Abstract
In The Blue Book, Wittgenstein defined a category of uses of “I” which he termed “I”-as-subject, contrasting them with “I”-as-object uses. The hallmark of this category is immunity to error through misidentification (IEM). This article extends Wittgenstein’s characterisation to the case of memory-judgments, discusses the significance of IEM for self-consciousness—developing the idea that having a first-person thought involves thinking about oneself in a distinctive way in which one cannot think of anyone or anything else—and refutes a common objection to the claim that memory-judgments exhibit IEM.
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This article originates in the work on self-consciousness that I embarked on in the 1980s, when Crispin Wright supervised my PhD The Self and Self-Consciousness. His patient and inspiring supervision helped to form my philosophical outlook. Taking our cue from Elizabeth Anscombe’s “The First Person”, and Gareth Evans’ discussion of self-reference in The Varieties of Reference, we focussed on the phenomenon of immunity to error through misidentification (IEM), which I gradually realised is key to an understanding of self-consciousness. Crispin suggested the definition of IEM which I still use here. He has turned to the topic in print only briefly, in his article “Self-Knowledge: The Wittgensteinian Legacy”, where he looks at the fundamental question of the relation between IEM judgments and the broader category of avowals, on which I say something below. My main aim here, after delineating IEM as relating specifically to memory-judgments, is to refute a common objection to it, and to discuss the significance of IEM for self-consciousness.
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Hamilton, A. Memory and self-consciousness: immunity to error through misidentification. Synthese 171, 409–417 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9318-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9318-6