1. I take this to be a particular individual, an individual with a particular history: Susan. To be clear about what is involved in ‘taking this to be Susan’, we will do well to focus on cases in which it matters to us who this is. Of course, there are many ways in which the identity of an individual can matter to us. A fuller treatment of the topic would include a consideration of the individual's perspective on their own past and future: how it matters to me that it was I who did that yesterday or am going to feel pain tomorrow. This, however, will play no direct part in what I have to say. Not because I do not think it is important but because I think there are also important things to be learned from a consideration of cases in which it is the identity of another that matters to me. As is perhaps fairly generally agreed now, it is a mistake to think that the central issues in the philosophy of mind will be resolved by an exclusive concentration on the first-person case: that this case must be given primacy in the sense that our thought about others can be viewed as, so to speak, simply a projection of our thought about ourselves.

Central to what I say will be a certain feature of a concern about the identity of another – about who this is – exemplified in love, affection or friendship. Of course, concern about the identity of another is manifested in other ways. For example, our conception of this as a particular individual – an individual with a particular history – is also central to our practices of reward and punishment. However, as Strawson brings out well, we are, when considering ‘impersonal’ contexts of this kind, prone to intellectualist distortions of our practice. A consideration of love or friendship may, then, be especially helpful in an attempt to attain a clear view of the thought of another as an individual who persists through time. In so far as it does that, it will be helping us to see what it is to think of another as a person.