The development of the first-person perspective

• Autor(a) principal: Meijsing, Monica
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Manuscrito (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/manuscrito/article/view/8643612
• topic: Evolution; First person perspective; Person; Personal identity; (Self)consciousness.

What are we, most fundamentally? Two topical answers to this question are discussed and rejected and a more evolutionary account is offered. Lynne Baker argues that we are persons: beings with a firstperson perspective. Persons form a separate ontological category, with persistence conditions that are different from those of the body. Eric Olson, by contrast, claims that we are human organisms. No psychological property is definitive of what we are. Our persistence conditions are those of the human organism. In a more evolutionary approach to the notion of personhood, it is argued that we are indeed, most fundamentally, beings with a first-person perspective. But such a perspective is not definitive of personhood. It is precisely living organisms that have it, and cannot fail to have it. There is no separate ontological category of persons.