How can Persons be Ascribed M-Predicates?
Smart (Brian)
Source: Mind, 1977, 49-66
Paper - Abstract

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Philosophers Index Abstract

  1. The aim is to show that the literal M-predication of persons is possible on the historical version of Cartesianism with its erroneous conception of the mind as substance and is required by the correct materialist1 concept of a person.
  2. Historical Cartesianism is mereological: the person is not identical with the mind but with a non-aggregate compound of which the mind is the essential part and the body and its parts are inessential parts.
  3. This mereology permits literal M-predication of the person.
  4. A variation on Wiggins's concept of person is proposed where it is a phase-sortal2 and not a substance-sortal3.

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