Jörg Noller Was sind und wie existieren Personen? - Mentis Verlag
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Jörg Noller Was sind und wie existieren Personen?
ethica
Herausgegeben von
Dieter Sturma, Michael Quante
und Julian Nida-RümelinJörg Noller
Was sind
und wie existieren
Personen?
Probleme und Perspektiven
der gegenwärtigen Forschung
mentisEinbandabbildung: Juan Gris: Pierrot (1922) Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. = ethica, Band 33 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk sowie einzelne Teile desselben sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zulässigen Fällen ist ohne vorherige Zustimmung des Verlages nicht zulässig. © 2019 mentis Verlag, ein Imprint der Brill-Gruppe (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Niederlande; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Deutschland) Internet: www.mentis.de Einbandgestaltung: Anna Braungart, Tübingen Wissenschaftlicher Satz: satz&sonders GmbH, Dülmen Herstellung: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISBN 978-3-95743-142-4
Inhalt Jörg Noller Einführung: Dimensionen der Person ............................. 7 TEIL I ONTOLOGIE DER PERSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lynne Rudder Baker What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Thomas Buchheim What Are Persons? Reflections on a Relational Theory of Personhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Anne Sophie Meincke Human Persons – A Process View ................................ 57 Uwe Meixner Substanz und Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Eric T. Olson Animalismus als Theorie der menschlichen Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Ralf Stoecker Ich bin nicht Stiller Über personale Identität und Verantwortung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 TEIL II LEBENSFORM DER PERSON ................................. 131 Marya Schechtman Practice and Identity An Anthropological View of Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Dieter Sturma Persons: A Thick Description of the Human Life Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Jörg Noller Personale Lebensformen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Matthias Wunsch Personalität, Würde und Lebensform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6 Inhalt TEIL III SUBJEKTIVITÄT DER PERSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Katja Crone Das Selbstverständnis von Personen und die Grenzen von Narrativität . . . . 211 Dan Zahavi Das Selbst, der Andere und Wir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 TEIL IV ETHIK DER PERSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Michael Quante Personale Autonomie, Dependenz und Würde im Kontext der Pflege . . . . . 247
Jörg Noller
Einführung: Dimensionen der Person
Der philosophische Begriff der Person ist komplex, da er verschiedene Dimensionen
in sich vereint. Neben der theoretischen Dimension von Personen – ihrer Ontologie,
Identität und Persistenz – ist es gerade die praktische Dimension – ihre Autonomie
und Würde –, die Personen auszeichnet. Ontologische und praktische Dimension
hängen im Begriff der Person aufs Engste zusammen, so dass sie sich eigentlich nur
schwer isolieren und unabhängig voneinander betrachten lassen. Ein umfassender
und integrativer Personbegriff, der beide Dimensionen in einen systematischen
Bezug setzt und in ihrem Verhältnis transparent macht, darf nach wie vor als ein
Desiderat der philosophischen Forschung gelten. Der vorliegende Sammelband
vereint Beiträge der neueren internationalen Debatte, die sich der verschiedenen
Dimensionen des Personbegriffs annehmen, und bringt sie in ein systematisches
Gespräch.
Im ersten Teil des Bandes steht die Frage nach der Ontologie der Person im
Zentrum: Sind Personen identisch mit ihrem tierischen Körperorganismus, oder
konstituieren sie eine davon ontologisch verschiedene Realität? Sind Personen
substanziell, prozessural oder relational verfasst?
Lynne Rudder Baker (Amherst) grenzt sich in ihrem Beitrag von den Positionen
des Immaterialismus und des Animalismus ab: Weder sind Personen immaterielle
Seelen oder Substanzen wie in der cartesischen Tradition noch sind Personen
identisch mit lebendigen Organismen. Der Immaterialismus kann nicht zeigen, wie
die Seele mit dem organischen Körper zusammenhängt; der Animalismus kann
durch die Biotechnologie infrage gestellt werden, da es denkbar ist, dass wir unseren
organischen Körper prinzipiell durch einen nicht-organischen Körper ersetzen kön-
nen, ohne unsere Identität als Person zu verlieren. Baker argumentiert in der Folge
für die Position des Konstitutionalismus: Personen sind demnach nicht mit dem
lebendigen Organismus identisch, sondern werden nur durch diesen konstituiert,
wobei ihre Identität in ihrem Selbstbewusstsein, der Perspektive der ersten Person,
besteht. Die Konstitution der Person durch ihren Körper ist im Gegensatz zum Ani-
malismus keine Relation strikter numerischer Identität, sondern eine kontingente
Einheitsrelation.
Thomas Buchheim (München) entwickelt in seinem Beitrag eine relationale
Theorie der Person. Diese nimmt ihren Ausgang von dem Problem, dass wir ei-
nerseits nicht nur Menschen zu Personen erklären dürfen – dies würde in einen
›Speziesismus‹ führen und die Möglichkeit nichtmenschlicher Personen katego-
risch ausschließen. Andererseits dürften wir aber auch nicht den Personstatus an
das Vorliegen bestimmter rationaler Eigenschaften und Verhaltensweisen binden,8 Jörg Noller
da dies Demenz- und Komapatienten sowie Kleinkinder ausschließen würde. Buch-
heim argumentiert angesichts dieses Problems dafür, dass der Begriff der Person
ein Hybrid zwischen einem ontologischen Naturbegriff und einem Attributivbegriff
ist, wonach der Personstatus von der zugewiesenen Rolle abhängt. Er entwickelt
davon ausgehend eine alternative relationale Theorie, wonach in der Person ein
lebendiges Individuum mit allgemeinen Mustern sozialer Existenz derart verwoben
ist, dass ihre Ontologie durch eine generelle soziale Form charakterisiert ist, die
unabhängig von ihren individuellen und artgebundenen Eigenschaften existiert.
Personen existieren nicht biologisch, sondern sind durch ihre biographische Le-
bensform charakterisiert.
