A Logic in the Conception of People

Table of Contents

I. The Problem
II. The Passive People
III. A Logic of Inquiry
IV. The Real Agent of the History
V. Conclusion

I. The Problem

It is well claimed and more often agreed that people(1) is the
subject who guides the history. And it is this thesis on the basis of
which many variations of expressions, left or right, come into being.
Examples of them would be names which start with 'People's Republic of'
or a statement that Government of the people, by the people, and for the
people will never be perished. But what is not clear is the exact
nature of the thesis or its logic. This paper aims to clarify the
notion.

What kind of thesis is it? Is it a factual thesis, a logical one,
or a postulate? How could we know whether it is true or not? What
should one do when she wants to persuade her friends on the thesis?
Factual observation of human histories does not show in one way or other
as to the verity of the thesis. If it is a postulate it ceases to be
compelling however well a tyrant of good will brings in his power to
make it to be the case. Then, I would submit in this paper that it is a
logical thesis, and that its truth can be shown through the structure of
some fundamental human thoughts. Thereby I may turn out to say that the
thesis is not merely contingently true but necessarily true.

What kind of move would be appropriate to advance the thesis? One
natural thing should be to take a look at the thesis to see any clear
defect or problem or to rewrite it in such a way to show that and to
start to tacke the problem from there. One plausible candidate for the
rewrite is that the passive people is the real subject who guides the
hitory. This second formulation of the thesis allows us a clear
question: what would be a link which could somehow turn the passive
peole to the real agent who guides the history?

Fortunately, there have been a few works which may be taken as
having concentrated themselves to search for such a link. This paper,
being critical in their approaches, agrees with them in that the linkage
is the crucial in the conception of people. I may classify them roughly
into three sorts: concientization, political participation, and
revolution.

The first type is to recommend that the passive people will turn
out to be the real agent of the history through conscientization of
historical senses of the people (Wansang Han; Inhoe Kim). The second
offers a diagonasis that people will remain passive so far as they are
alieanated from the political processes which are bound to affect their
lives and they will become real in the construction of the history when
they are allowed to play roles in the processes (Gwang Cho; Byungyoung
Ahn). The last insists that the proletariat will be the master of
history by eliminating reactionary forces through revolution.

There is a difference bewteen the first two types and the last in
that the former allows piecemeal improvements within a stable system
whereas the latter requires discontinuity with the ancien regime. It
would be hard to say in a strict sense that the third type offers a
candidate for the link, since the proletariat before the revolution and
the master class after would not belong to the same continuous system
and should not constitute one and the same class. Anyway there could be
many variations of the three types or any of their combinations.

All of three types would face at least two questions. What is the
passive people before they were connected to the link? The people
before the linkage, according to these, looks to be incapable of
anything or ignorant of the primary fact that their name is the people.
They should be said to be nobody or nothing so that there is no place
for them in the history. The people before the linkage is not the
subject who guides the history. The three types share a structure of
linkage which results a self defeating conclusion like it.

The second question which the three types should be able to explain
is what the relation is among three elements: the passive people, the
linkage, and the class of intelligentsia. They are saying that the
passive people could not relate themselves to the link of their own. If
they could they would not have needed the link in the first place.
Then, the people would need some mediating force for the linkage, some
enlightened elites or party and the mediating intelligentsia would not
be considered as part of the people. Reading from the relation of this
kind, it seems clear who the subject of the history really is. The
three theorists are saying only by courtesy of the term that the people
is the master. Unless they provide a plausible explanation for the two
questions their notion of the linkage respectively would not work as
they want it to.

The problem for me is to search a link which overcomes the two
problems above. I would propose that the link could be found in a logic
of inquiry. Then, another rewrite for the thesis would be that the
passive people would be the real agent of the history in the realization
of the logic of inquiry. The third formulation of the thesis would
enable us to see our strategy more clearly to advance the thesis. We
will start with an examination of the ontological structure of the
passive poeple. Then, with a brief introduction of a logic of inquiry,
I will try to show how the logic provides the basis by which the passive
people is elevated to the status of the historical agent.

