"Person" — unlike consciousness, which is construed as a process within neurological systems, is understood here as a process within social systems. On this model, a person is not a thing, whether material or immaterial, but a social-semiotic process. A person is a function of each socially-situated body, with a semiotised brain, embedded in a larger web of interacting local processes. The biological processes of the body in a social system serve as the medium for persons-as-processes, but it is through social-semiotic interaction that persons are differentiated as individuals.
As social-semiotic processes, persons unfold at the three timescales of logogenesis, ontogenesis, and phylogenesis:
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Logogenetically, a person is the process of meaning-making in a range of social situations.
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Ontogenetically, a person is the process of creating and evolving different situation-specific meaning potentials (registers) in a developing and aging body. In this sense, a person is an ongoing, developmentally-timed adaptation of semiotic potential to the social situations encountered throughout life.
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Phylogenetically, a person is a suite of processes that occurs within a specific time interval in the co-evolution of semiotic systems and biological species. Meanings are reproduced through humans; human existence involves both the experiencing of this process and the monitoring of that experiencing.
The individuated differentiation of persons arises from their unique histories of interaction. As an evolving development in social contexts, each person represents one set of trajectories within the state space of all possible ontogenetic paths. The valeur of each person, as an individual, lies in their contrast with other interactants in the social system. Thus, individual identity is not fixed; it varies with the social relations in which a person is involved. Each individual potentially has as many identities as they have different social relations. A person functions as a different identity for each person they interact with, meaning that a social system is not just the integration of persons, but the integration of the different identities those persons assume.
The process perspective shifts our view of beings into becoming: continuous creation, re-creation, and transformation. As processes, persons are not static; they start and stop. When a person begins, a new semiotic universe begins; when a person ceases, that semiotic universe ends. These semiotic universes are constantly starting and stopping. When a person begins interacting with another, a new identity emerges; when interaction ceases, an old identity fades away.
Because persons are processes, time becomes the dimension of personhood — the dimension of experiencing. But it is not that persons experience time and space; rather, time and space are the dimensions of experiencing. Time and space serve as the frame of reference — a four-dimensional grid that measures difference — within which persons experience difference.
Footnotes:
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Sartre’s View: Sartre suggests that the self emerges through our perception of ourselves as items within someone else’s world. Ramachandran extends this idea, proposing that our model of the self is essentially an application of our model of others to ourselves.
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Body as Form, Person as Social Function: This could also be understood as the body being a form and the person being a social function.
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Distinction between Person and Organism: A person can be distinguished from an organism in that a social system is a level of organisation that supervenes on persons — social beings defined by their roles within that system. An organism, in contrast, is a level of organisation that supervenes on organs, defined by the roles these organs play in the somatic system.
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Autonomy and Individuation: Persons with sufficient autonomy, in terms of choosing the range of environments they experience, have the opportunity to directly influence their own individuation by shaping the variants of social situations they encounter.