(a) Why does Strawson consider person to be a primitive concept ? What implication does it have for the mind-body dualism ?…

(a) Strawson's concept of the person and mind-body dualism

In Individuals (1959) Strawson argues that the concept of a person is logically primitive: it is not to be analysed as a compound of a mind and a body, or as a body with a mind attached. A person is a type of entity to which both states of consciousness and corporeal characteristics (P-predicates and M-predicates) are equally ascribed, such as "is in pain" and "weighs 70 kg". Reasons for primitiveness: Ascribing a state of consciousness to oneself makes sense only if one can also ascribe it to others on the basis of behavioural criteria. P-predicates have the same meaning in both uses, so the subject must be the kind of thing that is both observable and conscious. The Cartesian view makes the ego a pure subject, but one cannot identify a pure ego apart from a body, so the Cartesian cannot explain what makes experiences his own. The "no-ownership" theory, that experiences belong to no one, fails for the same reason, since an experience cannot be individuated without the person who has it. Implications. The person is logically prior to the mind and the body; "mind" and "body" are derived, and treating them as two substances is a category mistake, as Ryle too held. Cartesian substance dualism fails, and so does reductive materialism, since P-predicates are not replaceable by M-predicates. Criticism: it states what our concept is, not what reality is; it leaves survival after death and the unity of consciousness open, and functionalists say it only relocates the problem.

(b) Russell and "The present king of France is bald"

The sentence looks like a subject-predicate statement about a king, yet there is no king of France. If a name's meaning is its bearer, the sentence should be meaningless; yet it is understood. Meinong said the king subsists though he does not exist, which Russell rejected as an inflated ontology and as violating the law of contradiction. In On Denoting (1905) Russell treats "the present king of France" as a definite description, an incomplete symbol that has meaning only in context. The sentence says three things: there is a king of France; there is only one; and he is bald. Since the first is false, the whole is false, not meaningless. The negation "the king is not bald" is also not paradoxical, because the description can take wide or narrow scope; so excluded middle is saved. Critical discussion. Frege and Strawson (On Referring, 1950) hold that existence is presupposed and not asserted; when the presupposition fails the sentence neither is true nor false, a truth-value gap. Strawson adds that referring is what speakers do, not what expressions do. Donnellan's referential use and Kripke's rigid designators also show that Russell's analysis does not cover all uses of descriptions. Russell's merit is logical clarity without extra entities.

(c) Wittgenstein: from the picture theory to the use theory

The Tractatus holds that a proposition is a picture of a possible fact, sharing logical form with reality; names stand for simple objects, and sense is truth-conditions. What cannot be pictured, ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics, cannot be said. Reasons for the shift, in Philosophical Investigations: Language does many jobs besides picturing facts: commanding, asking, praying, joking. These are different language-games, so the Augustinian view that every word names an object is wrong. No single essence is common to all uses of a concept, such as "game"; there are only family resemblances. The simples and the exact logical analysis that the picture theory needs cannot be found; ordinary language is in order as it is. Meaning is public: following a rule needs public criteria, so a private language is impossible. The meaning of a word is its use in the language, rooted in shared forms of life. Critically, scholars see both continuity (limits of language, a therapeutic aim) and rupture. The use theory restores ordinary language and social practice, but risks relativism and leaves truth-conditional semantics to others.