How would one be interested in studying the conception of people?
Is there any relevance for such a work? If there is any significance I
may make three points in regard to it. One is that the conept may have
a bearing to enlighten some notions like democracy(2) or justice(3).
While the latter conveys a moral or political idea the former seems to
offer an ontological basis on which the latter may place its
prescriptive anchor. A certain society may adopt its philosophy from
ideas other than those of democracy or justice. There have been ideas
of order, security, prosperity or victory which were the primary focus
of the philosophy of some mation. But what would be the basis by which
we could claim that the philosophy of society is to be the one rather
than the other? The basis of the choice is not only arbitrary but also
it could not be left to some principles of utility or patriotism of
certain individual or group of people. The choice could be shown to base
on our thesis. The study is an attempt to offer a philosophcial
foundatiuon for the human society.

Another is to suggest that such a philosophical conception may be
traced to a Korean tradition of Confucianism (Dongil Cho). The
conception according to this tradition may be divided into two opposing
perspectives. One is more a practiced view where the people is
interpreted as the object of ruling whether the ruler sees them
positively on one hand as those to whom he should offer grace(4),
peace(5), deliverance(6), or education(7), or negatively on the other
hand as those who express rebellion(7), grievance(8), or wildness(9).
The other is rather a canonical version where it views people as the
center from which all the principles follow. The people on this theory
is described in terms of people as the heaven(10), people's mind as
the heaven's mind(11), awareness of the heaven through observation of
people(12), people as the master(13), and people as the basis(14).

It is this canonical version which facilitates the present kind of
analysis. The English word 'people' of itself does not show clearly the
way to approach toward the analysis. But this version allows to relate
the Far East Asian word(14) for people and the rich tradition of
thoughts involved with it. Somehow, they translated the Western notion
of democracy as an institutionsal structure into Chinese characters
representing the philosophical thought of people as the master which has
been there from antiquity.

The last point for the significance of the present study is that it
would enable us to see some implications the coneption may have toward
various disciplines of social sciences and humanities. A new
understanding of what the experience of people is would allow much
richer and more real possibilities of worlds making of expressions in
arts and humanities. It is important to wait for humanistic Cinderella
and to dream an Utopia. But it is importans as well to participate in
the experience of the people and to see the priority of this perspective
(Buyngmoo Ahn; Yongbok Kim). And when a value comes in as one
interprets data in social sciences the conception of people could give
more open and concrete perspective to the introduction of the value than
the perfectistic view like Marxism or a general theory like humanism
(Wansang Han; Sangjin Hahn).

II. The Passive People

What is the passive people? How could one characterize them?
There are two modells possible to answer it. One is what one may call
'model of class'. For many pointed out features of the passive people
by using those words like 'oppression, exploitation, subjection to
domination, suffering, alienation, under-privelege, low income, no
education'. This model distinguishes humanity into two classes,
contrasting persons of people on one class and persons of extras on
the other.

When one thinks that those under such conditions are people he
recognizes them, singly or jointly, to be a sufficient condition for it
(Changyul Chung). When other says that people have such features he
sees them to constitute a necessary condition to be a people (Jooyun
Kim; Byungjik Ahn). When both of them are combined those features yield
the necessary and sufficient condition for being a people (Chongchul
Kim). And it would be convenient to subsume under the model of class
the view which suspects that this particular conception of people is
relative to particular forms of culture, Korean (Manyul Lee) or Asian
(Kunho Song).