Anne Sophie Meincke (Exeter) entwickelt in ihrem Beitrag eine Prozesstheorie
der Person, die ihr Profil in Abgrenzung von (neo-)aristotelischen substanzon-
tologischen Auffassungen erhält. Dabei knüpft Meincke einerseits an Einsichten
der Existenzphilosophie an, erweitert diese aber durch eine ontologische Analyse
der biologischen Fundamente des menschlichen Lebens. Meinckes Alternative zur
substanzontologischen Bestimmung der Person besteht darin, dass menschliche
Personen als stabile und dynamische Prozesse höherer Ordnung ausgefasst werden.
Als komplexe Organismen sind Personen durch prozesshaften Stoffwechsel charak-
terisiert und durch systembiologische Strukturen wie Autopoiesis ausgezeichnet.
Als komplexe Prozesse existieren Personen nicht nur für sich, sondern sind mit an-
deren, sie umgebenden Prozessen verwoben. Ebenso konstituieren personale Akte
keine von der natürlichen Welt geschiedene Realität, sondern sind ›enaktivistisch‹
mit ihrer biologischen Natur holistisch verbunden.
Uwe Meixner (Augsburg) befasst sich in seinem Beitrag mit dem philosophischen
Begriff der Substanz und seinem Verhältnis zum Begriff der Person. Er definiert da-
bei »Substanz« zunächst in einem minimalen Sinne ganz allgemein als »selbständi-
ges Individuum ohne intrinsische zeitliche Lokalisierung«. Als ein Gattungsbegriff
lässt sich von der so verstandenen Substanz im Ausgang von Leibniz eine besondere
Art der aktiven Substanz unterscheiden, die dadurch ausgezeichnet ist, dass sie
kausal wirksam ist. Die Kausalität dieser aktiven Substanz unterscheidet Meixner
von anderen ontologischen Kandidaten, die kausal wirksam sein können – von Er-
eignissen, Sachverhalten und Eigenschaften. Die aktive Substanz ist kausal wirksam
im Sinne der Agens- bzw. Akteurskausalität. Daneben unterscheidet Meixner noch
die Art der bewussten Substanz, eine Substanz, die ein Bewusstseinssubjekt ist. Aus
der Konjunktion von aktiver und bewusster Substanz ergibt sich eine dritte Art –
die zugleich aktive und bewusste Substanz. Eine vierte Art von Substanz bildet die
vernunfthabende Substanz, die als solche immer auch aktiv und bewusst ist. Meix-
ner charakterisiert diese vernunfthabende Substanz als Person, ganz im Sinne der
Definition des Boethius, als »rationabilis naturae individua substantia«. Abschlie-
ßend plädiert Meixner dafür, die relationalen Bezüge der personalen Substanz,
wie sie sich in den verschiedenen Phänomenen ihres intentionalen Weltbezugs
manifestieren, ernst zu nehmen.Einführung: Dimensionen der Person 9
Eric T. Olson (Sheffield) entwickelt in seinem Beitrag eine Theorie des Animalis-
mus, die darin besteht, dass wir als menschliche Personen Tiere sind. Olson grenzt
sich damit von der philosophischen Tradition – etwa Platon, Descartes und Kant –
ab, welche die Auffassung vertreten hat, dass wir als Menschen keine Tiere seien.
Die Position des Animalismus erhält ihr Profil in Abgrenzung zu Theorien, die
die personale Identität in der Kontinuität ihres Selbstbewusstseins – der psycho-
logischen Identität – begründet sehen. Psychologische Identität kann aber nach
Olson unsere Identitätsbedingungen nicht angemessen beschreiben. Wir sind nach
Olson also durchaus Personen, aber nicht wesentlich, sondern vielmehr »Tierper-
sonen«, d. h. wesentlich Tiere, die personale Eigenschaften haben, an denen jedoch
nicht unsere Existenzbedingungen hängen. Olson grenzt sich diesbezüglich von
der Konstitutionstheorie Lynne Rudder Bakers ab. Denn die Konstitutionstheorie
kann nach Olson zum einen nicht erklären, wie es möglich ist, dass sich der die
Person konstituierende tierische Organismus qualitativ von der konstituierten Per-
son unterscheiden soll; zum anderen kann die Konstitutionstheorie nicht plausibel
machen, warum Tiere nicht denken können sollten, sondern nur Personen.
Ralf Stoecker (Bielefeld) geht in seinem Beitrag im Ausgang von Max Frischs
Roman Stiller sowie von John Lockes Philosophie der Frage nach, wie eng die Iden-
tität von Personen damit zusammenhängt, dass wir sie für ihr Leben verantwort-
lich machen. Stoecker problematisiert dabei Lockes Auffassung, wonach personale
Identität in einer psychologischen Erinnerungsrelation und in der Reichweite des
Gewissens bestehe. Er argumentiert schließlich dafür, dass die Frage nach persona-
ler Identität nicht unbedingt einer ontologischen Antwort bedarf. Denn ein solcher
Versuch führt nach Stoecker nicht selten in unauflösbare Paradoxien. Personale
Identität ist denn auch keine Frage der Ontologie, sondern von Berechenbarkeit
und Kontrolle. Sie hängt mit unserem praktischen Interesse zusammen, mit ande-
ren Personen vernünftig zusammenzuleben.
Der zweite Teil des Sammelbandes fokussiert auf die Art und Weise, wie Per-
sonen existieren und fragt nach der spezifischen Lebensform der Person: Inwiefern
lässt sich ein Begriff personalen Lebens entwickeln, der ihre theoretische und prak-
tische Dimension gleichermaßen verständlich werden lässt?
