Kenneth Rankin

Along with more frequently discussed theses, Strawson in his Chapter on Persons has maintained that the perceptual experience of the same subject could be causally dependent upon a multiplicity of bodies. But, without drastic revision, his effort to show in illustration that the visual experience of one subject might causally depend upon three different bodies is too fraught with difficulty to lend coherent support. When the difficulties are removed by revision, the truth of the thesis depends upon the truth of a particularly implausible variety of dualistic representa- tionalism. Constructive measures are required to ensure its consistency with Strawson's more salient claim 'that a necessary condition of states of consciousness being ascribed at all is that they should be ascribed to the very same things as certain corporeal characteristics'. The thesis is inconsistent with Strawson's defense of the possibility of Group Persons.