Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics
Strawson (Peter)
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Contents

    Introduction – 9
    PART I: PARTICULARS
  1. Bodies – 15
    … 1. The Identification of Particulars – 15
    … 2. Reidentification – 31
    … 3. Basic Particulars – 38
  2. Sounds – 59
  3. Persons – 87
  4. Monads – 117
    PART II: LOGICAL SUBJECTS
  5. Subject And Predicate (1): Two Criteria – 137
    … 1. The ‘Grammatical' Criterion – 139
    … 2. The Category Criterion – 167
    … 3. Tensions And Affinities Between These Criteria – 173
  6. Subject And Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects – 180
    … 1. The Introduction Of Particulars Into Propositions – 180
    … 2. The Introduction Of Particulars Into Discourse – 198
  7. Language Without Particulars – 214
  8. Logical Subjects And Existence – 226
    Conclusion – 246
    Index – 251

For various critiques, see:-

… "Williams (Bernard) - Strawson On Individuals",
… "Smart (Brian) - How can Persons be Ascribed M-Predicates?",
… "McCall (Catherine) - Strawson's Analysis of the Concept of Person", and
… "Van de Vate (Dwight) - Strawson's Concept of a Person".
Book Comment

University Paperbacks, Methuen, London, 1979 reprint


"Plantinga (Alvin) - Things and Persons"

Source: Review of Metaphysics 1961, 493-519


Author’s Introduction
  1. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in such traditional problems of metaphysics as the problem of universals1, of other minds, of the nature of predication, of the nature of time and space, of whether and in what sense material objects are "basic," and the like. P. F. Strawson's book "Strawson (Peter) - Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics" is an important product of that renewed interest.
  2. Exciting, able and challenging, the book is also, unhappily, obscure. It is as if Strawson were so eager to pursue the main vision, that he had neither the space nor the inclination to work out carefully the connections between the various things he says or the arguments tor his crucial contentions — connections and arguments which are often essential for an understanding of the book as a whole or the main points it makes.
  3. Since I am less than confident of my understanding of the book, I offer what follows with diffidence; and my critical remarks are to be taken in the spirit of queries, requests for clarification, rather than as settled criticisms.
  4. Individuals is divided into two parts.
    • In Part I, Strawson tries to show that there is an important sense in which material objects and persons are basic particulars.
    • In Part II "the aim is to establish and explain the connexion between the idea of a particular in general and that of an object of reference or logical subject" (11-12).
  5. Part II contains a wealth of interesting material and ingenious argumentation. Most important here, perhaps, is Strawson's attempt to provide criteria for distinguishing subjects from predicates and particulars from universals2, and to show a philosophically important link between the subject-predicate distinction and the particulars-universals3 distinction.

Paper Comment


"Strawson (Peter) - Individuals: Introduction"

