[1]
In other words, a judgment is identification-free if to judge that “a is φ” eo ipso is to judge that “I am φ”. Shoemaker’s argument for identification-freedom (subject-use) can be summarized as follows. (1) The utterance “a is φ” gives rise to an error through misidentification, if a speaker knows a thing to be φ and mistakenly thinks that ‘a’ refers to φ (cf. Shoemaker 1968). (2) Not every subject-use, which can give rise to knowledge about oneself, depends on identification, because this would lead to an infinite regress (cf. ibid.). (3) Since there is no identification of an object with a thinker in subjective first-person judgments, they are clearly incorrigible (relative to the first-person pronoun (e.g., some proprioceptive judgments or “I feel pain”; Shoemaker 1968). (4) Since the use-as-subject does not depend on identification, an error through misidentification is impossible.
[2]
This is a highly controversial metaphysical generalization of IEM, because it assumes that there are phenomenal constituents of IEM that serve for IEM as a property of judgments. Lane (2012), for instance, denies that there are any unique constituents that could explain mineness or mental ownership. Nonetheless, we suspect that the authors who defend theories of phenomenological immunity, like Liang, have to accept this generalization in one or another way.
François Recanati (2012) seems to defend a similar position. A subject experiences a state, for instance, through a proprioceptive mode, whereas the subject is not explicitly represented. He calls this implicit de se immunity to error through misidentification (IEM). This mode of experience is immune to error through misidentification because it is identification-free. Then the subject reflects upon this mode of experience, which means that she represents explicitly who the subject is. This is the explicit de se. The explicit involvement of a subject is constituted by the implicit involvement of the subject, which is identification-free. Since the former, the constituent, is IEM, it is also the latter. Recanati’s argumentation was the inspiration for summarizing proponents of phenomenal (or perceptual) immunity, as we did with IEM-P. The question arises whether some systems without any instantiated phenomenal properties could have beliefs that have the property of IEM. Since we are skeptical about IEM-P as a constituent of IEM-FP, as will be argued, nothing excludes this possibility according to our account.
[3]
It is important to mention that a subject can experience a state “from the inside”, which she does not experience as her own. Experienced “from the inside”, it could belong to someone else or to nobody (Lane 2012). But this fact, which we take to be an analytic truth, is something ascribed “from the outside”. To say that somebody has an experience, is just to say that the experience is instantiated in a subject, regardless of which experience the subject undergoes exactly.
[4]
Proponents of Cognitive Phenomenology would probably deny this claim. We stick with Carruthers & Veillet (2011), who says that cognitive thoughts could causally initiate some phenomenal experiences. The stronger claim, that thoughts constitute phenomenal experiences, lacks substantial argument. Hence we stick to the position that phenomenal states and thought contents could occur in isolation from each other.
[5]
The reason for this is the following: if you talk about “identification-components”, there must be something that is composed of at least one identification-component, and probably of something else as well. The identification component (as described by current philosophers—a=b) is either a sentence or a proposition, either expressing an identification or representing it. (This distinction is just made to satisfy Platonists and nominalists.) What is it that is composed of identification- and other components? We think, according to the usual use of language of philosophers debating IEM (She sees a bleeding hand in the mirror and thus judges “I am bleeding”), that the most probable answer is that they are part of an inference. Whenever you say that one “judges” p, you want to express not only that she believes p, but also that she has come to this belief through inference. We take this to be an adequate interpretation of the term “judgment” as used in Shoemaker, Pryor, Barz, and probably Liang as well. It is probably inadequate for every instance of “judgment” in philosophy, because our interpretation suggests that there are (hidden or opaque) processes that are important for calling something a judgment. Even though proponents of accounts that are Rylean (Ryle 2009), for example, would strongly disagree (because they wouldn't accept that there are hidden processes that we want to talk about using the term “judgment”), we think that there is in fact an ontological or categorical difference between judgment and beliefs: either judgments are processes and beliefs are states, or judgments are a subclass of beliefs, but a subclass of beliefs that one has come to through a process of inference (which is not necessarily the case with beliefs—just imagine someone manipulating your brain such that you gain new beliefs). So, unlike Ryle, we would say that as long as we are talking about human beings, judgments are certainly something that happen in the hidden depths of the human brain. And we can represent them—for our purposes—as structured like logical inferences. Please note that this is just an additional remark concerning our positive account of judgments that a lot of papers seem to lack. Our central argumentation does not rely on this specific ontological reading of “judgment” and “belief”.
[6]
Note that we in fact think that beliefs are brain states and judgments (if they are inferences) are cognitive processes—but they do not need to be brain states and cognitive processes. Depending on which understanding of propositions you prefer (e.g., the meaning of sentences or informational packs), any machine that is capable of some kind of reasoning can judge and have beliefs.
[7]
This means that there are no papers about IEM that give a positive account of judgments, e.g., Shoemaker (1968), Evans (1982), Barz (2010).
[8]
A wh-judgment involving an identification starts with existential quantification over a variable. You know that there is something that has a particular property and then you identify that something with, e.g., yourself.
[9]
A de re judgment involving an identification starts with a predication to a particular thing—a constant. So you know a particular thing to have a particular property and then you find that thing to be identical with, e.g., yourself.
[10]
A short explanation: reference magnetism is a theory that claims that there are metaphysically distinguished objects of reference in the world (no matter whether they are abstract or concrete) that function as magnets for certain expressions. This could, for example, hold for natural kinds and existential quantification. In the case of existential quantification, some philosophers, like Theodore Sider (2009), claim that there is no possibility of talking about existence without talking about the very same thing that everybody talks about—as long as there is no explicit or implicit quantifier restriction. Reference Magnetism plays an important role in the debate about quantifier variance and verbal debates.
[11]
This is to accept a de re/de dicto distinction that is compatible with non-propositional attitudes.
[12]
This does not mean that one is always only and exclusively in a non-conceptual relation to oneself. Of course one can have de dicto beliefs about oneself.