But after the attacks of Sept. 11, investigators and prosecutors are as likely to speak of "persons of interest" as they are of suspects.
Normally, when we use 'dead people' or 'dead animal' we mean to speak of persons or animals who lived in the past.
Thus, Quine suggests, if one has a language in which one speaks of persons and in which persons of the same income are indistinguishable the predicates of the language may be reinterpreted so that the predicate which previously expressed having the same income comes now to express identity.
And, if we want to speak of persons, or other creatures (as distinct from their states) being conscious, we will say that they are conscious just if there is something it is like for them to be the creatures they are — for example, something it is like to be a bat.
This would seem difficult if -- and we are not speaking of a particular person here -- one is representing what some in the field commonly call "scuzzballs".
Gilson wrote that "every human person is first an individual, but he is much more than an individual, since one only speaks of a person, as of a personage, when the individual substance under consideration possesses in his own right a certain dignity".
Therefore, Hartshorne's view of God as an enduring object apparently provides more of a basis for speaking of God as a person.
It is difficult, comments British philosopher R. S. Peters, "to decide what in general we mean when we speak of a person's character as distinct from his nature, his temperament, and his personality" (1966, p. 40).
Thus when we speak of a person as thrifty we are combining economic and psychological features.
Halfon speaks of a person confronting 'all relevant moral considerations', but this turns out to be quite a formal constraint.
