Persons and Bodies

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.

• This is Baker’s third book in the philosophy of mind - her two others were well received. Explaining Attitudes (1995) is her previous book in the series • Develops a new theory of human persons in the philosophy of mind • Gives an answer to questions such as ‘What is a person?’ and ‘What is the relation between a person and his or her body?’

Preface; Part I. The Metaphysical Background: 1. Persons in the material world; 2. The very idea of constitution; 3. The first-person perspective; Part II. The Constitution View Explained: 4. The constitution view of human persons; 5. Personal identity over time; 6. The importance of being a person; Part III. The Constitution View Defended: 7. The coherence of the idea of material constitution; 8. The coherence of the constitution view; 9. In favor of the constitution view.