Preface

This book lacks a Cartesian soul: its unity, like the unity of the self, consists in various connections. A central topic, however, which I think of as in one way or another running through its entirety, is the transcendent and in some ways mysterious importance of the first-person perspective to a normal human level of rational thought and behavior. This topic may be well-worn, but I hope I have something fresh to add to it. Throughout my professional life, issues of identity have been prominent in my writings, and I frequently teach courses on personal identity. About fifteen years ago, I became absorbed in John Perry’s work on the first-person pronoun and de se attitudes (the attitude, e.g., of someone’s believing that she herself did something). I was rather surprised to realize that seminal discussions of personal identity (e.g., the papers from Locke to Parfit in Perry’s own famous collection) do not address issues related to the first-person perspective. I do not mean to fault these discussions; it may actually seem quite natural to formulate conditions of personal identity in third-person terms, or even if in first-person terms, without any regard to questions about the nature of first-person reference. Nevertheless, it struck me that there must be important connections to be explored between the topic of personal identity and the topic of the first-person perspective. This motivated me to write a book in which such connections are addressed, as well as other significant connections between the first-person issue and various issues of metaphysics and epistemology.