The Concept of a Person

Abstract

The problems which I intend to discuss are excessively familiar to students of philosophy. They are concerned with persons in the broad sense in which every individual human being can be counted as a person. It is characteristic of persons in this sense that besides having various physical properties, including that of occupying a continuous series of spatial positions throughout a given period of time, they are also credited with various forms of consciousness. I shall not here try to offer any definition of consciousness. All I can say is that I am speaking of it in the ordinary sense in which, to be thinking about a problem, or remembering some event, or seeing or hearing something, or deciding to do something, or feeling some emotion, such as jealousy or fear, entails being conscious. I am not at this stage committing myself to any view about the way in which this notion of consciousness should be analysed.