Search

We examine the difference between attending to our mental states by looking 'within' and attending to the process of perceiving the object through a higher-order type of reflection. The distinction bears particular significance for the field of phenomenology as it corresponds to a crucial difference phenomenologists make between “introspection” (looking inward to examine our own mental states) and “phenomenological reflection” (a unique kind of higher-order act that looks at our perception of the world). In this paper, we attempt to show how they are two distinct ways of knowing ourselves in the world by comparing the models of their information processes. Taking the phenomenon whereby an agent perceives an object in the surrounding reality, we differentiate processes that obtain information from mental states resulting from a perceptive act, from ones which extract information from the perceptive act itself. Whilst in the former case, the perceived information remains within a single computation layer, the latter introduces a second, 'meta' order of computation. The structure of this distinction is reminiscent of informational processes in physical systems, in particular living ones. Similar meta layers are knowingly extremely common in those physical organizations as systems grow increasingly complex, thus allowing different computation types to combine. The benefit of this separation between computations is the capacity of variables from one layer to be coupled to ongoing dynamics in another, making for mutually constructive feedbacks. We use these formalisms to argue that resulting layering effects may enrich and clarify the distinction at issue.