Source: Strawson - Individuals


Full Text
  • Metaphysics has been often revisionary, and less often descriptive. Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to produce a better structure. The productions of revisionary metaphysics remain permanently interesting, and not only as key episodes in the history of thought. Because of their articulation, and the intensity of their partial vision, the best of them are both intrinsically admirable and of enduring philosophical utility. But this last merit can be ascribed to them only because there is another kind of metaphysics which needs no justification at all beyond that of inquiry in general. Revisionary metaphysics is at the service of descriptive metaphysics. Perhaps no actual metaphysician has ever been, both in intention and effect, wholly the one thing or the other. But we can distinguish broadly: Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley are revisionary, Aristotle and Kant descriptive. Hume, the ironist of philosophy, is more difficult to place. He appears now under one aspect, now under another.
  • The idea of descriptive metaphysics is liable to be met with scepticism. How should it differ from what is called philosophical, or logical, or conceptual analysis? It does not differ in kind of intention, but only in scope and generality. Aiming to lay bare the most general features of our conceptual structure, it can take far less for granted than a more limited and partial conceptual inquiry. Hence, also, a certain difference in method. Up to a point, the reliance upon a close examination of the actual use of words is the best, and indeed the only sure, way in philosophy. But the discriminations we can make, and the connexions we can establish, in this way, are not general enough and not far-reaching enough to meet the full metaphysical demand for understanding. For when we ask how we use this or that expression, our answers, however revealing at a certain level, are apt to assume, and not to expose, those general elements of structure which the metaphysician wants revealed. The structure he seeks does not readily display itself on the surface of language, but lies submerged. He must abandon his only sure guide when the guide cannot take him as far as he wishes to go.
  • The idea of a descriptive metaphysics might be assailed from another direction. For it might be held that metaphysics was essentially an instrument of conceptual change, a means of furthering or registering new directions or styles of thought. Certainly concepts do change, and not only, though mainly, on the specialist periphery; and even specialist changes react on ordinary thinking. Certainly, too, metaphysics has been largely concerned with such changes, in both the suggested ways. But it would be a great blunder to think of metaphysics only in this historical style. For there is a massive central core of human thinking which has no history—or none recorded in histories of thought; there are categories and concepts which, in their most fundamental character, change not at all. Obviously these are not the specialities of the most refined thinking. They are the commonplaces of the least refined thinking; and are yet the indispensable core of the conceptual equipment of the most sophisticated human beings. It is with these, their interconnexions, and the structure that they form, that a descriptive metaphysics will be primarily concerned.
  • Metaphysics has a long and distinguished history, and it is consequently unlikely that there are any new truths to be discovered in descriptive metaphysics. But this does not mean that the task of descriptive metaphysics has been, or can be, done once for all. It has constantly to be done over again. If there are no new truths to be discovered, there are old truths to be rediscovered. For though the central subject-matter of descriptive metaphysics does not change, the critical and analytical idiom of philosophy changes constantly. Permanent relationships are described in an impermanent idiom, which reflects both the age's climate of thought and the individual philosopher's personal style of thinking. No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms; and it is characteristic of the very greatest philosophers, like Kant and Aristotle, that they, more than any others, repay this effort of re-thinking.
  • This book is, in part, and in a modest way, an essay in descriptive metaphysics. Only in a modest way—for though some of the themes discussed are sufficiently general, the discussion is undertaken from a certain limited viewpoint and is by no means comprehensive; and only in part—for some of the logical and linguistic classifications around which discussion turns in the second part may well be of relatively local and temporary significance. On my method of treatment of these classifications I may make now one general comment. It is often admitted, in the analytical treatment of some fairly specific concept, that the wish to understand is less likely to be served by the search for a single strict statement of the necessary and sufficient conditions of its application than by seeing its applications—in Wittgenstein's simile—as forming a family, the members of which may, perhaps, be grouped around a central paradigm case and linked with the latter by various direct or indirect links of logical connexion and analogy. This principle of tolerance in understanding can, I think, be as usefully invoked in the attempt to understand general logical and grammatical structures as in that analysis of specific concepts which is undertaken in, say, the philosophy of perception or the philosophy of mind.
  • It seemed to me natural to divide the book into two parts. The first part aims at establishing the central position which material bodies and persons occupy among particulars in general. It shows that, in our conceptual scheme as it is, particulars of these two categories are the basic or fundamental particulars, that the concepts of other types of particular must be seen as secondary in relation to the concepts of these. In the second part of the book the aim is to establish and explain the connexion between the idea of a particular in general and that of an object of reference or logical subject. The link between these two notions and, with it, the explanation of the status of the particular as the paradigm logical subject is found in a certain idea of ‘completeness' which is expounded in the first half of the second chapter of this part. This is the crucial passage of the second part of the book. The two parts of the book are not, however, independent of each other. Theses of the first part are at many points presupposed, and at some points extended and further explained, by arguments of the second part. I doubt if it is possible for us fully to understand the main topics of either part without consideration of the main topics of the other.


