In this paper, I will lay down the main argument presented by Strawson in the third chapter “Persons” in his book Individuals. Before getting involved into the Strawson’s abstract world, I will cover some parts of the method that Strawson uses for an investigation of our thinking about how we are different from what we are not, and what is the place for states of our consciousness in this concept. In addition, I will develop a little bit more the concept of individuality from the position of a society.

Strawson is, without a doubt, one of the prominent representatives of descriptive metaphysics. Unlike revisionist metaphysicians, who attempt to revise our ordinary way of thinking, Strawson tries to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world. He believes that there is a universal scheme of conceptual analysis for which no justification can be given. This approach is often used in transcendental arguments that are focused on necessary conditions of some aspect of our experiences or our beliefs. The starting point of every transcendental argument is to define empirically a general proposition P, and then to claim that an indubitable truth of P requires some condition C. Developing the framework of relations between propositions and describing the conditions of these relations, Strawson focuses on abstract and non-empirical observation. Distinctive features of transcendental reasoning include answering on presumable opponent’s questions during the discourse and a complete refutation of skepticism. In the best tradition of Kantianism, Strawson builds his arguments in such a way that the objector is not in a position to question statements about facts or conditions of our knowledge about them. So, in most cases, there is nothing left to do but participate and assist in Strawson’s drawing of the picture of our reality.

In search of our understanding of individuality, Strawson first looks into the conditions of how one makes a distinction between oneself and the other ones. Having imagined a pure auditory world, Strawson concludes that, to be an individual person, a sound needs to be the subject of its experiences. Otherwise, it would not have the place for the idea of itself. The sound would be completely solitary in its world without any perceptions of its body and without any power of making changes in its reality. It could probably have an idea of itself as an individual when thinking about itself as a disembodied person and possessing the memories of the time once it was a body. As memories become vague and dim, an understanding of itself as an individual would weaken to a full extinction. Here, we can observe that the concept of a person may be narrowed to three fundamental notions: the body, as the basic particular in identifying processes, a pure individual consciousness, as the mine of memories and thoughts, and a society, as an infrastructure for individual’s actions and experience. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear what is the place of person’s experiences in relation to a body or a society, and why this relation exists.

Strawson notes that body occupies a special position in relation to all the person’s perceptual experiences. For instance, what we hear is dependent on the location of the body and the condition of the ears. Thus, this position is not only causal, but also unique in relation to other kinds of perceptual experience. A given observation may explain a special attachment of the subject of experience to his body. But it does not unfold the reason why we ascribe states of consciousness to the same thing to which we ascribe corporeal characteristics, or why we ascribe our experiences at all. In other words, why we use “I” in both cases of our experiences, e.g. ‘I love’ (state of consciousness) and ‘I am running’ (corporeal state).  One of the answers to this concept of reasoning would be the Cartesian view, asserting that ‘it is only a linguistic illusion that both kinds of predicate are properly ascribed to one and the same thing’ (Strawson, 94). That is to say, we apply ‘I love’ and ‘I am running’ differently, thus having two uses of ‘I’.  Here, the states of consciousness belong to ‘Ego’ that provides experiences for the subject. The problem of this concept is that an idea of a person would be composed of two different, identifiable subjects of experiences, and we could not explain the uniqueness of the individual. This confusion could be solved by the ‘no-ownership’ doctrine that would partly support the Cartesian distinction of ‘I’, but would deny an existence of Ego. The ‘No-ownership’ claim eliminates an owner of person’s experiences, so instead of ‘I love’ we should say ‘There is love’.  Yet, the argument of ‘No-subject’ theorists is falsely built on an assumption that if the experience is causally related to a body, then it might have been causally dependent on the state of some other body. They want to conclude that the idea of two different subjects owning all one’s experience is an illusion. But this concept of possession ignores a distinction of one’s experiences and the experiences of some other person, thus making the argument fall apart. If we accepted the ‘non-ownership’ argument, we would deny that one might possess one’s states of consciousness, rejecting the idea of uniquely applicable predicate within a manifold class of them. In this way, we may formulate that one should ascribe states of experiences not only to oneself, but also to others who are not oneself. Others, in this context, are identifiable and distinguished subjects, of which experiences stand in a special relation to their bodies. Hence, if the concept of the pure Ego cannot exist and the ‘non-subject’ theory fails, we have to admit the primitiveness of the concept of a person in ‘that states of consciences could not be ascribed at all, unless they were ascribed to persons’ (Strawson, 102). We need to give up the idea of a person as the composition of two subjects, and to focus on the concept of one subject and non-subject. In that sense, the concept of a person is to be analysed prior to the idea of an individual consciousness, which may have only a secondary existence in relation to body.

Clearing up the conceptual scheme of individuals, Strawson wonders about an intelligible necessity of the concept. According to him, it may be a trivial simplification of understanding how we can perceive each other as persons, viz. a system of ascribers and self-ascribers of P-predicates. Moreover, Strawson points out that this concept could exist only in a world where human nature is not common. In other words, there is almost not place for individuals in a group, ‘members of which think, feel and act as one’ (Strawson, 114). It does not mean that a ‘group mind’ is entirely excluded from our lives, since our social interaction is a part of our existence. Nevertheless, it is just a part, but not the whole of human beings.    

In conclusion, the concept of individual can be explained by combination of I-body and I- consciousness, one of which takes a secondary position. Individuality may exist only in relation to other subjects of experiences, viz. in a group or a society. Even the most solitary hermits are the products of civilisation, by which were formed their ‘I’s’. However, personhood does not imply acting in accordance with common human nature. If such a thing as a ‘group mind’ happens, members of the group stop making reference to individual persons at all and the concept of a person is excluded.

Bibliography:

  • Strawson, P.F. Individuals, Routledge, London and New York, 1959