First person perspective
The first-person perspective is a concept of philosophy discussed in epistemology and ethics . The debate is whether an acting or a cognitive subject has a special access to the processes of thinking, the motives of his actions or to the moral value of his own actions. Either a privilege of the “first person”, the ego , is asserted or the possibility of exclusively private experiences (which are only accessible to me and no other) is denied.
Epistemology
Various consciousness-theoretical models of knowledge assign the first-person perspective a decisive role. In contrast to naturalistic or scientific approaches, such as that of Quine , the "outside" of a third-person perspective proceed postulated a these (also ego or participant perspective mentioned) Viewing angle tracked model specific self-perceptions, on the findings and considerations, but also intentions and decisions are based.
A special perspective of the first person assumes in particular that perceptions in their peculiarity and quality as experiences ( qualia ) cannot be reduced to public experiences that are also accessible to the third-person perspective.
The private language argument of Ludwig Wittgenstein , according to it can from such experiences but no knowledge give because there is no way for thinking to refer directly to these experiences. Such a reference should rather require comparability or integration into a linguistic pragmatic context that only a language community can fix. Some critics claim that communicating with other people requires expressing one's own self-perceptions linguistically or representing them in order to be able to exchange ideas. Therefore, an indissoluble self-reference in the perspective of the first person in contrast to the environment of thinking and language is assumed. Every reference to places, events or people in the respective environment implies a self-orientation from the point of view currently taken.
ethics
Within ethics , the question of the first-person perspective plays a role in the assessment of actions or their moral evaluation. Compared to an objectivistic point of view, the question of the intention to act can only be answered from the perspective of the first person. In particular, deontological approaches to ethical argumentation consider the intention to be decisive for the evaluation of an action. In various non- cognitivistic approaches ( Adam Smith ), it is crucial for the evaluation of an action to take the perspective of the person concerned or the point of view of an uninvolved (disinterested) third party. It is assumed that the assessors have a first-person perspective, in which they experience the impact directly, but that it is possible for them to imagine the situation of those affected or not affected.
literature
- GEM Anscombe : The First Person. In: SD Guttenplan (Ed.): Mind and Language. Oxford 1971, pp. 43-65.
- Lynne Rudder Baker : The First Person Perspective. A test for naturalism. In: Geert Keil / Herbert Schnädelbach (Ed.): Naturalism - Philosophical Contributions. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2000, pp. 250-273.
- Donald Davidson : The First Person Autonomy. In: Subjective, intersubjective, objective. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2004, pp. 21-39.