We argue for the fact that inserted thoughts (IT) are thought-like processes
that are reflexively accessible to their subject but that are not phenomenally
conscious. They are vehicles of thought, like words, images, and computational
processes that underly thoughts. But unlike the first two, the subject can
access them just like he accesses thoughts (IT are “in” the subject), and
unlike the last one, they are not phenomenally conscious. One way to argue for
that claim would be to argue that conscious processes are immune to error
through misidentification (IEM) but that IT are not. But many philosophers have
taken IT to threaten the validity of this immunity principle, so we should
investigate the question further. By carefuly comparing the phenomenology of IT
and of other well studied pathologies such as obsessive or intrusive thoughts,
we show that all the interpretations of IT, whether they take IT to be
consistent with IEM or not, fail because they do not take seriously the fact
that patients report that the thought, although “in them”, is not “their own”.