Flew, Strawson and Locke's Parrot

Abstract

Strawson's discussion of the concept of a person does seem to allow for the possibility of there being immaterial persons. Nevertheless his insistence that the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics … are equally applicable to a single individual of that single type suggests that he is conflating the concept of a human being, in the technical sense of homo sapiens, and the concept of a person.