Volume V (2022) (2015)
For Baker, the first-person perspective is the essential property of a person. In Persons and
Bodies: A Constitution View, she writes that a "person is an ontological kind whose defining characteristic is a first-person perspective.” 5 Here, the first-person perspective is the ability to
"think about oneself as oneself and think about one's thoughts as one's own. The first-person
perspective opens a distinction between thinking of oneself in the first-person reference and thinking of oneself in the third person reference.” 6 For example, someone could say, “I’m happy,”
through the first- person point of view or say something like, “I wonder whether I’ll be happy in the
future, ” through a third -person reference. In the secon d example, the “I” doing the wondering and
the “I” who is being wondered about is the same person. In addition, Baker writes, “since human
persons are necessarily embodied, a person can think of their body, as well as their thoughts, from a first-person pe rspective.” 7 In simple terms, first-person perspective is how an individual sees,
perceives, and interacts with the world.
It is this first-person perspective that determines the persistence conditions that make
resurrection possible after death. Baker, in Person and Metaphysics of Resurrection, states that
The persistence conditions of a human person are determined by the property in virtue of which she is a person – viz. the property of having a first-person perspective: a human person could cease to have an organic body without without ceasing to exist. But she could not cease to be a person without ceasing ceasing to exist. 8
Therefore, reincarnation is possible – resurrection in her case – if this first-person perspective
persists.
Now that this paper has determined the entity that constitutes identity, it needs to determine
the conditions required for a person to be reincarnated or resurrected. According to Baker, three features characterize resurrection: identity, embodiment, and the miracle condition. 9 The identity condition requires that "the very same person who exists on earth is to exist in an afterlife." 10
Therefore, for Baker, some weaker form of a mental continuum where a defining characteristic is
not transferred or if there is a change in first-person perspective during the transfer will not be
considered resurrection. The second condition deals with the person having a body after death, and
5 Baker, 335. 6 Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 67-68. 7 Baker, 68. 8 Baker, “Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection,” 339.
9 Baker, 339. 10 Baker, 339.
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