Tuesday, February 24, 2015

First-Person, Singular, Plural

The relation between the concepts First-Person Singular and First-Person Plural seems problematic. For, if the Firstness of the former denotes, as has been previously proposed, the centrality of one's Motility in one's experiential field, then its application to multiple agents is difficult to conceive by analogy. Accordingly, First-Person Plurality has often been characterized as abstract, if not illusory. However, a non-factual alternative to abstraction or illusion is possible--an Ethical concept, and, indeed, the We is the assumption of a Moral principle by the I that, therefore, does not conflict with its phenomenological Firstness, i. e. one can conceive of oneself as part of the manifestation of a We without contradicting the fact of one's inherent factual Motility. Furthermore, that such an assumption can have concrete implications, i. e. one's factual treatment of others, distinguishes such a concept from mere abstraction or illusion. In other words, I may be a Psychological concept, while We is a Moral one.

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