Investigating Pristine Inner Experience

Russell T. Hurlburt pioneered the investigation of inner experience (thoughts, feelings and so on), inventing (in 1973) the beepers that launched 'thought sampling', the attempt to measure characteristics of inner experience. Despite the sophistication of his thought-sampling measurements, Hurlburt concluded, by about 1980, that science needs a better understanding of inner phenomena themselves. Therefore he developed Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), the attempt to apprehend inner experience in high fidelity. That has led to four books: Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience (1990), Sampling Inner Experience in Disturbed Affect (1993), Exploring Inner Experience (with Chris Heavey, 2006) and Describing Inner Experience: Proponent Meets Skeptic (with Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007). A special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies (January 2010) was devoted to DES. Hurlburt is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is also the author of a highly regarded statistics textbook, Comprehending Behavioral Statistics (fourth edition, 2006).