: STRAWSON ON THE NOTION OF THE FIRST PERSON

• Authors: Sen Manidipa
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper is an attempt to understanding Strawson's notion of the first person in the context of his general theory of a person. More specifically it will look into the idea that the concept of a person is 'primitive', and see how Strawson's idea of primitiveness of the concept of a person can be extended to his notion of the first person. One way of cashing out the notion of primitiveness in the context of the first person is in terms of the way the pronoun 'I' functions in self ascription, like 'I am feeling terrible'. As Strawson himself points out, 'use of 'I' is guaranteed against two kinds of failure to which the uses of some other definite referring expressions are sometimes exposed: it is guaranteed against lack of reference, and it is guaranteed against mistaken or incorrect reference' (1994, 215). Does this way of understanding the primitiveness of the first person work? If it does, what kind of notion of the first person and authoritative self-knowledge may be derived from it? Another related issue that will be dealt with in the paper is how one can construe the relationship between the first person and the world on the one hand and the first person and 'the other' on the other hand within the Strawsonian framework.

Keywords

EN

'OTHER'; FIRST PERSON; PRIMITIVNESS; THEORY OF PERSON

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 477-492
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Sen Manidipa

• Manidipa Sen, Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067, The Republic of India; www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/organon

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10SKAAAA074810