Marya Schechtman (Chicago) versucht in ihrem Beitrag, eine Konzeption der
Person zu entwickeln, die den Einseitigkeiten des Animalismus auf der einen und
der Bewusstseinstheorie auf der anderen entgeht. Während die Anhänger des Ani-
malismus zu sehr auf die metaphysische und biologische Identität der Person fokus-
sieren, ist die Locke’sche Tradition zu sehr mit der psychologischen und ethischen
Dimension der Person befasst. Schechtmans alternativer Vorschlag dazu grenzt sich
auch von Bakers Konstitutionstheorie ab, insofern diese nach Schechtman immer
noch der Locke’schen Tradition anhängt. Schechtman argumentiert stattdessen
für einen basalen Begriff der menschlichen Lebensform, der den animalistischen
Einwänden gegen die Locke’sche Theorie entgehen kann. Im Gegensatz zur Lo-
cke’schen forensischen Theorie erlaubt es Schechtmans weiter gefasste Theorie10 Jörg Noller
auch, Kleinkinder und Demenzpatienten als Personen anzusehen. Denn sie fokus-
siert nicht nur auf moralisch relevante Eigenschaften und Vermögen, die eine Per-
son auszeichnen, sondern auf die generelle Form einer diese umgebenden sozialen
und kulturellen Infrastruktur, die sich nicht in bestimmten subjektiven Fähigkeiten
erschöpft. Die Eigenart dieser Infrastruktur besteht darin, dass sie allen Menschen –
auch Kleinkindern und Demenzpatienten – einen Personstatus zuspricht. Gemäß
einer solchen »Person Life View« sind Menschen wesentlich Personen und nicht
menschliche Organismen, wie der Animalismus behauptet.
Dieter Sturma (Bonn) argumentiert in seinem Beitrag gegen eliminative Theo-
rien, die in wissenschaftlichen Beschreibungen der Welt keinen Raum für die
Existenz und Bedeutung von Personen lassen. Stattdessen argumentiert er für
einen integrativen Naturalismus, der neben der Welt der kausalen Ursachen auch
eine Welt der Gründe (»space of reasons«) anerkennt, und diese nicht weiter auf
wirkursächliche Phänomene reduziert. Sturma entwickelt dazu im Anschluss an
Gilbert Ryle den Begriff einer menschlichen Lebensform, die sich nur durch ›dichte
Beschreibungen‹ (»thick descriptions«) angemessen fassen lässt, insofern sie die
immanenten Bedeutungen, normativen Tatsachen und Bezugsrelationen der per-
sonalen Lebenswelt berücksichtigt.
Jörg Noller (München) entwickelt im Ausgang von John Lockes Identitätstheorie
einen Begriff der personalen Lebensform, der in kritischer und konstruktiver Ab-
sicht an die neueren Theorien des Animalismus (Olson), der Konstitutionstheorie
(Baker) und der Person Life View (Schechtman) anknüpft. Er argumentiert dafür,
dass lebendiger Körper und Person nicht wie im Animalismus identifiziert wer-
den dürfen, und auch nicht als verschiedene Entitäten einer Konstitutionseinheit
aufgefasst werden sollten. Stattdessen gilt es, einen Begriff personalen Lebens zu
entwickeln, welches das bloß tierische Leben transformiert. Es sind demnach nicht
besondere Eigenschaften, die zum tierischen Organismus hinzutreten müssen, da-
mit eine Person entsteht, sondern es ist die Form des Lebens, die Personen zu
Personen macht. Diese personale Lebensform ist nichts Individuelles, sondern we-
sentlich abhängig von einer intersubjektiven Gemeinschaft, die in Anknüpfung an
Schechtmans Begriff des »person space« weiter normativ und ontologisch analy-
siert werden kann.
Matthias Wunsch (Ulm /Kassel) entwickelt in seinem Beitrag eine alternative
Theorie zu Auffassungen der Person, die diese entweder nur anhand von psycho-
logischen und mentalen Fähigkeiten oder aber ausschließlich biologischen Eigen-
schaften und Artzugehörigkeit bestimmen. Wunsch argumentiert dafür, dass der
Personbegriff durch eine deskriptiv-normative Doppelnatur ausgezeichnet ist. Von
besonderer Bedeutung sind dabei die Begriffe der Würde und der Lebensform. Nur
Personen besitzen eine absolute Würde – ein Kriterium, welches nach Wunsch ein-
deutiger ist als die Orientierung an mentalen Eigenschaften. Wunsch argumentiert,
dass dem Statusbegriff von Personen – dass alle Menschen eine absolute Würde
besitzen – nicht über ihre biologischen oder psychologischen Eigenschaften ent-Einführung: Dimensionen der Person 11
sprochen werden kann. Eine Entität ist insofern eine Person, als sie in normativer
Hinsicht den Status eines Würdewesens besitzt und deskriptiv die Lebensform des
Menschen teilt.
Der dritte Teil des Sammelbandes ist der Subjektivität der Person gewidmet:
Wie verhalten sich Personen zu sich selbst, und wie haben sie sich zu verstehen?
Wie verhalten sie sich darin zu anderen Subjekten, und auf welche Weise wird
Intersubjektivität gestiftet?
Katja Crone (Dortmund) betrachtet in ihrem Beitrag kritisch die Theorie der
narrativen Selbstkonstitution, wonach Personen ihre Identität durch kohärente
Erzählungen bilden. Zwar gesteht Crone narrativen Ansätzen zu, wichtige Erkennt-
nisse über das Selbstverständnis von Personen erlangen zu können. Doch besteht
ihre Grenze darin, nicht-narrative Charakteristika von Personen, die ihr biographi-
sches Selbstverständnis betreffen, auszuklammern. Um dies nachzuweisen, kon-
zentriert sich Crone zum einen auf den für das biographische Selbstverständnis
unverzichtbaren Modus des präreflexiven Erlebens und zum anderen auf die Rolle
des Bewusstseins numerischer Identität über die Zeit hinweg.
