Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Write-up₁ (as at 14/07/2026 03:00:00): Person

Plug Note²

• Thesis Text:
  1. We must first consider whether the debate on personal identity has been hijacked by a term (whose meaning has changed over time) that can now be dispensed with. Wiggins claims (in "Wiggins (David) - The Person as Object of Science, as Subject of Experience, and as Locus of Value", I think) that the Greeks had no term for “person”. Have we always secretly been talking about human animal identity (probably referring to human beings³ rather than human animals) when we thought we were talking about something separate, namely persons? See "Ferner (Adam) - Metaphysics and biology: a critique of David Wiggins’ account of personal identity" for a detailed exegesis of Wiggins’s views.
  2. See "Trendelenberg (Adolf) - A Contribution to the History of the Word Person" for the usage of the term ‘person’ prior to the 20th century.
  3. For a slightly less ancient treatment, see also:-
     → "Mauss (Marcel) - A Category of the Human Mind: the Notion of Person; the Notion of Self"
     → "Allen (N.J.) - The Category of the Person: a Reading of Mauss’s Last Essay"
     → "Collins (Steven) - Categories, Concepts or Predicaments? Remarks on Mauss’s use of Philosophical Terminology"
  4. For a more contemporary historical discussion, see "Rorty (Amélie Oksenberg) - Persons and Personae".
  5. We need to start with some conceptual⁴ analysis, though this may lead to somewhat arbitrary (ie. merely semantic⁵ or culture-relative) conclusions if PERSON isn’t a natural kind⁶ concept.
  6. I accept Locke⁷’s conceptual distinction between Human Beings⁸ (“Men”), Persons and Substances⁹. I accept Locke’s assertion that the rational parrot would be a person, but not a man – the latter essentially involving particular physical characteristics, the former specific mental characteristics.
  7. Can any purely mentalistic definition of the concept PERSON, such as Locke’s definition of a person as
     “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” ("Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity" - Essay II.27.2)
     be correct? I suspect not, because of the corporeal aspects we take as being essential to our self-image.
  8. But, when we think of ourselves in this corporeal way, is this qua ANIMAL or qua PERSON. But then, this “qua-ing” can lead to relative identity¹⁰, and shows how difficult it is to maintain the strict logic of identity¹¹ in these discussions.
  9. Some further thoughts:-
     • We must not ignore potential differences between the Person, the Self¹² and the Individual¹³.
     • I doubt the truth of the contention that one’s Self is the sum of one’s projects, one’s individual “identity¹⁴”.
     • We must also note the potential for degrees of personhood¹⁵.
     • Are persons essentially sentient? Or rational? And is rationality, like the mental generally, overstated by philosophers whose favourite habitat it is?
     • What about temporal gaps¹⁶ in sentience & rationality in the life of an individual – does the person pop in and out of existence?
     • What about legal persons: not companies, but the comatose, who still have estates (but then so do the deceased¹⁷)?
     • How important is “person”, as against “sentient being¹⁸” in my research concerns? The Cartesians denied sentience to animals¹⁹ and until recently there has been a down-playing of the capacities of animals, particularly their emotional capacities. Consequently, the persistence criteria²⁰ for sentient non-humans may not have been given the focus they ought. I suspect that many of the thought experiments²¹ work just as well if we drop some of the more onerous requirements of personhood in such contexts. Some of the thought experiments play on the thought of “being tortured tomorrow²²”. While animals may not have the concept TOMORROW, I presume the higher animals have some capacity for anticipating future goods or ills about to befall them – that’s how dog-training works₂₃. I wonder whether my research concerns should be about all beings that care about the future, whether or not they have a clear concept of it as their future.
  10. To aid in investigating just what persons are I will start with Dennett’s six criteria of personhood (see "Dennett (Daniel) - Conditions of Personhood", on which I have written an essay²⁴):-
      1. Rationality,
      2. Intentionality – “predicated of”
      3. Intentionality – “adopted towards”
      4. Reciprocation of the personal stance,
      5. Verbal communication and
      6. Consciousness

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  Further Remarks:
  1. This Note is intended to cover what a PERSON is, and not to stray into every other aspect of Personal Identity, which are covered by other Notes. In particular, there’s a division of labour between this Note and that on What We Are²⁵. That we are most fundamentally Persons is an assumption challenged by Animalism²⁶.
  2. My considered opinion is that human persons²⁷ are phase sortals²⁸ of human animals²⁹.
  3. As is clear from the above, I have a note on human persons³⁰. I also have a separate Note on Non-Human Persons³¹. I have not been too careful to segregate the reading lists, nor – at this stage – the texts.
  4. Recently, it has come to my attention that a related term of art – PERSONITE³² – has been coined to refer to a temporal part of a person. See the Note for discussion.