Abstract

It is certainly true that we could give an account in mechanistic terms of what there is which would be, in one sense, as complete account of what there is. If everything listed in the account were put in a pile, for example, there might be nothing left out of the pile for someone to go and fetch to it. This would be one sense in which we could give, in mechanistic or purely physical terms, a complete account of what there is. But there is a more important sense in which an account in mechanistic terms cannot be allowed to be complete, because it could not include language qua language or any particular occasion of the use of language qua language, such as the giving of that account itself. I want to go on to argue now that this claim means that we cannot drop the concept of person, and that any Determinist or Physicalist who tries to make such a move is in a self-stultifying position. If we are to have any concepts at all we must have the concept of purposive action and thus the concepts of agent and person.