Dan Zahavi (Kopenhagen) argumentiert in seinem Beitrag für einen Begriff
von Selbstsein, welches phänomenal basal bei allen Personen vorkommt. Eine so
verstandene Subjektivität ist nichts statisch und unveränderlich Vorliegendes, etwa
im Sinne einer cartesischen res cogitans, sondern vielmehr Wandlungen unterwor-
fen, die das Ergebnis sozialer intersubjektiver Interaktion sind. Zahavi weist dabei
Einwände gegen die Existenz von Selbstsein zurück, wie sie in jüngster Zeit etwa
von Thomas Metzinger vertreten wurden. Gegen die Auffassung eines substanzi-
ellen Selbst bringt Zahavi die Position des erlebnisfundierten Minimalismus ins
Spiel. Diese besteht in der Auffassung, dass Selbstsein eine inhärente Eigenschaft
bewussten Lebens ist. Erlebnisse kommen demnach nicht nur in einem Subjekt vor,
sondern sie sind immer auch für das Subjekt wirklich, insofern sie perspektivisch
gebunden sind. Am Beispiel des Phänomens der Einfühlung zeigt Zahavi dann,
dass die Unterscheidung zwischen Selbst und Anderer nicht strikt und absolut ist,
sondern sich vermitteln lässt. Diese Einsicht führt Zahavi schließlich zum Begriff
und Phänomen eines ko-konstituierten Wir, welches ein Subjekt nicht von außer-
halb, sondern innerlich durch Fremdidentifikation und wechselseitiges Einfühlen
erfährt.
Der vierte Teil des Sammelbandes befasst sich schließlich mit der Ethik der
Person: Worin besteht ihre Würde, die der Verfasstheit menschlicher Personen
angemessen ist?
Michael Quante (Münster) untersucht in seinem Beitrag die Frage, auf welche
Weise die Endlichkeit des Menschen in die philosophischen Konzeptionen von
Autonomie und Würde integriert werden kann. Er vertritt dabei die These, dass
dies insofern möglich ist, als Autonomie und Würde auf die personale Lebensform
des Menschen bezogen werden. Dabei muss die Würde von menschlichen Personen
so verstanden werden, dass sie auch die Persönlichkeit des jeweiligen Individuums12 Jörg Noller
als konstitutiven Aspekt einschließt, was Quante als »personale Würde« bezeich-
net. Diese umfasst neben dem allgemeinen Merkmal eines aktivischen praktischen
Selbstverhältnisses auch die individuelle und konkrete Ausgestaltung und Bildung
der Personalität in ihrer jeweiligen Biografie. Als solche existierten die menschli-
che Personalität und die je individuelle Persönlichkeit nur innerhalb von sozialen
Kontexten. Die personale Lebensform des Menschen wird erst durch intersubjek-
tive und institutionalisierte Anerkennungsverhältnisse realisiert. Quantes Beitrag
kann damit als begrifflicher Rahmen dienen, der Frage weiter nachzugehen, wie
Personen im Kontext der Pflege ethisch angemessen begegnet werden kann.
Die meisten der folgenden Beiträge wurden im Rahmen des vom Lehrstuhl I für
Philosophie organisierten »Münchner Philosophischen Kolloquiums« zum Thema
»Was sind und wie existieren Personen?« an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
präsentiert und diskutiert. Darüber hinaus wurde der Band ermöglicht durch ein
von der DFG gefördertes wissenschaftliches Netzwerk zum Thema »Ontologien
personaler Identität« (NO 1240/3-1).
Der Herausgeber dankt Frau Inken Titz M.A. und Herrn Philip Zogelmann M.A.
für die Mithilfe bei der Redaktion des Bandes.Teil I Ontologie der Person
Lynne Rudder Baker
What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist?
The topic of this Colloquium, »What are Persons, and how do they exist?,« was
outlined by the organizers of the Colloquium as follows: »We use the term ›person‹
not only for naturally existing individual human beings, but also for non-natural
entities such as juridical persons, dramatis personae, and the Person of God, without
considering [these uses] as mere equivocations on the word [person]. This raises the
question of what persons really are, and how they exist if they are not conceived as
merely natural beings, but also not explicitly as non-natural entities.«
This formulation is an intriguing one. On my view, what persons really are are
human persons, who evolved without human intervention; but, as you say, there
is no equivocation in calling dramatis personae, etc., ›persons‹. The reason that
there is no equivocation is that the application of the term ›person‹ for entities
that did not evolve naturally is a case of what Aristotle called proshen homonymy
(Categories 1003a35). Proshen homonymy is the phenomenon of homonyms that get
their meaning by reference to a central paradigm case. Aristotle used the example
of ›healthy.‹ We may speak of healthy food, healthy complexion, and healthy urine;
but to understand these locutions, we must understand ›healthy organism.‹ The
›focal‹ meaning of ›healthy‹ comes from its application to organisms: If you do not
understand what a healthy organism is, you will not understand what healthy food
(food that conduces to the health of an organism) is or what healthy complexion
(complexion that indicates a healthy organism) is. 1
›Human person‹ is like ›healthy‹. If you do not know what a human person
is, you will not understand what dramatis personae are. Dramatis personae are
characters played by natural, human persons. Juridical persons are entities deemed
by the law to have some of the rights of a person. So in both cases, there is a
linguistic difference, an asymmetry, between the »anchoring« or independent term,
sometimes called the ›focal meaning‹ (›healthy organism‹, ›human person‹) and the
»tethered« or dependent terms (›healthy food‹, ›juridical person‹), but there is no
equivocation.
The meaning of ›healthy‹ in its tethered or dependent use depends on its mean-
ing in the anchoring or independent use; similarly, the meaning of ›person‹ in its
tethered or dependent use depends on its meaning in its anchoring use. Just as
there is a big difference between the way in which food is healthy and the way in
which organisms are healthy, so there is a big difference between the way in which
juridical persons are persons and we are persons. There would be no healthy food if
1 I am grateful to my late colleague and friend, Gareth B. Matthews, for this point.16 Lynne Rudder Baker
there were no organisms, and there would be no juridical persons if there were no
natural persons. We conceive of the other persons – we might call them ›persons by
convention‹ – in relation to natural persons like ourselves.
The one example that does not fit neatly into this scheme is God: Unlike us finite
persons – who come into existence at various times – God, if He exists, does not
come into existence at all: He is eternal. The use of ›Person‹ to refer to God stemmed
from the word to refer to the masks worn in ancient Greek and Latin rituals. Even so,
today we use ›Person of God‹ to indicate that some of God’s attributes are analogous
to ours. The Person of God refers to a divine being that has certain of the mental
properties – or analogues of them – of a natural person (e. g., will and intellect).
