I have a body and there is no body which has me (in the same sense of having as an element and of body as in i have a body). That is why i can speak of 'my body' instead of 'the body which has me'. Thus i am a whole of which my body is a component part, and --i must assume-- the sole component part, because there is nothing that forces me to believe that i have other parts which do not belong to my body. Being a whole, and having rejected the objectualist conception, i do not merely have my body, i also have my own whole-attributes as a person. These attributes are my 'personal' or 'mental' properties, whereas my physical characteristics are, strictly speaking, only properties of my body, that is, part-attributes. It is my behavior, not my body's, which is purposeful. I intend to write things down, not my body; and i have a will and thoughts, not my body. If my body shows tendencies to something, and if my body has a 'will', it is in addition to the tendencies and will i have in a strict sense. And this is true of all of us, of every person.

As everyone is the whole of 'er body, the extensionality of a person is 'er body and the predicament a set of nonphysical whole-attributes which the person has 'imself in the strict sense of having. A person has 'er nonphysical, or not purely physical, properties as a gestalt, since they are not logically derivable from the only part 'e has: 'er body. What, then, ordinarily is called "(a person's) mind" is a person's predicament (or attributive predicament) and what ordinarily is called "(a person's) body" is a person's extensionality. Hence, the mind or soul is no whole whatsoever, but the set of a person's not purely physical (whole-)attributes. And these properties, which may be called "mental" or "psych(olog)ical", are not parts or elements of parts; they are attributive elements of the whole itself, of the person 'imself. A person's body, however, is in turn a whole itself, and has parts and attributes of its own. This configuration of persons is illustrated in figure I.1.6.3.1.

A person's body may be made up of, let's say, a trunk, a head, two legs and two arms (leaving the discovery of these wholes and the need to have them to empirical scientists). The trunk in turn may be made up of a heart, kidneys and other wholes, like sexual organs. Because of this the body, or person having it, may be called "cordate", "renate" or "sexual". In a strict, primary sense, a person does not have a heart or kidneys or genitals: 'er trunk or maybe 'er body has. In the same, strict sense 'e does not have a left or a right arm: 'er body has. It is only in some loose, secondary sense that a person (instead of 'er body) 'has' a trunk and arms; and it is only in some tertiary sense that 'e 'has' a heart and hands. When 'finally' a hand has fingers, it is only in some quaternary sense that the person 'has' these fingers. It depends on the definiteness of the position of an extensional element whether the use of having is secondary or even looser. If this position is not clear at all, every use of having may be regarded as secondary in the case of a person having bodily organs or parts.

'Having a hand with fingers' does seem to be for a human person a kind of having of the third or fourth degree, while 'having mental characteristics, such as a will or intentions,' is definitely a kind of having of the first degree. Altho these mental predicates which may determine a person's utterances on paper are located a long way up from the fingers writing them down, they are all elements in the same realm nevertheless.

A person's physical characteristics are the elements of 'er body's predicament. Hence, a person has 'er body in a primary sense but 'er physical properties only in a secondary sense. A person's mental characteristics are the elements of 'er (very own) predicament, 'er properties in the strict, primary sense of having. It is this set of predicates which is often called "mind", "soul" or "spirit". Yet, this set is merely a theoretical construct and does not represent any really existing entity at all. (Predicaments are not ontic sets as we have seen in 1.3.2.) The mind does not exist as a whole or thing, since it is itself the predicament of a whole of which a body is a part, the sole part. The mind is a collection of nonphysical predicates. The only thing that distinguishes it from a mere collection is that all its elements are had by one and the same person or mental being.

Some might now wonder whether a number of mental attributes could not form a thing themselves just as a number of physical attributes can form a thing in the process of concretion (yielding a simplex thing with an attribute of velocity). But again, so far as the collections of mental attributes of individual persons are concerned this is even conceptually impossible, because it would make those collections into simplex things, and the persons having no attributes anymore (but things instead) would lose their personhood. (In this respect the situation is not dissimilar for physical attributes: the collections of the physical attributes of concrete, complex things cannot form a thing either.) The idea of the mental attributes of individual people being a thing collectively would merely lead us back to the dualistic objectualism we were forced to dismiss. For the sake of completeness it must be noticed however, that it is indeed possible on our attributivist construction that sets of mental, or at least nonphysical, properties do exist as abstract, simplex things. Just as in the physical world, it is furthermore also conceptually possible that there exist more complex, abstract things of which the ultimate constituents are nonphysical properties. But none of those abstract things --even if they exist at all-- is a person, or can ever be part of a person.

In our terminology bodies do exist and are concrete things. Persons exist too but are not concrete things in a strict sense, for they do not have an attribute of velocity or any other physical attribute. Hence, in a strict sense, persons are abstract entities with a concrete object as the sole component part. It is only in a little bit looser usage that we may say that a person is something concrete with physical properties.

The (personal) mind is an abbreviation for mental property A, and mental property B, and mental property C, and so on or for all a person's (whole-)attributes or for all a person's nonphysical characteristics. Thus, paradoxically as it may seem, the mind is no thing and does not exist, whereas all 'its' elements do exist. But what is presented theoretically as 'its' elements is in reality the person's elements. As a set of a person's mental predicates (or attributes only) no personal 'mind' can exist independently of a body since a person is 'imself a whole with a body as part, a whole of one body. On the other hand, a personal body always exists with mental characteristics called "a mind" conjunctively. As soon as a body is not part of a whole with a mental predicament, it simply is not a person's body. And, of course, there are many bodies without a person. There is no need tho to hypostatize persons (or other entities which have mental properties) without a body. On the contrary, it entirely passes over the configuration of personal beings and it detaches what belongs together, however different in nature.