In order to discuss this appropriately we first have to recall some of Liang’s conceptual refinements. One important distinction we want to discuss is the distinction between the fact of experiential ownership and the sense of experiential ownership, which mark out the factual and the subjective aspect of experiential ownership. The third-personal sense of experiential ownership describes the factual aspect, which can be observed from the outside via fMRI. Liang calls it a biological fact that, when a subject undergoes an experience, there is an objective fact of experiential ownership that is constitutive of the sense of experiential ownership. The first-personal sense is a phenomenal property of mental states, which means that it does not require further informational states to ensure that the one who is experiencing it from the inside sense herself experiencing it, which would be the “for-me” aspect. This is the property which concerns the aspect in which we and Liang are interested in: the self-as-subject. In order to evaluate the arguments of IEM, Liang uses the conceptual refinement offered by Pryor (1999), namely the de re and which-object misidentification. The former has been challenged through cases of somatoparaphrenia, the latter by the so-called body-swap illusion, both of which provide cases of misrepresentation. What happens in cases of misrepresentation? For Liang the sense of experiential ownership misrepresents the fact of experiential ownership. We argue that there are some aspects of the fact of experiential ownership and the sense of experiential ownership that are not that clear. Our thesis is that the fact of experiential ownership has nothing to do with IEM-P in the first place, but is rather what some philosophers describe as the conceptual truth of a subject having an experience. If you are describing the specific phenomenological richness of an instantiated experience, it is obviously true that it is an experience of a subject.[3] Since subjects are the bearers of experiences (as opposed to objects) it is quite obvious that there is a fact that somebody has this experience. This can be illustrated in Liang’s own words: “[w]hen a subject experiences a phenomenal state, there exists a fact that he is the subject of that state” (Liang this collection, p. 6). But this is just analytically true, since experiences are not free-floating occurrences—because they, as a matter of principle, have a subject of experience. This is about using the words “somebody’s experience” correctly and is rather a description from the outside. It tells us nothing substantial about IEM-P. Perry (1998, pp. 96–97) talks about a similar phenomenon while recapitulating Locke’s idea of personal identity. He claims that “[a]n instance of being aware of an experience, and the experience of which one is aware is known, necessarily belong to the same person […]”. To say something substantial it would be important for the content of the phenomenal experience of a specific state to concern the subject itself. But the content, experienced “from the inside”, is of course different from an analytical truth, because phenomenal states have nothing to do with the right usage of words. The content of the phenomenal experience is what Liang calls the sense of experiential ownership, experienced from the inside. Granted that these two conceptualizations are correct, it is impossible that a phenomenal state like the experiential ownership represented from the inside can misrepresent something that is rather a conceptual ascription or description from the outside. They are completely different categories. To understand this we can think of a patient suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID), who has many different personalities. What would be the fact of experiential ownership here? To answer this question a very specific and rigorous conception of personal identity is needed, which cannot be discussed here.
Let us summarise the argument:
Sense of experiential ownership cannot misrepresent fact of experiential ownership
(1) The fact of experiential ownership is to describe (as we see it), as a matter of logical necessity, that an experience is instantiated in a subject, that is (according to Liang), if a subject undergoes an experience in the actual world, a matter of fact.
(2) The sense of experiential ownership concerns the content of a phenomenal experience, which can either be experienced as owned by a subject or by nobody.
(3) Phenomenal experiences do not represent facts or states of affairs and even less analytic truths.
(4) The sense of experiential ownership cannot represent the fact of experiential ownership.
(5) A representation necessarily goes together with the possibility of a misrepresentation.
(C) The sense of experiential ownership cannot misrepresent the fact of experiential ownership.
Does it generally make sense to talk about IEM-P as a property of phenomenal states? The remaining story about IEM-P could be that it serves as the basis for judgments that usher in beliefs (see section 4). The immunity would then hold just through the structure of experience itself. But does it?
We claim that there no error through misidentification is possible, because of the lack of judgments and cognitive elaboration at the phenomenal level. An identity judgment requires identifying two conceptually-represented ingredients. Phenomenal states can be accompanied by conceptual ingredients, but they are not basic properties of phenomenal states themselves.[4] Thus, they are distinct from one another. Hence we could say that phenomenal states are neither eligible for such a kind of error in general nor for a de re or which-object misidentification in particular. The intelligibility of IEM-P is very doubtable. Let us again summarise the argument:
Ineligibility of IEM-P
(1) To talk about identification is to talk about judgments and inferences that can be identified with one another, which means that they are judged to be identical.
(2) To talk about misidentification is to talk about some defective judgments.
(3) Phenomenal states have nothing to do with judgments and inferences in the first place.
(C) Phenomenal states lack the basic properties to be defective.
The ineligibility of phenomenal states of course satisfies the rule of identification-freedom. But since phenomenal states are always identification-free, the claim that they are immune to error through misidentification is misleading. Why is that? Remember that the content of phenomenal experience could occur without being owned by somebody (Lane 2012). Nevertheless, an experience is instantiated in a subject, which is just a matter of principle or the factual aspect. If the content of a phenomenal experience just occurs, without an experience of mineness, then the rule of identification-freedom tells us nothing substantial, because of the lack of any committed judgment. An interesting question, of course, is whether there are any judgments that are identification-free.
We would recommend talking about IEM as a property of judgments or beliefs (IEM-FP) instead of talking about phenomenal states. Nevertheless, there are also some problems with IEM-FP that we will present and discuss in section 4. Let us now have a closer look at the two alleged counterexamples that Liang proposes.