First Person and Body Ownership

• Main Author: Sebastián Sanhueza Rodríguez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de La Serena 2019-11-01
• Series: Logos: Revista de Lingüística, Literatura y Filosofía
• Subjects: -
• Online Access: https://revistas.userena.cl/index.php/logos/article/view/1202

Bodily and mental self-ascriptions are forms of first-person thought where a subject attributes physical properties and psychological states to herself. The body-ownership view argues that a necessary and sufficient condition on such self-ascriptions is the existence of causal links between a spatio-temporal body and the self-ascribed properties or states. However, since P.F. Strawson’s influential attack, this view has been dismissed as a bad philosophical idea. The goal of this brief piece is to outline the body-ownership view and neutralise two classic lines of objection against it: on the one hand, that the stance is incoherent; and, on the other, that it has counterintuitive implications.