Another to characterize the passive people is what I would call a
'model of degree'. This model is built on a notion of negation.
Negation is here understood as a name of the extension of all the states
of affairs which may be characterized as absence of order. Then, the
notion of negation would include in it not only ontological falsity and
epistimic distortion but also psychological suffering and physical pain.
I think theris a sense in which we san say that there is some order in
terms of their urgency for our attention in the human experience of
negation. One reason for this is that we can more easily agee with
conditions of unhappiness than with conditions of happiness. In the
realm of physical suffering, for an example, bleeding and allergy may
not require same sense of urgency of our attention. Going up to a more
gneral level, physical pains and deprivation of cultural experience may
not belong to the same category of the urgency. But the order of the
urgency is continuous rather than discontinuous, allowing a sense of
degree in it.

One may suppose that the degree of negation occurs between 1 and 0.
Then, people may be characterized as follows: one who has the degree of
negation more toward 1 is more of people and one wwho has it toward 0 is
less of people. Nobody has his degree of negation at the absolute value
1 or 0. Those who has the value toward 1 are closer to people and those
toward 0 are marginal to people. One may be tempted to think that the
understanding in terms of the negation degree sounds empty since every
human being would be part of people (Rakchung Baik; Ziha Kim). But the
point in question to be stressed is that people is to be understood,
not purely in their extension but in terms of the degree of negation,
severity of which many are subject to.

Which model could one choose? It looks hard to prefer one to the
other. The class model allows an intuitively clear extension of people
and sounds more congenial to an apparent intension of the word 'people'.
But the degree model requires that every one who is a human person
should not be separated from each other by some qualitative difference
but that every body is relalted to each other by degrees of quantifiable
negation of common bond. The class model will be embarassed by the
question of who the real subject of the history is, people or elites.
But the thesis in the context of the degree model sounds empty when it
says that people consists of all the human beings there are. Then, is
tere any consideration by which one may like one model better than the
other? I would attempt to formullate such a few considerations.

There may be two sorts of societies in principle: one where people
is already the subject of the history and the other where it is not yet
the case. I may call the former 'SAL' and the latter 'SOT'. Consider
the thesis that people is the subject who guides the history, and
compare different ways it could be used in each of two societies.

The thesis would be used, in SAL, to describe or report what's
happening there. It will be understood to be true of certain states of
affairs and people there would enjoy what they and their forefathers
accomplished. But in SOT, the thesis is not true or not yet realized.
How could it be used here? It will be used prescriptively rather than
descriptively. Its people would try to see that the moral force of the
thesis gain its effect. As two models for the notion of people appear
symmetric as to their merits and demerits, they also look, on
the surface, to be symmetric as to the use of the thesis.

But there loom at least two differences between the two models
which are not symmetric. The first is that there is nobody in SAL who
would satisfy the criteria of people of the class model whereas there
are those in SOT who satisfies that of the degree model. On the
criteria of the class model, the thesis is already fulfilled in SAL and
there is no one to be qualified to be a part of people. For members of
SAL have no longer those negative traits. In view of this result, some
suggested that the notion of people as the subject of the history is
tentative or provisional. For any one who suffers refuses to be
satisfied with the situation at hand but aims toward a life with the
human dignity (Juyun Kim; Jaichun Yu). Then, anyone who understands the
notion of people on the model of class should say that the class of
people simply disappears in SAL. But on the degree model people
struggles not only in SOT but they thrives in SAL. For people on this
model will never have their negativity in life at the absolute level of
0.

This leads us to the second consideration. On the class model, the
thesis is not false in SAL but empty in it. The irony is that the
thesis to the class model is prescriptive in SOT but is never materially
relevant. It has its use as a temporary slogan in SOT. One would
thereby suggest that people in SOT turn out to be in SAL parts of
citizens or of public. But on the degree model, the thesis remains
prescriptive both in SOT and SAL. Even in SAL people woulddd still have
some negativity and the thesis requires it to be protected from the
constant danger of being washed away. Then, the thesis on the degree
model carries the notion of necessity.

