On investigating inner experience: Contrasting Moore & Schwitzgebel and Brouwers et al.

Moore and Schwitzgebel (this issue) reported that readers report innerly speak the text about 59% of the time. Brouwers et al. (2018) reported that readers innerly speak the text only about 3% of the time. I use this huge discrepancy as a case study to discuss important issues in the investigation of inner experience, including: the training of participants; ambiguity in the time being considered; ambiguity in the phenomenon; the desirability of investigating the phenomenon itself, not merely its frequency; bracketing presuppositions; the advantages and disadvantages of large and small sample sizes; influence by the investigator; and the slide from phenomena to reports of phenomena.