Throughout his career, Chisholm thought and wrote about the metaphysics of persons. His book, Person and Object, contains an extended discussion of the topic and the claims he makes there provide a good illustration of his views about persons. Chisholm maintained that a fully satisfactory metaphysics of persons would have to accommodate certain bits of preanalytic data, or else explain how they can be false. He took these bits of data to be “innocent until proven guilty”. Among these is the notion that persons are genuine objects, and not merely logical fictions. Talk about persons must be taken seriously, and not as a mere figure of speech. Chisholm mentioned further data (which he presented in the first person): (1) I have various beliefs, feelings, desires, attitudes; (2) I have a body; (3) I am intentionally bringing about various things that I could have refrained from bringing about. He went on to affirm past-tense versions of (1)–(3): at various times in the past I had certain other beliefs, etc. Chisholm emphasized a kind of “unity of consciousness” thesis according to which the contemporaneous psychological facts pertain to one and the same thing. Additionally, he thought he was entitled (at least until strong evidence to the contrary is provided) to assume that there is one thing that has beliefs, and also has a body, and also engages in intentional action.