that impair our ability to solve problems. Now I’m talking
about the loss of a much more fundamental ability, namely the
ability to know our own mind. Furthermore, in this case we
have a much more specific explanation for why introspections
mess up our reactions. It’s that we simply don’t have any way
of explaining our feelings about jam. We know unconsciously
what good jam is: it’s Knott’s Berry Farm. But suddenly we’re
asked to stipulate, according to a list of terms, why we think
that, and the terms are meaningless to us. Texture, for instance.
What does that mean? We may never have thought about the
texture of any jam before, and we certainly don’t understand
what texture means, and texture may be something that we
actually, on a deep level, don’t particularly care much about.
But now the idea of texture has been planted in our mind, and
we think about it and decide that, well, the texture does seem a
little strange, and in fact maybe we don’t like this jam after all.
As Wilson puts it, what happens is that we come up with a
plausible-sounding reason for why we might like or dislike
something, and then we adjust our true preference to be in line
with that plausible-sounding reason.
Jam experts, though, don’t have the same problem when it
comes to explaining their feelings about jam. Expert food