There are some other grounds to prefer the degree model to the
class model. One may apply to the class model what's known as the
slippery slope argument. It is here to ask how the class model
theorists would distinguish people from those who are not. For their
alleged distincition presupposes that those negative properties they
appeal to can play a criteria for the distinction. And this role could
be performed only if they are absolute properties like triangle, person,
truth. But they are pain, poverty and alienation and these are relative
properties like tall, heavy, fat. For a property like being a person is
independent of any contex whereas a property like being tall depends on
the context where it is spoken. If the class model theorist is to say
that there may be marginal cases where it is hard to say who is people
it is like saying that it is oten hard to discriminate who is a person.

Another propblem to the class model is what place in history to
give to those other than people. The model seems to negate any role of
the residue in the history, which is contrary to our intuition. For the
residue would include not only those intellectual elites who are, even
to their admission, essential to keep people aligned to the direction of
the history but also those in political or economic powers and those in
social or cultural influences. The class model theorist may say that the
residue would play only a reactionary role in history. But does it sound
plausible?

I think I have a ground to prefer the degree model to the class
model. The ground is not decisive but it gives a reason enough to
choose one over the other. Yet there are problems for the degree model
as well. Those who are more of people or closer to the degree 1 of
negation do not know most of the time that they are of people or that
they are the subject of the history. This being the case, how could
they be the subject of the history? They even would not know what
direction the history should move to. The passivity of the people just
means absence of such sensitivity to the historical horizon. In what
sense, then could we say that they are the people who is the subject who
guides the history? Since we established some charaterization of the
people we are challenged to show exactly how this people is that subject
of the history. For this I will turn to an investigation of the logic
of inquiry as is presented by Hangi Choe.*

* I believe that there have been various attempts to construct a logic
of inquiry. Peirce made a great contribution on this field and Dewey
early recognized the fact. Whereas Popper makes the logic popular among
some contemporary scenes in philosophy of science Hegel's dialectics or
even Plato's dialogue appears to have influenced on such an
investigation. But there seem to be a problem with the Peircean
conception of the logic of inquiry. The conception presupposes the
tripartite notion of truth, consisting of notions of coherence,
correspondence, and verisimilitude. A problem is apparent on the strict
three part partition of the notion of truth: What is the real relation
of those three so that the notion of truth could be illuminated without
any appearance of conflicts?

Surprisingly there was a study of the logic of inquiry in the
middle of the nineteenth century philosophy in Korea which may provide
with a clue to overcome the difficulty. It was known as 'Silhak
(literally translated as Science of Content) philosophy' in the
tradition of Confucianism. Hangi Choe may perhaps be the most
philosophically minded among Silhak thinkers, having written numerous
books two of which are Theory of Content and Name, and Theory of
Inquiry.

Choe has a particulasr use of the word 'name'. He means by it any
part of language. He subsumes under it not only ordinary proper names
and common names but also predicates, syncategorematic vocabularies,
sentences, and theories. This kind of use may be understood perhaps by
his notions of names and contents. Any word to him ends up to be a name
of something whether it is an object, a property, an operation, a state
of affairs, or a system of thought.

III. A Logic of Inquiry

I believe that there have been various attempts to construct a
logic of inquiry. Peirce made a great contribution on this field and
Dewey early recognized the fact. Whereas Popper makes the logic popular
among some contemporary scenes in philosophy of science Hegel's
dialectics or even Plato's dialogue appears to have influenced on such
an investigation. But there seem to be a problem with the Peircean
conception of the logic of inquiry. The conception presupposes the
tripartite notion of truth, consisting of notions of coherence,
correspondence, and verisimilitude, each of which is crucial
respectively in the logic of formalism, the logic of semantics, and the
logic of inquiry. There is a problem on the strict three part partition
of the notion of truth: What is the real relation of those three so that
the whollesome notion of truth could be illuminated without any
appearance of conflicts?

