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• We must not ignore potential differences between the Person, the Self¹⁰ and the Individual¹¹.
• I doubt the truth of the contention that one’s Self is the sum of one’s projects, one’s individual “identity”¹².
• We must also note the potential for degrees of personhood.
• Are persons essentially sentient? Or rational? And is rationality, like the mental generally, overstated by philosophers whose favourite habitat it is?
• What about temporal gaps¹³ in sentience & rationality in the life of an individual – does the person pop in and out of existence?
• What about legal persons: not companies, but the comatose, who still have estates (but then so do the deceased¹⁴)?
• How important is “person”, as against “sentient being¹⁵” in my research concerns? The Cartesians denied sentience to animals¹⁶ and until recently there has been a down-playing of the capacities of animals, particularly their emotional capacities. Consequently, the persistence criteria¹⁷ for sentient non-humans may not have been given the focus they ought. I suspect that many of the thought experiments¹⁸ work just as well if we drop some of the more onerous requirements of personhood in such contexts. Some of the thought experiments play on the thought of “being tortured tomorrow”. While animals may not have the concept TOMORROW, I presume the higher animals have some capacity for anticipating future ills about to befall them. I wonder whether my research concerns should be about all beings that care about the future, whether or not they have a clear concept of it as their future.

• rationality,
• intentionality – “predicated of”
• intentionality – “adopted towards”
• reciprocation of the personal stance,
• verbal communication and
• consciousness

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1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026