 Nāgārjuna, and his follower Candrakīrti denied that persons are reducible to the aggregates and that they are distinct from the aggregates. They are irrealists about selves and persons. According to Candrakīrti the proper explanation of this is that our everyday conception of self or person consists in ‘an appropriative act of laying claim to the elements of the psycho-physical aggregate, an act that does not require there to be any object that is the person, nor any of the usual apparatus of reference to things. The term ‘I’ does not refer to selves or persons. In support of Candrakīrti’s view, Ganeri notes that that Reductionist accounts fail to explain the significance of the distinction between the anticipation of one’s own future pain and the concern one feels for the future pain of another (2007, 195). He further claims that irrealists are able to avoid this problem by substituting for a positive account of the metaphysics of persons an account of how one’s sense of self arises from the psycho-physical stream. According to this irrealist account, in spite of appearances the function of person-talk is not to talk about persons, or selves, but to appropriate experiences, emotions, and bodies.