Any logic of inquiry as is known so far seem to agree on quite a
few items and to build its case on those: that a hypothesis could be
falsified but not verified; that inquirers are, though not given a
truth, allowed to an access toward truths through such falsification
process; that hypotheses which are more falsifiable are more
informative and vice versa; that any hypothesis needs to be subject to
the scrutiny of renewed inquiry.

Let's have an illustration for this. Suppose that I want to drink
a glass of water and that there happen to be a glass of water on my
table. Then, I may form a hypothesis H to be such that the glass of
water on my table is drinkable. How could I test the hypothesis? I
will soon see that H would allow only certain kind of testing conditions
as legitimate, if it is a scientific hypothesis rather than a pseudo
scientific hypothesis, and that H entail an infinite number of
legitimate testing conditions.

One of the test conditions would be that if the glass of water
passes a particular chemical analysis of type A then the glass of water
does not contain cyanide. But there are, in principle, an infinite
number of chemical analyses possible for cyanide, and even for a
particular type of test A one can perfom an indefinite number of tests
still not to reach a certainty of the result for the test A.

What this logic shows is that H can be falsified but not verified.
We can know that a glass of water is not drinkable if it is not, but we
can never know that it is drinkable even if it is. But many tests allow
us to come nearer to the truth of the hypothesis or its verisilitude.
Then, we tend to accept a hypothesis not because it is shown to be true
but rather because the hypothesis is shown to resist some reasonable
falsification. We drink a glass of water not from the conviction that
the hypothesis is true but from the belief that there is reasonable
ground to regard the hypothesis to be not falsified yet, or from the
absence of the doubt that H is false.

The logic of inquiry crudely summarized above is apllicable
primarily to what's called 'scientific investigation' or to the practice
of natural sciences. But it could also be extended to a practice of
social engineering. The estension is possible since the epistemic mode
of the logic of inquiry could be turned to the engineering mode.

An example would clarify the extension. We suppose that every
human being wants to be happy and that every human society wishes to be
a happy society. Here comes a problem of the notion of happiness. But
I would not go in this in detail except by offering rough ideas on it.
Happiness is never merely a certain kind of pure psychological state.
It has some propostitional content such as some conditions we would like
to see realized. And the conditions have some restraining force
imposed. Otherwise any lunatic would be happy simply by stipulating his
own conditions he could meet and by sincerely believing that it has
come. Then, let's suppose that the following pair of definitions hold.

D1 An agent a, individual or corporate, is happy at t1 if and
only if a has a sense of fulfillment at t1 on the
condition C which a adopts at t0 as the condition of a's
happiness and C is justifiied as such at t0 and t1.
D2 A is unhappy at t1 if and only if a undergoes at t1 the
condition C which is justifiied as undesirable at t0 and
t1.

There is non-symmetry between notions of happiness and unhappiness
just as there is non-symmetry between notions of verification and
falsification. As D1 and D2 show, conditions of happiness may be
changing whereas those of unhappiness are not. It is more natural that
conditions of happiness should be changing since the agent of t1 where
he realized C of t0 should be seeking something other than C. This
implies that there is no constant condition for any agent, an individual
or corporate body. Another thing is that happiness requires the agent
to be aware of the self-fulfillment whereas unhappiness does require
neither any sense of unhappiness nor any other sort of dissatisfaction.
This entails that unhappiness condition could be constant, independent
of experience of a particular person or corporate of certain time. We
may conclude that it is difficult to agree on what constitutes a
constant condition of happiness but easy to agree on what is a constant
condition of unhappiness.

IV. The Real Agent of the History

How could this logic of inquiry be a mediating link between the
passive people and the real agent of the history? In order to answer to
this question I would like to devlop the notion of negativity in the
logic of inquiry to the notion of priority of negation in which the
passive people turns out to be the real agent of the history.

Contrast between happiness and unhappiness above would be more
heightened if we substitute a more concretely negative term P for C.