"Strawson (Peter) - The Identification of Particulars"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 1.1


Sections
  1. We identify particulars in speech. The identifiability of some kinds of particular may be dependent upon the identifiability of other kinds – 15
  2. Identification of particulars which are sensibly present. The identification of particulars which are not sensibly present raises a theoretical problem. Its solution. – 17
  3. The general conditions of particular-identification. These conditions are satisfiable because our knowledge of particulars forms a unified structure of a spatio-temporal character. – 23

Paper Comment

Part I: Particulars; Chapter 1. Bodies


"Strawson (Peter) - Reidentification"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 1.2


Sections
  1. A condition of our possessing such a scheme of knowledge of particulars is the ability to reidentify particulars. Scepticism about reidentifcation. – 31
  2. Reidentification of places. – 36

Paper Comment

Part I: Particulars; Chapter 1. Bodies


"Strawson (Peter) - Basic Particulars"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 1.3


Sections
  1. A general argument to show that material bodies are the basic particulars from the point of view of identification. – 38
  2. Arguments to the same effect from the nature of different categories of particulars. – 40

Paper Comment

Part I: Particulars; Chapter 1. Bodies


"Strawson (Peter) - Sounds"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 2


Sections
  1. Is the status of material bodies as basic particulars a necessary condition of any scheme whatever which provides for knowledge of objective particulars? – 59
  2. The character of this chapter. – 63
  3. The model of the auditory world. The problem of satisfying the conditions of a non-solipsistic consciousness. – 64

Paper Comment

Part I: Particulars; Chapter 2. Sounds


"Strawson (Peter) - Persons"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 3


Sections
  1. Why are states of consciousness ascribed to anything? And why to the same thing as corporeal characteristics? – 87
  2. The unique position of the personal body in perceptual experience described; but this does not answer these questions. 90
  3. Cartesian and ‘No-ownership' views. The incoherence of the No-ownership view. – 94
  4. A condition of the ascription of states of consciousness to oneself is ability to ascribe them to others. The incoherence of the Cartesian view. The primitiveness of the concept of a person. – 98
  5. The logical character of a fundamental class of personal predicates. – 103
  6. The central importance of predicates ascribing actions. The idea of a ‘group mind'. – 110
  7. Disembodiment. – 115

Paper Comment


"Strawson (Peter) - Monads"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 4

Paper Comment

Part I: Particulars; Chapter 4. Monads


"Strawson (Peter) - The Distinction Between Particulars and Universals"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 5.0


Sections
  1. The distinction between particulars and universals1 is traditionally associated in a certain way with the distinction between reference and predication or between subject and predicate. – 137

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (1): Two Criteria


"Strawson (Peter) - The 'Grammatical' Criterion"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 5.1


Sections
  1. Various forms of the reference predication or subject-predicate distinction recognized by philosophers. – 139
  2. One prima facie attractive way of explaining the distinction is shown to be inadequate. Viewing it as a distinction between grammatical styles of term-introduction seems to yield more satisfactory results. – 142
  3. Quine's distinction in terms of the variables of quantification does not at first sight offer an alternative interpretation. – 153
  4. Finalstatement, on the present approach, of the conditions of an expression's being a subject- or predicate-expression. – 158
  5. The present, grammatical approach to the subject—predicate distinction, though it appears to harmonize with authoritative views, is not the only possible approach. – 160
  6. The grammatical approach encourages scepticism both about the importance of the subject predicate distinction and about its traditional association with the particular-universal distinction. – 162

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (1): Two Criteria


"Strawson (Peter) - The Category Criterion"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 5.2


Sections
  1. Characterising, instantial and attributive ties: or differ- eat mays in which particular and universal terms may collect each other in assertions. – 167
  2. A new criterion for subjects and predicates, based on the differences between particulars and universals1 as principles of collection of terms in assertions. The new criterion guarantees the traditional association between the two distinctions. – 171

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (1): Two Criteria


"Strawson (Peter) - Tensions and Affinities Between These Criteria"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 5.3


