at the workings of our minds with introspection. As far as we know, we are the only animal on the planet that can do that. It is foolish not to use this amazing gift to study the structure and functions of the mind.

Scientific Introspection is presented as a new psychological methodology An applied case study shows how it would work.

Admittedly, Scientific Introspection is not psychological sci-fi. It’s nonfiction. So what’s it doing hanging around here at PsiFiBooks.com? I wrote Scientific Introspection first. It is the source of many ideas that appear in my psi-fi novels. For example, my highly intelligent androids in the Newcomers Series often wonder if they are really intelligent the way humans are, or if they are merely simulations, clever pretenders.

A perplexing fact about introspection is that you can only do it on yourself. How do I know if your mind is anything like mine? That’s just one of the many strange questions Scientific Introspection takes up.

Scientific Introspection is available online and in paperback.