The Immunity of the Sense of Ownership
Are bodily self-ascriptions immune to error through misidentification (IEM)? It is classically assumed that I can be wrong about whose legs are crossed when I have access to them through vision, but not through proprioception. Although the epistemic difference between vision and proprioception is intuitive, one may question its generality. Judgements of ownership that are grounded on bodily sensations can indeed be incorrect, whereas the body can be visually presented in such a way that it can be only one’s own body. This chapter will reconsider which experiences can ground bodily judgements that manifest IEM. This will help us analysing the relationship between the phenomenological phenomenon of bodily ownership and the epistemic phenomenon of IEM. The chapter will argue that it is important to keep the two phenomena apart: one should not conceive of feelings of ownership as the phenomenological counterpart of bodily IEM.