Term introduced in ‘Beyond Belief’ (1982) by Dennett, to describe an exploration of consciousness that takes the reports we and others give of what a particular state is like as part of the admissible data. Introspective reports are not rejected out of hand, as in methodologies influenced by behaviourism. For producing such a report gives an intentional identification of mental states (that is, shows what we take them to be), and this can be studied regardless of whether such states really exist.