The Subjective Perspective in Introspection

As an empirical example of introspective conditions in which the normal sense of self is disrupted, the delusion of thought insertion is of special interest to philosophers investigating the epistemic and phenomenological structures of introspection. A common strategy is to use immunity to error through misidentification as a tool with which to pick apart the implications of thought insertion for our understanding of the faculty of introspection. In this paper I turn that strategy on its head: I draw on our understanding of introspection and of thought insertion to make two correctives to the literature on immunity to error through misidentification. The first is the identification of a formal distinction between two phenomena sometimes conflated under the rubric of misidentification errors. The second is a weakening of the presumed significance of claims to immunity to error through misidentification. With these tightenings to the notion of immunity to error through misidentification in hand, the idea is, we will be in a better position to turn again to questions about the epistemic and phenomenological nature of introspection.