Summary |
It is often held that a characteristic feature of some self-conscious thoughts, that is, thoughts with first-person content or 'I'-thoughts, is their immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. The claim is that when thinking or expressing certain 'I'-thoughts, the subject can be mistaken with respect to the property that is being self-ascribed, but not with respect to the subject of the self-ascription. For example, when I judge on the basis of my experience that I have a toothache, I cannot be mistaken with respect to the point that it is really me who has the toothache. Many authors think that an understanding of immunity to error through misidentification is essential for a theory of self-consciousness and self-knowledge. However, there are many open questions with respect to, for instance, different varieties of immunity to error through misidentification, the distinction between logical and contingent immunity, the relation between judgments containing the first-person pronoun and those containing indexical and demonstrative terms, and alleged empirical counter-examples to the immunity principle. |