D20 A is negatively characterizable at t1 if and only if
a undergoes at t1 the condition P which is justifiied
as undesirable at t0 and t1.
D21 A is miserable at t1 if at t1 a feels physically painful
or is hungry many days or homeless.

The contrast, I would contend, shows that the priority of
negativity reigns over fields of inquiry and social engineering. For
falsification is at work in inquiry and constant conditions of
unhappiness could be more agreed on. Only self-righteous elites would
claim confidently that their principles are verified or sincerely that
they have prescriptions for happiness for all. For any claim of truth
of a hypothesis by an appeal to the process of verification or testing
would end up to be fallacious and so would any prescription of happiness
in similar manner.

But what is history? History is a story of devlopment of human
kinds. Then, is the history of humans a story of natural evolution of
them? Could it be a natural history of man? I would assume that it is
hard to claim it is. Suppose rather that it is a story of devlopment of
some important human workings. Then, how is the devlopment to be
evolved or executed if at all?

The logic of inquiry seems to suggest itself to be a clue on this.
I would propose that history is to evolve by paying attention to the
negativity of people. It could further be claimed that the negativity
is the sole dictator of the history. For there is no principles or
procedures other than this by which history is to be moved. The
negativity is the only legitimate locus of authority which could
justifiably dictate attentions of any person or any group of persons
when they are about to engineer a social policy. Thereby our thesis may
now be justified as plausible.

One may still be challenged to ask a question. Is
there any case where people commits a mistake? This is a serious
question. For the negative answer seems to make the seemingly important
thesis a trivial one. There should be a justification to claim

D3 People could not commit a mistake
in order to make the thesis of this paper interesting. I plan to defend
the claim D3 by showing that there is no one case possible where people
makes a mistake. Consider a sentential funtion as follows:
D30 x could not commit a mistake.
Suppose we take as an argument for the variable any of active agents
like folks, the world citizens, public, nation, the human beings, a
king, a hero, a president, a pope, and a philosopher. I should claim
that the resulting sentence is false.

What is the distinction made here between the active agent in those
and the passive agent in people? Any active agent not only feels pain
but also believes that so and so is the case. In other words, any
belief involves with a sentence. Unless he is omniscient he is bound to
be ignorant of something. And this entails that he could be false in
some of his beliefs.

What about people as a passive agent? As I defined 'people'
exclusively in terms of some passive or negative qualities people is not
an agent who had any positive views or interpretaions about his or her
surrounding. People on this definition is the one who expereince
negativities, namely, anything negative which results from events,
decisions, or institutions so that we can say the result is physically
painful, economically hard, socio-politically oppressed, psychologically
miserable, or culturally deprived.

Two points are worthy to note. One is that the negative experience
of people is not sentential or propositional. If it is anything else it
is a negative phenomenal experience. The other is that for such a kind
of negative experience one does not have to be aware that he experiences
something in order for him to expeirence it. People is not required to
be able to identify any socio-politically oppressed experience in order
for him to experience it. Perhaps all he experience is something he
experiences as undesirable. That's all. The former ability requires
beliefs and then a frame of reference and comparision. But the latter
ability requires some awareness of some form of pains and this does not
have to involve with any theory.

I may then claim that people could not make a mistake. For people
do neither insist any claim, nor offer any of their beliefs, nor hope
for anything. People by difinition experience only things phenomenally
negative. Of course there may be cases where some pretend negative
experiences. But this does not constitute a counterexample against D3
since pretending and making errors are distinct. People could not make
a mistake about their having negative phenomenal experiences so far as
they are sincere in having them. An illustration might be helpful.
Suppose that Jones experiences some physical pain in his stomach and
sincerely says that he does. Is it possible sensibly to question
Jones's claim or his ability to know it? It is natural to allow that
Jones could not make a mistake about his having a pain so far as he is
sincere in claiming to have it.

