🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Argumentativ-dialektische Bilanz der Personbegriffe
The following overview counts, for each of the four concepts of person represented in the argument map, the supporting, refuting, and objecting edges. The numbers are derived directly from the argumentation network of the map — each edge corresponds to a support, refutation, presupposition, or objection relation between two arguments, or between an objection and an opposing argument.
Overall Balance
| Concept of person | Arguments | Proponents | Supporting edges (incoming) | Refutes opposing arguments | Is refuted | Objections against it | Adequate? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substance-ontological-relational (Pb₂ / Spaemann) | 7 | 5 | 9 | 14 | 0 | 0 | yes |
| Substance-ontological | 8 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | no |
| Empirical-functionalist | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 6 | no |
| Purely relational (Coeckelbergh) | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | no |
Proponents in detail:
- Substance-ontological-relational: Bexten (2), Spaemann (2), Stein, Richard of Saint Victor, Wojtyła
- Substance-ontological: Alexander, Aristotle (2), Boëthius, Seifert, Scheler, Thomas (2)
- Empirical-functionalist: Hume, Locke, Parfit, Singer
- Purely relational: Coeckelbergh
Reading
The asymmetry is quantitatively unambiguous.
The substance-ontological and substance-ontological-relational side together contributes 15 arguments from 11 proponents, which support one another 18 times. Not a single objection is directed against them; no opposing refutation succeeds. The substance-ontological-relational concept is the densest: its seven arguments together receive nine supporting edges and by themselves refute fourteen opposing arguments — more than any other position.
The empirical-functionalist side has nothing comparable to set against this. Its four arguments receive not a single supporting edge from their own camp; they are connected by chains of presupposition (Singer presupposes Locke, Parfit presupposes Hume and Locke), but not by substantive support. Against them are directed six objection edges (from three objections: the exclusion objection, the objection from diachronic identity, and the performative contradiction) and twenty refutation edges from the substance-ontological and the substance-ontological-relational tradition.
The purely relational position (Coeckelbergh) remains isolated with a single argument and is refuted three times without fielding a single counter-edge of its own.
Why Precisely the Substance-Ontological-Relational Concept of Person
The numbers say nothing about the philosophical truth of a concept of person — a single strong argument can outweigh a hundred weak ones. But they make visible why the substance-ontological-relational concept of person can count as the most adequate:
- No point of attack. No objection, no refutation touches it.
- Highest offensive power. Its arguments refute 14 opposing arguments — more than the purely substance-ontological line (9) and considerably more than any other position.
- Integration instead of one-sidedness. It preserves the substance-ontological foundation (Boëthius, Thomas) and carries the relational dimension (Richard, Wojtyła, Spaemann) — and holds the most radical of all objections, the performative contradiction, in readiness as its own weapon.
- Load-bearing capacity for others. Its core arguments (Spaemann’s nature-as-ground, Richard’s incommunicabilis existentia) serve as presuppositions for Wojtyła’s personalistic norm and Bexten’s sublation syllogism — the network carries itself.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Bexten 2017, ch. 6 (dialectical balance of the concepts of person — the author’s own methodological concept); numbers derived from the Argument Map of the Concept of Person (status: 20 arguments, 18 supporting, 23 refuting, 10 presupposition, and 6 objection edges).