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Philosophy of Mind > Philosophy of Consciousness > Self-Consciousness > Immunity to Error through Misidentification
Immunity to Error through Misidentification
Assistant editor: Anna Lena Weyand (Universität Leipzig)
About this topic
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. |
Key works | The phenomenon of immunity to error through misidentification was first discussed by Wittgenstein 1958, who distinguished between the use of 'I' 'as subject' and the use of 'I' as object, where the former is thought to be immune to error through misidentification. The notion of immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun was introduced into the literature by Shoemaker 1968 whose work together with the work of Evans 1982 influenced much of the contemporary discussion. Pryor 1999 and Coliva 2006 distinguish different types of immunity. Campbell 1999 and Coliva 2002 discuss whether the phenomenon of thought insertion in schizophrenia constitutes a counter-example to the immunity principle. A recent collection of new essays on immunity is Prosser & Recanati 2012. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Self-Consciousness in Psychology (466)
- Animal Self-Consciousness (149)
- Functionalism and Self-Consciousness (61)
- First-Person Contents (721)
- Self-Consciousness in Experience (463)
- Self-Consciousness in Action (208)
- Nonconceptual/Prereflective Self-Consciousness (199)
- Self-Consciousness, Misc (638)
- Self-Knowledge (1,623 | 551)
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