Why should we base our theories about the mind on our knowledge of how the brain functions? Why shouldn't we study the mind as philosophers and scientists did for centuries, by introspecting to find out how we ourselves think and then asking other people questions to find out how they think? Or if we want to be more scientific, and we can figure out how to make a computer do what human beings do, why not assume that the way the computer does it is the way humans do it too?

One reason is that there is a very great difference between our ability to know what we are thinking and our ability to understand how this thinking takes place. We are aware mainly of the contents of our thoughts, because this is the knowledge we need in order to be able to function. I need to know that the object I am looking at is an apple in order to know that I should pick it and eat it rather than the leaf next to it. I do not need to know how I recognize it as an apple in order to eat it and be nourished. Our consciousness has therefore evolved to be aware of what we are thinking, but not of how we go from one thought to another, or how we go from a perception to a thought, or from a thought to an action.

But our minds at some point, perhaps at the time of the Greek philosophers, began to consider the way they themselves work. As human beings, we cannot be satisfied with just knowing facts about the world “outside” ourselves.