Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Three pathologies of alienation (thought insertion, anarchic hand syndrome, and somatoparaphrenia) have been claimed to refute the philosophical thesis that introspection-based self-ascriptions of mental states are immune to error through misidentification. In this paper, I show that this critique of the Immunity Thesis is misguided; the cases of alienation either are not self-ascriptions or do not involve misidentification. Rather, these cases undermine a widely assumed explanation of immunity, which is based on the idea that self-ascriptions of mental states are identification-free. I argue that, given a certain understanding of the Immunity Thesis, identification-freedom does not explain immunity anyhow, and I offer an alternative explanation, one which posits a tight link between first-personal awareness and ownership of a mental state.
Author: Max Seeger
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2275844095