Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances. Throughout, Individuals advances some highly (...) influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'. (shrink)

In this paper I first give a summary and modification of an analysis of human action for which I have argued elsewhere ( No s, Vol. 2 [1968], No. 2). I then distinguish true, correct and applicable descriptions of actions and propose a thesis by which a single action may be correctly described by more than one description. Finally, I state and argue against the thesis of a paper of A. B. Cody's ( Inquiry, Vol. 10 [1967], No. 2), according (...) to which a single action can be correctly described by no more than one description. (shrink)