Self-Consciousness and Immunity
Journal of Philosophy 108 (2):78-99 (2011)
| Abstract | Sydney Shoemaker, developing an idea of Wittgenstein’s, argues that we are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. Although we might be liable to error when “I” (or its cognates) is used as an object, we are immune to error when “I” is used as a subject (as when one says, “I have a toothache”). Shoemaker claims that the relationship between “I” as-subject and the mental states of which it is introspectively aware is tautological: when, say, we judge that “I feel pain,” we are tautologically aware that feels pain is instantiated and that it is instantiated in oneself. Moreover, he contends that this relationship holds not just for bodily sensations, but also for the sense of agency and for visual perception. But we deny that this relationship is tautological; instead, we treat Shoemaker’s principle (IEM) as a hypothesis. We then proceed to show that certain pathological states and experimentally-induced illusions can be adduced to show that IEM describes not a necessary relationship but a contingent relationship, one that sometimes fails to obtain. That we are not immune to error in the way Shoemaker describes has grave consequences for many aspects of his ideas concerning the first-person perspective. In the course of arguing that these empirical phenomena count against IEM, we also show that not only can the content of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the subject: that is, not only can the what of conscious experience be misrepresented, so too can the who. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
  |
| External links |
|
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesCheryl K. Chen (2011). Bodily Awareness and Immunity to Error Through Misidentification. European Journal of Philosophy 19 (1):21-38.
Andrea Christofidou (2000). Self-Consciousness and the Double Immunity. Philosophy 75 (294):539-570.
Andy Hamilton (2009). Memory and Self-Consciousness: Immunity to Error Through Misidentification. Synthese 171 (3).
Joel Smith (2006). Which Immunity to Error? Philosophical Studies 130 (2):273-83.
Annalisa Coliva (2002). Thought Insertion and Immunity to Error Through Misidentification. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 9 (1):27-34.
Marina Folescu & James Higginbotham (2012). Two Takes on the De Se. In Simon Prosser & Francois Recanati (eds.), Immunity to Error Through Misidentification: New Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Masaharu Mizumoto & Masato Ishikawa (2005). Immunity to Error Through Misidentification and the Bodily Illusion Experiment. Journal of Consciousness Studies 12 (7):3-19.
José Luis Bermúdez (2003). 'I'-Thoughts and Explanation: Reply to Garrett. Philosophical Quarterly 53 (212):432–436.
J. L. Bermudez (2013). Immunity to Error Through Misidentification and Past-Tense Memory Judgements. Analysis 73 (2):211-220.
David M. Rosenthal (2003). Unity of Consciousness and the Self. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (3):325-352.
Anne Newstead (2006). Evans's Anti-Cartesian Argument: A Critical Evaluation. Ratio 19 (June):214-228.
Sydney Shoemaker (1996). The First-Person Perspective and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Alan Thomas (2003). An Adverbial Theory of Consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2 (3):161-85.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-10-11Total downloads247 ( #761 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)55 ( #434 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
