First-Person Concern

First-person thought comes with a distinctive evaluative attitude directed toward its intentional object. When we think about ourselves in the first person, we think about an object that is evaluatively outstanding for us. In this chapter, I offer a metaphysical analysis of what I term “first-person concern,” that is, a concern attitude which is existence-dependent on, co-occurring with, and directed at the objects of first-person thoughts. More specifically, I explain why we should posit first-person concern and address questions such as whether first-person concern is instrumental, what other properties we should ascribe to it, and how it relates to the first-person concept. I will provide reasons to believe that the first-person concept itself is not thick, as proposed by Textor (“Enjoy your Self”: Lotze on Self-Concern and Self-Consciousness. History of Philosophy Quarterly 35(2). 157–179, 2018), but that thoughts containing it are typically accompanied by an emotional attitude. This attitude is grounded in the unique instrumental value that we have for ourselves, rather than an intrinsic value, as Guillot and O’Brien (Self Matters. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9(28). 728–754, 2023) suggest.