Persons and Bodies

Abstract

What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can be fully material beings without being identical to our bodies. The Constitution View yields answers to the questions 'What am I most fundamentally?', 'What is a person?', and 'What is the relation between human persons and their bodies'? Baker argues that the complex mental property of first-person perspective enables one to conceive of one's body and mental states as one's own.

Baker on the Psychological Account of Personal Identity

“…(Baker 2000;67) Hence, my dog lacks a first-person perspective. Second, the first-person perspective of Prince must be the same first-person perspective as Cobbler.…”

“…There can be no such entity who is partly me and partly someone else. (Baker 2000;135) It is unclear, however, how this helps disarm Parfit's arguments. Consider first SPECTRUM.…”

“…For example, it might be indeterminate whether some individual is a member of a particular club, even if the relation x is a member of club y cannot be analyzed in a non-circular fashion. 11 It should be noted as well that the reality of indeterminate identity does not require that there exists after I step out of the machine, "someone who is partly me and partly someone else" (Baker 2000;135). The advocate of indeterminate identity is claiming that there is no fact of the matter as to whether that individual is the same person as me, not that the person is and isn't me, or is sort of me and sort of isn't.…”

“…Second, if my argument in the next paragraph is correct, a defender of the psychological account might also endorse Epistemicism. Finally, Baker (2000;137) doesn't appear to endorse this response when she states that if a fission product had my first-person perspective, then 'I would know it.' 11 Thanks to an anonymous referee here for helping me see the importance of making this point.…”

“…As Baker (2000;134) notes, "it is a paramount virtue of the Constitution View that it is a materialistic view that does not imply indeterminacy." This commitment is problematic since we can ask whether, if Prince does indeed survive as Cobbler, it is true that in all possible worlds where our fission scenario takes place, Prince is Cobbler.…”