Linguistically speaking, our use of ›Person‹ to refer to God depends on our use
of ›person‹ to refer to natural, human persons; however, ontologically speaking,
assuming that God exists, His really being a person (as opposed to His merely being
called a person) is ontologically prior to us and to everything else. But I suspect that
the word ›person‹ in ›Person of God‹ adds only the presumption of intellect and
will to the simple word ›God‹, where ›intellect‹ and ›will‹ are anchored in the use of
those terms to refer to human persons. 2 So, we can treat ›Person‹ in ›Person of God‹
as another case of proshen, where God is a person by analogy to us.
If all this is right, to answer the title question, »What Are Persons, and How Do
They Exist?,« the only questions that we need to investigate concern the nature of
natural persons like ourselves. We do not need a separate investigation of the other
kind of entities that we call ›persons‹ – the persons by convention or in the case of
God, persons by analogy. We do not need to investigate them separately, because
they are characterized in terms of their relation to natural persons like us.
What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist?
I’ll start with the second half of the question: We may well have evolved naturally,
with or without divine help, but I do not believe that we can read off what we are
most fundamentally from how we got here. My interest here is ontological. That is,
my interest focuses on questions of what genuinely exists, questions of what must
be mentioned in a complete inventory of the world.
What kind of entities are we fundamentally? I’ll develop my view in contrast
to two other influential views. Until recently, the prevalent answer to the question,
What is a Person?, has been that we (human beings, persons) are or have immaterial
souls; I’ll call this view ›Immaterialism‹. But the modern synthesis in biology makes
it clear that we are continuous with the rest of the animal kingdom. So, today
2 If the word ›person‹ when applied to God derives from ancient words for ›mask,‹ so does
›person‹ when applied to us. In today’s usage, the focal meaning of ›person‹ is ›human person.‹What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? 17
immaterialism is challenged by the view that we are just primates, one kind of
primate among others – Animalism, this view is called.
I believe that both of these views – Immaterialism and Animalism – are inade-
quate: According to Immaterialism, each of us either is or has an immaterial soul;
but – as critics as early as those of Descartes were quick to point out – there is no
hint of how immaterial souls are to be linked to organic bodies. Immaterialism falls
short by not showing how we with our (alleged) souls are related to the animal
kingdom. Animalism, by contrast, takes each of us to be identical to an animal:
there is no fundamental difference between us and other primates. However, if I
am essentially this animal standing here, then I could not exist without this organic
body; in particular, I could not survive replacement of my organic body – this
animal – by a nonorganic body.
We all know by now of the stunning innovations in biotechnology – not just
artificial hips, knees and hearts, but also cochlear implants, and brain-machine
interfaces that allow totally paralyzed people to operate robotic limbs with their
thoughts. A person can survive replacement of organic bodily parts by many kinds
of increasingly sophisticated artificial devices. At some point, computerized re-
placements of parts of an animal will be so extensive and so integrated that the
resulting entity will no longer be an organism, but will still be a person. It will not
be an organism, because organisms are essentially carbon-based, and these artificial
bodies will be mostly or wholly nonorganic and hence non-carbon-based. According
to Animalism, your organic body is essential to you. So, if it is possible that you can
survive without your organic body, then Animalism is false. Animalism is just not
up to the changes wrought by biotechnology.
So, neither Immaterialism, which makes our connection to the animal kingdom
a mystery, nor Animalism, which takes the particular organic bodies that we have
now to be necessary for our survival, is adequate to the nature of human beings.
We need another approach besides immaterialism and animalism, and I believe
that I have one. I shall defend a view – call it ›Constitutionalism‹ – that skirts the
problems both of Immaterialism and of Animalism. According to Constitutional-
ism, persons begin existence constituted by, but not identical to, animals, organ-
isms. The relation of constitution is a relation of unity, but not of strict identity:
When an animal constitutes a person at time t, there is a single entity at t, a-person-
constituted-by-an-animal-at-t.
Behind the idea of constitution is an Aristotelian assumption. For any x, we can
ask, What most fundamentally is x? The answer will be x’s primary kind. Everything
that exists is of exactly one primary kind – e. g., horse, cabbage, passport. A thing’s
primary kind is essential to it; it determines the thing’s persistence conditions – the
conditions under which it survives or not. 3 When something of one primary kind is
3 At least, an entity’s primary kind determines its persistence conditions when supplemented
by a determinate like ›human‹ or ›divine‹ – thus allowing a difference in persistence conditions18 Lynne Rudder Baker
in certain circumstances, something of another primary kind comes into existence.
When, say, two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom are in certain circumstances, a
new thing – a water molecule – comes into existence. Or when a piece of paper of a
certain kind is in certain circumstances, a new thing – a U. S. dollar bill – comes
into existence. Similarly, when a human organism is in certain circumstances, a
new entity – a person – comes into existence. The circumstances in which a human
organism comes to constitute a person are the development of consciousness and
intentionality – that is, a person comes into existence when a human organism
develops the ability to support a rudimentary first-person perspective.
Persons and animals are of fundamentally different kinds: Animals are essen-
tially organic; persons are essentially bearers of what I call ›first-person perspec-
tives.‹ Any body, organic or not, that can constitute a person must be able to support
a first-person perspective.
Constitutionalism differs from both Immaterialism and Animalism. Unlike Im-
materialism, Constitutionalism is a view that shows how we persons are related
to the animal kingdom: persons are essentially embodied, and we begin existence
constituted by organisms. Unlike Animalism, which regards a person as just another
primate, Constitutionalism is consonant with unending progress in biotechnology;
our relation to our bodies is not the timeless and necessary relation of identity
posited by Animalism, but the time-bound and contingent relation of constitution.
However, what distinguishes us from all other entitites is that we are of a kind that
develops what I call ›robust first-person perspectives.‹
On my view, the first-person perspective is a two-stage dispositional property.
