Immunity to Error through Misidentification and Essential Indexicality

21.-22. September 2012, Konstanz

On September 21st and 22nd a workshop titled Immunity to Error through Misidentification (IEM) and Essential Indexicality was held in Konstanz, organized by the interdisciplinary research group Who is thinking?. The main aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers in the fields of immunity to error through misidentification and essential indexicality to explore and discuss emerging ideas. A particular focus lay on the question how psychiatric symptoms such as thought insertion can inform our theories regarding immunity and essential indexicality.

Other talks adressed issues such as these:

• What types of IEM are there? Which thoughts are IEM?

• What is the role of identification processes in the explanation of IEM?

• Can a better understanding of IEM improve our understanding of essential indexicality?

• It is sometimes held that in IEM-thoughts I cannot falsely take somebody else to be the thinker of my thoughts. What does it mean to be the thinker of a thought (authorship vs. ownership)?

Among the speakers of the workshop were many prominent researches in the field of immunity. Talks were given by John Schwenkler, Simon Prosser, François Recanati, Annalisa Coliva, Daniel Morgan, Kristina Musholt, and Michael Pauen. Roughly 15 participants, among which were both philosophers and psychiatrists, followed and took part in the lively and fruitful debates that succeeded each talk.

Program and abstracts can be downloaded here