Why I am not a Third Person, Part 2: Papal Infallibility

In Chapter 4, Dennett presents an interesting objection to the first person perspective.  Doesn’t the first person perspective award “papal infallibility” to peoples’ reports of their phenomenology?  Since “introspection” would not seem to be infallible, shouldn’t we avoid it, and put our conclusions on firmer footing?

To answer this objection, first of all, I would distinguish between infallibility and reliability.  It’s possible for a reporter, or a spy, or a research assistant to be extremely reliable but never, of course, infallible.

We treat the testimony of a reliable source differently from the testimony of an unreliable source.  We rely on the testimony of a reliable source, though we are always prepared (in the back of our minds) to reject that testimony in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  We don’t ignore the testimony of an unreliable source -- the source may be unreliable, but he did say what he said -- instead, we treat it as data that can be accounted for or explained.  Dennett is asking us to treat peoples’ reports of their experience as data, which means that he is asking us to treat people as unreliable witnesses of their own states of mind.  But is that really a good idea?

I think a good analogy here would be memory.  Memory is not infallible, but if we were not to rely on our memories, we would not be able to do anything; neither philosophy, or science, or surviving for more than a few hours.  We know that memory is not infallible, but we assume it is reliable, and we rely on it.