But there is a big problem. People on my view, the human beings
and the world citizens are the same and their designating terms have the
same extension. How could one and the same persons have opinions about
something and no opinions at the same time? I may use a Quinean
example in order to shed a light on my reasoning.

Q1 All humans are rational.
Q2 All humans are two-footed.
Q3 All fetherless bipeds are two-footed.
Q4 All featherless bipeds are rational.

The point I would like to concentrate in this illustration is the
distinction between de dicto reading and de re reading in designating
expressions, 'humans' and 'featherless bipeds'. Aristotle might have
thought that Q1 is both de re and de dicto true, that Q2 is both de re
and de dicto false, that Q3 is only de dicto true, and that Q4 is de re
true but de dicto false.

Then I would conclude that D3 is de dicto true. Someone could
object to this reasoning by saying that what's real is de re truth
rather than de dicto one. There may be a time to say it but to ignore
the de dicto truth here is like to ignore difference or relavance to
make distinctions, among terms like 'Jewish nation', 'Jewish citizen',
'Jewish people', and the like. Certainly, there might have been the
case that all those terms denote the same extension. And yet they mean
distinct and various occasions require the use of different terms. One
may be a term to denote the same entity in view of blood ties, another o
legal status, still other of historical character and so on.

Another objection would be that de dicto truth is not a real truth
but is merely a definition of a language. This has a ring of truth in it
when we consider the type of

D4 The author of Tractatus Logico-Philosopjicus wrote Tractatus
Logico-Philosopjicus
to have just one reading. But the type could have another reading as in
D5 The author of Philosophical Investigation might not have
written Philosophical Investigation;
D6 Jones did not know that the husband of Alys Thomas succeeded
the Earldom on the death of his brother, but he knew
that the author of Principia of Mathematica succeeded to
the Earldom on the death of his brother.

Two descriptions of 'the husband of Alys Thomas' and 'the author of
Principia Mathematica' denote one and the same person, namely, Bertrand
Russell. Obviously what Joes knew under a certain language may not be
related to Jones under a different descriptions even though two forms of
expressions have the same truth value. Then it may be justified to say
that any fact comes under a certain expression just as one knows
something only under some description. Two sentences may have the same
truth value but should mean different so far as they are different
sentences. Then, a de dicto truth is not less true than a de re true.

V. Conclusion

There remains a lot of problems. I will take up only a few of them
for a discussion. One problem is how people could be a subject who
guides history, where people as defined sometimes does not know not only
who they are but also what direction the history should take. For any
real agent would presuppose posession of some relavant information and
of sense of choice.

The objction is understandable. A particular agency would require
a specific intention at hand. When Frege wrote 'Sense and Reference',
he could not have written it without specifically intending to write it.
One could not take a walk without intending it. But what we may call 'a
general agency' does not presuppose a specific intention. When Viscount
Amberley Russell fathered the author of 'On Denoting' as his third child
he could do it without having ever intended to father the author of the
paper as his third child. Most of the time we wake up from our sleep
without intending it and yet we do not ascribe this quality of waking up
to any non-animate objects. There are hosts of acts which do not
require such intentions: resent, feeling sorry, being ignorant, being
surprised, dreaming, and the like. Yet we are agents of those acts or
states whereas we usually do not ascribe these to other animals. People
may be said to be the subject of history in the sense of general agency.

Another problem which is often raised is that the notion of people
here is so all-inclusive to be vacuous. This would sound acute perhaps
only if one is to adopt the class model for the notion. I should
concede that the class model for the understanding of people has been
the Accepted Model since Marx. But what this paper is all about is
exactly to challenge the Received Notion and its implications.

People are the ones most of whom are faceless and nameless
(Younghak Hyun), and are commited crimes against often by responsible
elites (Namdong Suh). But it is people who all we as human being are,
suffering negativities of our own making, sharing this common bondage of
human destiny. The notion of people is what unites us all in our
historically necessary predicament whereas the notion of human being
unites us in our biologically determined condition.

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