considered to be persons, features start to emerge that resemble the
ditransitive grammar of gift transfer.^94 In particular, the Rdef part is
in many ways similar to the gift that one person gives to another.
When A recognizes B‘as something’, this something is a gift trans-
ferred from the giver to the recipient. As my four conceptions have
the seemingly unilateral R1 as their core, they may exemplify a gift
transfer rather than gift exchange. In this manner, the four concep-
tions could be subsumed under the idea ofgift transfer. At the same
time, this is only one interpretative possibility since the conceptions
can also be dealt with in terms of social interaction.
At this point, we need to look more closely at some special cases.
How should we deal with cases in which something impersonal is
recognized? While I am basically positive about the distinction
between acknowledging facts or norms and recognizing persons,
this usage is not always supported by the historical texts and may
therefore be confusing. Religious texts often have expressions like
‘recognizing the truth’, ‘recognizing baptism’,or‘recognizing a
creedal text’. Basically, these expressions have something to do with
personal recognizees. It may nevertheless be useful sometimes to treat
them in an impersonal manner.
As a pragmatic solution to this issue I will reserve Laitinen’s
adequate regardinsight to cover matters in which an impersonal
recognizee is at least linguistically assumed. Adequate regard in this
sense means a unilateral recognition of other persons or any possessors
of normative features, such as creedal texts or religious rituals. While
adequate regard employs R1 and Rdef, it may not need R0 and R2.
This is, however, a merely pragmatic solution. It may well be the case
that the texts speaking about‘A’s recognition of the truth’(R1: A, Rdef:
the truth) in some deeper sense also assume another personal being
who exercises activity resembling R0 and R2.
There is a variant of personal recognition that concerns the act of
recognizing oneself. As the related topic of‘knowing oneself’is a
classical theme of philosophy, it is understandable that the act of
recognizing oneself is also discussed in similar contexts. We may
formulate this case as follows:
(R0: A has openness to introspection)
R1: A recognizes himself/herself(^94) For this, see Saarinen 2010 and section 4.3 in this volume.
Introduction 39