Sections
  1. How the grammatical appearance of predicating a particular is avoided in certain cases of the assertion of a characterizing tie. – 173
  2. How the grammatical appearance of predicating a particular is avoided in certain cases of the assertion of an attributive tie. – 176

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (1): Two Criteria


"Strawson (Peter) - The Introduction of Particulars Into Propositions"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 6.1


Sections
  1. The introduction of a particular into a proposition requires knowledge of an empirical fact: the introduction of a universal does not. – 180
  2. Affinity between the grammatical and categorial criteria for subject- and predicate-expressions in part explained by a mediating distinction between ‘completeness' and 'incompleteness'. Once the fundamental association between the subject-predicate and particular-universal distinctions is established, further extensions of the former distinction may be explained by analogy etc. – 186
  3. Further explanations of the idea of ‘completeness': the presuppositions of expressions introducing particular terms. – 190
  4. Consideration and rejection of a simplified form of the above theory. – 194

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects


"Strawson (Peter) - The Introduction of Particulars Into Discourse"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 6.2


Sections
  1. Can the above account of the conditions of introducing particulars into propositions be supplemented with an account of the conditions of introducing particulars into discourse? The conditions of success in any such attempt. – 198
  2. Feature-concepts and sortal1 universals2: the introduction of basic particulars involves the adoption of criteria of re-identification. – 202
  3. The logical complexity of particulars and the 'completeness' of logical subject-expressions. Particulars the paradigm logical subjects. – 210

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects


"Strawson (Peter) - Language Without Particulars"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 7


Sections
  1. In a feature placing language the subject predicate distinction has no place. – 214
  2. Problems involved in dispensing with ordinary particulars. – 217
  3. Places, times and place-times as logical subjects. – 221

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects


"Strawson (Peter) - Logical Subjects and Existence"

Source: Strawson - Individuals, Chapter 8


Sections
  1. The grammatical index of appearance in a proposition as an individual or logical subject. Existential propositions. – 22.6
  2. Nominalism. Why reductionist pressure on non-particular individuals varies in strength for different types of non-particular. – 230
  3. The nature and form of the nominalist drive. Quantification and existence. – 234
  4. Existence and quantification. – 239
  5. Statements of identity. Plural subject-expressions. Reference, predication and propositions. – 242

Paper Comment

Part II: Logical Subjects; Chapter 5. Subject and Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects


"Strawson (Peter) - Individuals: Conclusion"

Source: Strawson - Individuals


Full Text
  • Now to bring things summarily together. At the beginning of this book, I was concerned to bring out the central position held among particulars by material bodies. They appeared as the basic particulars from the point of view of identification. Later I added to them, as in a different though related way basic, the category of persons. The admission of this category as primitive and underived appeared as a necessary condition of our membership of a non-solipsistic world. Given, then, that our scheme of things includes the scheme of a common spatio-temporal world of particulars, it appears that a central place among particulars must be accorded to material bodies and to persons. These must be the primary particulars. In the latter part of the book I was concerned with the more general task of trying to explain the central position held by particulars among individuals in the broadest, logical sense of this word. I found that particulars held a central position among logical subjects because the particular was the paradigm of a logical subject. Taking these two results together, we obtain, perhaps, a rational account of the central position of material bodies and persons among individuals, i.e. among things in general. I noticed also, and in part explained, the close connexion between the idea of an individual in the logical sense, and the idea of existence, of what exists; so perhaps may even be said to have found some reason in the idea that persons and material bodies are what primarily exist. There seems no doubt that these things of which I have tried to give a rational account are, in a sense, beliefs, and stubbornly held ones, of many people at a primitive level of reflection, and of some philosophers at a more sophisticated level of reflection; though many other philosophers, at a perhaps still more sophisticated level, have rejected, or seemed to reject, them. It is difficult to see how such beliefs could be argued for except by showing their consonance with the conceptual scheme which we operate, by showing how they reflect the structure of that scheme. So if metaphysics is the finding of reasons, good, bad or indifferent, for what we believe on instinct, then this has been metaphysics.


Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
  1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
  2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)


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