First-person perspectives have rudimentary and robust stages. Very roughly, the
distinction between the rudimentary and the robust stages corresponds to the
difference between consciousness and self-consciousness. Before explaining the
two stages of the first-person perspective, I want to list some features that do not
set us human persons apart from the rest of nature.
First, we, like the rest of the animal kingdom, evolved via natural selection –
perhaps guided evolution, as Plantinga insists, or perhaps unguided evolution, as
Dennett and many biologists insist. It would take us too far afield to argue here
about whether belief in God is compatible with natural selection. So, I remain
neutral on this matter here; the present point is that we need posit no special
beginning to account for our existence.
Second, persons and nonhuman animals don’t differ in what we’re made up of at
the beginning of our existence: both persons and nonhuman animals have the same
kinds of organs, made of the same kinds of carbon-based cells. It has been estimated
that we share 98.6 % of our genetic material with chimpanzees (Povinelli 2004).
between human and divine persons. This qualification was prompted by an objection by Alfredo
Tomasetta.What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? 19
Third, we, like other species, are social beings. There is empirical support for
the social character of primates, including us. The psychologist Michael Tomasello
gave cognitive tests to two-year-old human beings, and to adult orangutans and
chimpanzees, and found that the only places in which the human beings outscored
the nonhuman primates were on tests that measured social skills: social learning,
communicating, and reading the intentions of others. (Tomasello 2008)
Fourth, we, like other primates, are problem-solvers. There is voluminous lit-
erature on nonhuman animals’ solving problems. For example, Scientific American
(2006) reported on work that showed that bonobos and orangutans not only can use
tools to get a fruit treat from a mechanical apparatus, but also they can plan ahead. 4
I take it that nonhuman animals’ problem-solving ability indicates that the
nonhuman animals have consciousness and intentionality – and on my view, en-
tities with consciousness and intentionality have the first stage of the first-person
perspective – what I call a ›rudimentary first-person perspective‹. An entity with a
rudimentary first-person perspective can perceive and interact with things in the
environment. Moreover, like most people, I take human infants to be persons who
have rudimentary first-person perspectives – just as many nonhuman animals have
rudimentary first-person perspectives.
What, then, sets infants, who are human persons, apart from animals? How can
human infants be persons, but chimpanzees not be persons, despite the similarity
of DNA and the fact that both kinds of beings (human infants and chimpanzees)
have rudimentary first-person perspectives. What’s the difference between them?
I’ll give a preliminary answer here, and answer more fully at the end of the talk.
Constitutionalism offers two kinds of answers: One answer is of mainly technical
interest. The technical answer is that only persons have first-person perspectives
essentially; and animals that have first-person perspectives, have them only con-
tingently. (The animal exists as a fetus before developing a rudimentary first-
person perspective, and so does not have a rudimentary first-person perspective
essentially; the person doesn’t come into existence until constituted by the animal
with a rudimentary first-person perspective, which the person then has essentially.)
I am going to pass over this first answer to the question of what makes us special,
because I think that the second answer is more revealing of the kind of thing that
we most fundamentally are.
The second answer to the question of what’s the difference between human
infants and chimpanzees in virtue of which the infant, but not the chimpanzee, is
4 After being trained to use a tool to get a fruit treat from a mechanical apparatus, apes were
given tools, some suitable and some unsuitable for the task of getting the fruit; next, they were
taken out of the test room into a waiting room and brought back to the test room after an hour.
Significantly more often than predicted by chance, the apes took with them a suitable tool for
getting the treat and brought it back with them after the waiting period. The apes, the article
said, »selected, transported, and saved a suitable tool not because they currently needed it, but
because they would need it in the future.« (Biello 2006)20 Lynne Rudder Baker
a person is this: Human infants (but not chimpanzees) are of a kind that typically
develops what I call a ›robust first-person perspective.‹ Like chimpanzees, human
infants have a rudimentary first-person perspective; but unlike chimpanzees, hu-
man infants also have a second-order capacity to develop a robust stage when they
master a natural language and acquire a self-concept, where a second-order capac-
ity is a capacity to develop a capacity. Let’s look more closely at the rudimentary
and robust stages of the first-person perspective, beginning with the rudimentary
stage.
The Rudimentary First-Person Perspective
Here are three important features of a rudimentary first-person perspective: (1) It is
a perspective. A perspective is not an object; it is not something that one occupies.
To have a perspective is to be disposed to perceive the world from a particular point
of view. (2) Even the rudimentary first-person perspective is first-personal: it does
not explicitly refer to a subject (first-personally or otherwise) but yields the default
location of the conscious subject, the source of her perceptual field, the location
from which the subject perceives the environment that she interacts with. (3) A
rudimentary first-person perspective does not require linguistic or conceptual abil-
ities. So, entities that lack concepts (e. g., human infants and nonhuman animals)
may both enjoy rudimentary first-person perspectives. (I should say that I think that
concepts are tied to natural language; if there were no language, there would be no
concepts.)
As I mentioned, there are two conditions for an entity to have a rudimentary
first-person perspective: consciousness and intentionality. An entity has conscious-
ness only if it is capable of being conscious of something. The term »perspective« is
appropriate, because all consciousness is perspectival. What intentionality adds to
sentience is minimal agency, goal-directed behavior.
An entity with only a rudimentary first-person perspective has mental states,
but no self-concept or self-understanding; the entity simply stands at the origin
of that part of reality that it can perceive and interact with. All its perceptual
mental states are first-personal by default, but the bearer of those mental states
does not think of them as first-personal. (An entity with a rudimentary first-person
perspective just scratches where it itches, not where another entity itches.) The
hallmark of a rudimentary first-person perspective is the ability to perceive and to
act intentionally upon the world, without having a first-person concept of oneself,
a self-concept. Now turn to the robust first-person perspective.What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? 21
The Robust First-Person Perspective
A robust first-person perspective is a conceptual capacity acquired when a toddler
learns a natural language; it is the capacity to think of oneself as oneself from
the first-person. It is a capacity not only to think, ›I’m hungry,‹ but also to think
›I wish that I were not hungry,‹ where the second occurrence of ›I‹ signals your
conceiving of yourself in the first-person; you, thought of in a first-person way, are
part of the content of your thought. Although persons share with higher nonhuman
animals rudimentary first-person perspectives, only persons ever develop robust
first-person perspectives. (Hence, the important difference between human infants
and chimpanzees: human infants are overwhelmingly likely to develop robust first-
person perspectives, but chimpanzees never do.)
