What is a person?

What follows is a well-known article about what we mean when we talk about what it means to be a person. It is a far call from Kierkegaard or Wittgenstein, but was chosen deliberately so as to throw some light on topics that interest Kierkegaard but which are dealt with in a far more logical and objective manner. Reading this very readable but academic article is also good practice in the tough business of reading and following philosophical arguments. This first post is the introduction. Four further parts will follow. I hope that this will form the basis of our discussion at our next meeting. Who wrote this and when is not important, not, at any rate, as important as just getting to grips with what is said.

I look in a mirror. I can see my eyes, but can I see the ‘I’ that sees them?

«What philosophers have lately come to accept as analysis of the concept of a person is not actually analysis of that concept at all. Strawson, whose usage represents the current standard, identifies the concept of a person as “the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics ... are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type.”[i] But there are many entities besides persons that have both mental and physical properties. As it happens – though it seems extraordinary that this should be so – there is no common English word for the type of entity that Strawson has in mind, a type that includes not only human beings but animals of various lesser species as well. Still, this hardly justifies the misappropriation of a valuable philosophical term.  

«Whether the members of some animal species are persons is surely not to be settled merely by determining whether it is correct to apply to them, in addition to predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, predicates that ascribe states of consciousness. It does violence to our language to endorse the application of the term “person” to those numerous creatures that do have both psychological and material properties but which are manifestly not persons in any normal sense of the word. This misuse of language is doubtless innocent of any theoretical error. But although the offense is “merely verbal”, it does significant harm. For it gratuitously diminishes our philosophical vocabulary, and increases the likelihood that we will overlook the important area of inquiry with which the term “person” is most naturally associated. It might have been expected that no problem would be more central and persistent concern to philosophers than that of understanding what we ourselves essentially are. Yet this problem is so generally neglected that it has been possible to make off with its very name almost without being noticed and, evidently, with evoking any widespread feeling of loss.  

«There is a sense in which the word “person” is merely the singular form of “people” and in which both terms connote no more than membership in a certain biological species. In those sense of the word which are of greater philosophical interest, however, the criteria for being a person do not serve primarily to distinguish the members of our own species from the members of other species. Rather, they are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and problematical in our lives. Now these attributes would be of equal significance to use even if they were not in fact peculiar and common to the members of our own species. What interests us most in the human condition would not interest us less if it were also a feature of the condition of other creatures as well.  

«Our concept of ourselves as persons is not to be understood, therefore, as a concept of attributes that are necessarily species-specific. It is conceptually possible that members of novel or even of familiar non-human species should be persons; and it is also conceptually possible that some members of the human species are not persons. We do in fact assume, on the other hand, that no member of another species is a person. Accordingly, there is a presumption that what is essential to persons is a set of characteristics that we generally suppose – whether rightly or wrongly – to be uniquely human.  

«It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person’s will. Human beings are not alone in having desires and motives, or in making choices. They share these things with the members of certain other species, some of whom even appear to engage in deliberation and to make decisions based upon prior thought. It seems to be peculiarly characteristic of humans, however, that they are able to form what I shall call “second-order desires” or “desires of the second order”.  

«Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, me may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires or motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call “first order desires” or “desires of the first order”, which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires.[ii]»

[i] P.F.Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), pp.101-102. Ayer’s usage of person is similar: “It is characteristic of persons in this sense that besides having various physical properties ... they are also credited with various forms of consciousness” (A.J. Ayer, The Concept of a Person {New York: St. Martin’s, 1963}, p. 82). What concerns Strawson and Ayer is the problem of understanding the relation between mind and body, rather than the quite different problem of understanding what it is to be a creature that not only has a mind and a body but is also a person.

[ii] For the sake of simplicity, I shall deal only with what someone wants or desires, neglecting related phenomena such as choices and decisions. I propose to use “to want” and “to desire” interchangeably, although they are by no means perfect synonyms. My motive in forsaking the established nuances of these words arises from the fact that the verb “to want”, which suits my purposes better so far as its meaning is concerned, does not lend itself so readily to the formation of nouns as does the verb “to desire”. It is perhaps acceptable, albeit graceless, to speak in the plural of someone’s “wants”. But to speak in the singular of someone’s “want” would be an abomination.