What Is a Person?

1. What Is a Person? "Human beings are animals.  We are sometimes monsters, sometimes magnificent, but always animals.  We may prefer to think of ourselves as fallen angels but in reality we are risen apes." - Desmond Morris

2. Personhood • What it means to be a person is an essential component of most legal and moral systems. • Have certain rights and privileges – fundamentally the right to life. • Where does “personhood” end and “thinghood” begin?

3. Why Is This Important? • To regard a particular entity as a person is to regard it as a member of the moral community. • The “Community of Persons” has changed over the years… • In Greece only landowning males were persons. • Until the beginning of the last century women and children were not persons under the law.

4. Slavery • For most of history, slaves were not considered persons, they were property. • With changes in the concept of person have come new forms of: • inclusion / exclusion • tolerance / discrimination.

5. John Locke • 18th century philosopher’s basic ingredients for personhood: • Rationality • Thought • Consciousness • Self-consciousness • Self-identity • The mere fact that an entity has a human body or biology is not sufficient to make it a person.

6. John Locke • Farsighted view because it allowed for the possibility that other non-human creatures might have the requisite cognitive or reasoning properties to be worthy of the title of person. • Controversial because it did not claim that all persons are human beings, nor that all human beings are persons.

7. Daniel Dennett • Contemporary philosopher of cognitive science who tried to improve on Locke’s concept. • Six conditions of personhood: • Rationality • Conscious mental states and intentionality • Being the subject of special stance or attitude of regard by other persons • Reciprocating this person stance • The capacity for verbal communication • Self-consciousness

8. Daniel Dennett • His definition is also broad enough to allow non-human creatures person status. • His conditions are mostly mental in nature but two (3 & 4) are social – a creature’s recognition and treatment as a person helps to make it a person.

9. Mary Ann Warren • Contemporary moral philosopher who has discussed the concept of person from the POV of the debate over abortion. • When does personhood begin? Moment of conception? At one month? Eight months? Birth? • She believes once society has a coherent concept of ‘person’, people will be in a position to know whether abortion is right or wrong.

10. Mary Ann Warren • Her essential conditions for personhood: • Consciousness of objects and events; ability to feel pain • Reasoning and problem-solving ability • Ability to carry out self-motivated activities • Ability to communicate messages of an indefinite variety of types • Presence of self-concepts and self-awareness • A creature need not satisfy all conditions to be considered a person – two or three might be enough.

11. Criteria • What about infants? Those who are developmentally challenged or brain damaged? • Maybe their potential for rationality? • Is this just another set of problems? How would potentiality be established?

12. Ethicist Annette Baier • Thinks that “tests” of personhood that entities pass or fail reflect the narrow values / bias of those who design them.

13. http://www.greatapeproject.org/

16. Read the “Rattling the Cage” article. • Create a table that notes the arguments for both granting and denying “personhood” to the great apes. • Once you have completed your table, write a paragraph answer that elucidates which point of view you find most convincing. Which argument from either the for/against POV do you think is the strongest? Why? Make sure you give a clear argument for your point of view.