observation

From quantum mechanics we know that observing something changes its position or momentum, and so alters the state the object is in, preventing us from knowing what was true before the observation, or what would be true without the observation having happened.

Similarly (or I want to argue for a similarity), to inquire into the emotions or consciousness of a subject, you have to ask them to report on it, thus altering their conscious state. Here too, we don't know what would have been true without the observation having happened. What McClelland was discussing in the CNBC retreat discussion on consciousness last year about Crick and Koch's work suggested the same thing: that there is some tricky and too intimate connection between conscious thought and reporting on conscious thought. That work seemed to suggest that the act of reporting on it might be involved in bringing it to consciousness. I'd like to draw out this similarity.

It might also relate to my paper on feminist standpoint epistemology, but on a more abstract level. there, one of the points was that the person doing the observing puts something into the observations from themself necessarily.