ABSTRACT
The question of self-identification is explored in depth: Due to the absence of identification components, certain singular judgments involving the self-ascriptions of mental and physical properties are immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person concept. The subject formulating such judgments in given epistemic contexts cannot be mistaken as to whether it is she who is attributing a particular property to herself. Kant seems to anticipate some of the self-reference without identification features: The act of reference performed by the subject to refer to itself entails no mediation of knowing; in other words, the notion of transcendental designation involves no identification through the properties ascribable to the subject. At this level, the intellectual representation I is a simple representation bearing no content, and it only designates transcendentally; that is, without any conceptual mediation. The Kantian reflections on I think and empirical apperception are explored to explain the different Wittgensteinian uses of I as subject and I as object. On the other hand, the so-termed No-ownership Reading, whereby the I in I think has no reference whatsoever, has to be rejected: I think (qua Representation) plainly designates the activity of thinking transcendentally. The affinity between Wittgenstein and Kant, alleged by some commentators within this framework, is examined in a new light in order to assess the appropriate theoretical bond between the Kantian I think and the contemporary perspectives on the question of self-identification.
