The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 155 of 254
Are person and self sortal concepts?
The false assumption can be put in another way. Concepts such as ‘person’ and ‘self’ are taken to be either ‘sortals’ or useless. A sortal concept is one which allows you to count the number of things to which that concept applies, and to specify the conditions for their identity at a time and over time. The distinction is similar to the grammatical one between count nouns and mass nouns, so ‘love’ and ‘water’ are not sortals, but ‘computer’ and ‘ball’ are. Given this distinction, isn’t it obvious that ‘person’ and ‘self’ must be sortal concepts? Most philosophers of personal identity accept this. But I think the animalists are right to say that, given this assumption, theirs becomes the only coherent view, because nothing else other than the human…