Ask how you know it: first, second or third person

Sort what you believe about a situation by how you came to know it — your own experience, talking with others, or outside observation.

Pourquoi ça marche

Wilber and Walsh proposed that consciousness should be studied by combining first-person (experience from inside), second-person (understanding reached in dialogue) and third-person (observation from outside) approaches. Applied to everyday life, the same split shows which kind of evidence a belief rests on. A conclusion built only from your inner sense, only from conversation, or only from outside facts is missing the checks the other two would provide.

Comment faire

1. Write down a belief you hold about a situation, for example "my team does not trust me".
2. List what you know from your own experience (how it feels, what you notice in yourself).
3. List what you know from actual conversations — what people have said to you, not what you imagine they think.
4. List what you know from observable facts — behaviour, records, numbers.
5. Notice which list is empty. Gather one piece of evidence of that kind before acting on the belief.

Données probantes

Wilber and Walsh (2000) set out the proposal to integrate first-, second- and third-person approaches in an edited scholarly volume on methods for studying consciousness. Esbjörn-Hargens describes the same three perspectives as the basis of "integral methodological pluralism". Using the split to audit a personal belief is an application, not a studied intervention. (mechanistic)

This is a reflection aid. It does not tell you which kind of evidence should win when they disagree.

Sources

• Wilber, K., & Walsh, R. (2000). An integral approach to consciousness research: A proposal for integrating first, second, and third person approaches to consciousness. In Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness (Advances in Consciousness Research, Vol. 13, pp. 301–331). John Benjamins.
• Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2010). An Overview of Integral Theory: An All-Inclusive Framework for the Twenty-First Century. In S. Esbjörn-Hargens (Ed.), Integral Theory in Action: Applied, Theoretical, and Constructive Perspectives on the AQAL Model. SUNY Press. (First circulated as Integral Institute Resource Paper No. 1, 2009.)

Erreur fréquente

Counting imagined conversations as second-person evidence. "I know what they would say" is still first person until someone has actually said it.