Let me illustrate the robust first-person perspective with a little fantasy that I
have used before: Suppose that Jane Jones is a billionaire hedge-fund manager who,
naturally enough, believes that she – she herself – is wealthy. (She has a robust first-
person perspective.) One day, she is abducted, bopped on the head, and left on the
side of the road in Vermont. When she recovers, she cannot remember her prior
life, but her first-person perspective is as robust as ever; she can conceive of herself
as herself and wonder if she’ll ever regain memory of who she is. She squeezes out
a living on a sheep farm in Vermont, and regularly reads in the newspaper about
J. Jones, the missing hedge-fund manager. Jones thus comes to believe that Jones,
the hedge-fund manager, is wealthy, but that she herself is not wealthy. Then our
sheep-farming Jones wins the Vermont lottery; at the same time, she reads in the
newspaper, that due to mismanagement, the hedge-fund that Jones used to run has
crumbled, and that Jones is now a pauper. Still not believing that she herself is Jones,
Jones believes that she herself is wealthy (since she won the lottery), but she does
not believe that Jones, whose fortune has been lost, is wealthy.
So, after her abduction, Jones believes that Jones is wealthy, but not that she
herself is wealthy; and after winning the lottery and reading of the hedge-fund’s
demise, Jones believes that she herself is wealthy, but not that Jones is wealthy.
Therefore, Jones’s belief that Jones is wealthy is not equivalent to Jones’s belief
that she herself is wealthy since either belief can be true when the other is false.
The robust first-person perspective is the ability to conceive of oneself as oneself
in the first-person and thus to make the distinction between thinking of someone
who happens to be oneself and thinking of someone as oneself in the first person.
(Baker 1981)
The point here is that, whether she knows it or not, Jones refers to herself by
›Jones‹ just as surely as she refers to herself by ›I‹; so the difference between her
saying or thinking »I believe that Jones is wealthy« and »I believe that I am wealthy«
is not a difference in who or what is being referred to. The difference is that the
thought that Jones expresses by »I believe that I am wealthy« – is a different thought
(with different truth-conditions) from the thought that she expresses by »I believe22 Lynne Rudder Baker
that Jones is wealthy.« The first (»I believe that I am wealthy«) but not the second
(»I believe that Jones is wealthy«) manifests Jones’s capacity to conceive of herself
as herself in the first-person.
A robust first-person perspective is a conceptual capacity the exercise of which
requires mastery of first-personal language. It is directly manifested by someone’s
entertaining thoughts like, ›I am glad that I am a philosopher,‹ or ›I wonder how
I’m going to die.‹ No name or description can replace the second occurrence of ›I‹
in any of these sentences without changing its meaning. When I wonder how I’m
going to die, I’m not wondering how Lynne Baker, or the person writing, is going to
die; I wonder how I am going to die, where the second ›I‹ expresses a self-concept.
In order to acquire a self-concept, a language-learner needs to have a battery of
empirical concepts – hungry, toy, mama, and so on. Acquiring the empirical con-
cepts requires learning a natural language with words like ›hungry‹, ›toy‹, ›mama‹,
etc. And one could not learn these words unless one were in a social and linguistic
environment. Our being social entities enables us to learn natural language, and
with it, to acquire self-concepts and an explosion of further conceptual capacities.
(Baker 2013)
I mention this to show how far I am from Descartes, who took for granted that
if he were alone in the world except for an Evil Demon who was deceiving him,
he could entertain the thought that he was sitting in front of the fire, and that the
Evil Demon might be deceiving him. On my view, if Descartes had been alone in the
universe except for an Evil Demon, he would not have had the conceptual resources
to suppose that he was sitting in front of the fire, much less that he might be
deceived. Without a language-dependent robust first-person perspective, Descartes
could not have entertained the thought, »I may be deceived that I am sitting in front
of the fire.« (Without others to teach and correct him, how would he even have
acquired the concept of a fire, or of sitting?) So, my idea of a robust first-person
perspective is decidedly non-Cartesian.
How We (the Kind Person) Came to Be
We can tell a credible evolutionary story about how animals developed to the point
of constituting persons. It is easy to see how consciousness and intentionality, the
ingredients in the rudimentary first-person perspective, could have been produced
by natural selection. Mutations that produced whatever neural patterns that can
constitute consciousness and goal-directed behavior would surely have enhanced
chances of survival. Animals that are conscious and that behave in goal-directed
ways have more behavioral flexibility, and hence are likely more adaptive, than
otherwise-similar animals that lack consciousness and intentionality. Species by
species, animals with higher levels of consciousness and more fine-grained inten-
tionality, are likely to have an evolutionary advantage.What Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? 23
So perhaps there was an evolutionary period during which there were animals
with rudimentary first-person perspectives, but no robust first-person perspectives.
Perhaps there were hominids, but not yet persons. (The young hominids had rudi-
mentary first-person perspectives, but not yet a second-order capacity to develop
robust first-person perspectives.) There were social beings, but not yet linguistic
beings. When groups of hominids invented language, and brains evolved to the
point of being able to support a robust first-person perspective, a new kind of
being came into existence, a person: perhaps not biologically new, but ontologically
new – a being with new kinds of causal powers (for example, causal powers to learn
complicated syntax and to devise complex conventions that govern complicated
transactions, like the transfer of property). My conjecture is that the acquisition
of language by our species made an ontological difference in the kind of beings
that there are: persons-constituted-by-animals, who have first-person perspectives
essentially, and who typically acquire robust first-person perspectives. We human
persons are a kind linked to the animal kingdom by our ancestry and rudimentary
first-person perspectives; but what makes us unique are our robust first-person
perspectives.
