Wittgenstein and Immunity to Error Through Misidentification

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Abstract: In a famous passage in The Blue Book, Wittgenstein distinguishes ‘two cases in the use of the word “I”’: ‘the use as object’ and ‘the use as subject’.  He has generally been taken to be advocating a distinction along the following lines.  Self-ascriptions in which ‘I’ is used as object ‘involve the recognition of a particular person’ and are for that reason vulnerable to error through misidentification of the subject.  Self-ascriptions in which ‘I’ is used as subject involve no recognition of a person and are therefore immune to error through misidentification.  Those claims about the use of ‘I’ as subject, in particular, are widely thought to express important insights about the first person and self-consciousness.

Rachael Wiseman has argued against this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Blue Book discussion and this assessment of its significance.  Far from advocating a distinction between as-subject and as-object uses of ‘I’, she thinks, Wittgenstein regards the distinction as an artefact of a solipsistic way of thinking about ourselves and our experience, which he rejects.  Similarly, she maintains that the idea that psychological self-ascriptions are immune to error through misidentification has hindered, rather than illuminated, our understanding of self-consciousness and subjectivity; we get a better understanding of self-consciousness, she thinks, if we approach the topic in a way that is informed by a proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s treatment of ‘I’ in The Blue Book. 

The paper has three aims.  First, I explore Wiseman’s exegetical claims about the Blue Book discussion of the use of ‘I’ as subject and the use of ‘I’ as object, defending a version of the orthodox interpretation of Wittgenstein in the face of her objections.  Second, I respond to Wiseman’s claim that the idea of immunity to error through misidentification obscures rather than illuminates the nature of self-consciousness.  Third, I examine the relation of this Blue Book passage to other discussions of ‘I’ in Wittgenstein’s work.