SCIENCE, PUBLICITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS

A traditional view is that scientific evidence can be produced only by intersubjective methods that can be used by different investigators a nd will produce agreement. This intersubjectivity, or publicity, const raint ostensibly excludes introspection. But contemporary cognitive sc ientists regularly rely on their subjects' introspective reports in ma ny areas, especially in the study of consciousness. So there is a tens ion between actual scientific practice and the publicity requirement. Which should give way? This paper argues against the publicity require ment and against a fallback version of it, viz. that evidence-conferri ng methods must at least have their reliability publicly validated.