How We (You and I, Individual Persons) Came to Be
Constitutionalism, among other things, is an account of how particular entities of
various kinds come into existence. Everything we know of that came into existence
after the Big Bang came into existence gradually – from the solar system to organ-
isms to automobiles coming off an assembly line. So, I take vagueness to be inherent
in our world.
And so it is with persons. There is not an exact moment when a person comes
into being. When a late-term human fetus develops to the point of having a rudi-
mentary first-person perspective, it comes to constitute a person, who has a first-
person perspective (only rudimentary at this stage) essentially. The result, as we
have seen, is a person-constituted-by-an-animal. The unity provided by constitution
allows the fetal organism to hand off, as it were, the first-person perspective to
the person that the organism is beginning to constitute. It is as if, by passing
off the rudimentary first-person perspective, the constituting organism cedes its
ontological supremacy to the person it comes to constitute.
Now we can see how a human infant is a person, but a chimpanzee is not a per-
son, despite the fact that they are biologically similar, and both have rudimentary
first-person perspectives. They are ontologically distinct: The difference is that the
human infant, but not the chimpanzee, essentially has a remote or second-order
capacity to develop a robust first-person perspective.
Let me explain this remote capacity to develop a robust first-person perspective.
A normal toddler has a remote capacity to ride a bicycle; she has a capacity to24 Lynne Rudder Baker
develop the capacity to ride a bicycle. Once she learns how to ride a bicycle, she
has an in-hand capacity to ride a bicycle. Analogously, a normal human infant has
a remote capacity to develop a robust first-person perspective. Once she develops
a robust first-person perspective (via a self-concept), she has an in-hand capacity
to conceive of herself as herself in the first-person. Since a robust first-person per-
spective is unique to persons, and persons are distinct from animals, a chimpanzee
or other organism that does not constitute a person has no such remote capacity to
develop a robust first-person perspective.
So, according to Constitutionalism, a human infant – but not, say, a human
fetus that does not yet constitute a person – has a remote capacity to develop a
robust first-person perspective. One does not have a remote capacity to develop a
robust first-person perspective until she has an in-hand rudimentary first-person
perspective. Again: Infant human persons not only have a rudimentary first-person
perspective, but also have a remote capacity to develop a robust first-person per-
spective: They are of a kind that typically develops the in-hand capacity for a robust
first-person perspective when they learn a language. (Baker 2013)
So, to sum up: the difference between a human infant – who is a person – and
a chimpanzee – who is not a person – is that the human infant – the person – is
of a kind whose members typically have the capacity to conceive of themselves as
themselves in the first-person; chimpanzees are not members of such a kind.
Why Does a Robust First-Person Perspective Make an
Ontological Difference?
Why don’t we just say that we persons are identical to animals who have this special
feature – namely a capacity to develop a robust first-person perspective? Well, there
are at least two reasons:
First, although I’m happy to leave biology to the biologists, my account is onto-
logical; and I see no reason to suppose that ontology should recapitulate biology.
The robust first-person perspective is crucial, as I’ll illustrate in a moment, to
civilization, but does not seem so important to biologists. One of my goals is to
regard the animal kingdom as seamless, with no sharp breaks. To suppose that
certain animals – human animals – have a unique feature which is unimportant to
biologists but crucial to us and to characteristic human activities seems not only
to split the animal kingdom, but also to make a split in a way unsanctioned by
biologists.
Second, what makes something fundamentally the kind of thing that it is is not
always what it’s made of (e. g., organic material), but rather what it can do. (What
makes something a clock is that it is intended to tell time, regardless of what it is
made of and of the mechanism that runs it.) What makes something a person is itsWhat Are Persons, and How Do They Exist? 25
essentially having a rudimentary first-person perspective and a remote capacity to
develop a robust first-person perspective. This capacity is a nonqualitative disposi-
tional property, which is sui generis, not reducible to any third-person properties. A
robust first-person perspective brings with it a host of new kinds of causal powers –
with significant enough differences, I believe, to support the ontological uniqueness
of persons. Let me illustrate this point.
Robust first-person perspectives are implicated in many of the characteristic
activities of persons – activities in virtue of which they make contracts, celebrate
anniversaries, have the ambition to become Miss America, become philanthropists
who want new buildings named after them, keep diaries, and so on. We could
not even have many of the thoughts that we have without robust first-person
perspectives. Even trivial thoughts like »I wish that I were a movie star« are di-
rect manifestations of a robust first-person perspective. No one could have such a
thought unless she could conceive of herself as herself from the first person.
Let me just list some of the features that we persons share and do not share with
non-person-constituting animals.
– We share with several species the ability to communicate with conspecifics; but
only we persons have a fully articulated language with resources for considering
necessity and possibility. Only we worry about explaining modality.
– We share with several species the trait of having a perspective on our environ-
ments; but only we persons have rich inner lives, filled with counterfactuals
(»... if only I had ... «).
– We share with several species methods of rational inquiry (The dog sniffs around
where he saw the bone being buried yesterday and digs there); but only we
persons deliberate about what to do and attempt to rank preferences and goals,
and try to resolve conflicts among them (and thus be rational agents).
– We share with several species activities like self-grooming; but only we persons
have self-narratives.
– We share with several species the ability to make things that we need (for ex-
ample, nests), but only we persons make things that we don’t need (for example,
enough nuclear warheads to eliminate the human race many times over).
– We share with several species the property of having social organization, but only
we persons have war crimes, international courts, and human rights.
– We share with other species the property of having a rudimentary first-person
perspective, but only we persons can be moral or responsible agents.
All these differences between persons and other entities rest on our having ro-
bust first-person perspectives. Robust first-person perspectives bring with them
a cascade of new kinds of abilities: We can plan for our futures; we can deceive
ourselves; we can try to reform; we can go on diets; we can have rich or empty inner
lives. And on and on. With respect to the range of what we can do (from trying to
control our destinies to fantasizing about the future) and with respect to the moralSie können auch lesen
