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The First-Person Perspective

Authors: Lynne Rudder Baker;

The First-Person Perspective

Abstract

According to the Constitution View, human persons are constituted by bodies. Constitution, as we have seen, is not identity. But if a person is constituted by a body to which she is not identical, what distinguishes a person from the body that constitutes her? My answer, which I shall explain in this chapter, is that a person has a capacity for a first-person perspective essentially; her constituting body has it contingently. The person/body case is thus analogous to the statue/piece-of-marble case. The statue has the property of being related to an artworld essentially; the constituting piece of marble has that property contingently. Having a capacity for a first–person perspective plays the same role in the human person case that being related to an artworld in such-and-such a way plays in the statue case. A first–person perspective makes possible an inner life. On the Constitution View, something with a capacity for an inner life is a fundamentally different kind of thing from anything that has no capacity for an inner life. (Thus, I am ontologically closer to a self-conscious Martian than I am to a racehorse or to an early-term fetus.) The body of a human person is (identical to) an animal. An animal, human or not, can exist without any capacity for an inner life; a person cannot. This view is not Cartesian: An inner life does not require an immaterial soul, nor is it independent of the world around us.

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This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
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popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
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