Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The central topic of this book is the importance of the first-person perspective to a normal human level of rational thought and behavior. It is argued that an “I-blind” being, a being who lacks the capacity to employ the first-person pronoun self-referentially, could not possibly be fully rational; nor could she acquire normal knowledge of physical reality. The meaning of the first-person pronoun is shown to have a special bearing in the anomalous context of split-brain patients and generalizations of that context. Parfit’s suggestion that a better language might eliminate or revise the concept of personal identity and the use of the first-person pronoun is criticized on the grounds that the first-person perspective must remain as it is, because the capacity to employ the first person is a necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings. It is argued further that, contrary to Lewis and Sider, it may be difficult to find any other necessary condition for a language to be suitable for rational beings. The book then moves into a discussion of the self’s perspective on other selves and advances the rather bold claim that the self’s first-person perspective must necessarily include the belief that there are other selves, this belief constituting a (metaphysically) necessary condition for sanity, that is, for being a full-fledged person. This claim opens up a number of issues related to skepticism about other selves, and the final chapter explores a connection between facing skepticism and facing death.</jats:p>