Personhood

What is a Person?

What is a Person?
What

distinguishes us from animals? We

both have feelings, consciousness, selfawareness, cleverness, emotions and
are communicative ie) Orangutans

The Concept of a Person

The concept of personhood is an essential
component of most legal and moral systems. To be
considered the holder of certain rights and privileges,
most fundamentally the right to life, one must be
considered a person.
How can we tell where personhood ends and
thinghood begins? Important because to regard and
entity as a person is to regard it as a member of the
community of persons and the moral community.
Does this moral community include animals?
Machines? How broad or narrow should the definition
be? How do we not include animals and machines but
include humans at different stages of development or
suffering from medical or social ailments?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FPpwxHtXLU

Theories of Personhood
John

Locke- 17thc English Philosopher

Defined a person as a thinking intelligent being
that has reason and reflection and can consider
itself an itself, the same thinking thing in
different times and places, which it does only by
that consciousness which is inseparable from
thinking.
The basic ingredients of personhood include
rationality, thought, consciousness, selfconsciousness and self identity.
Lockes definition is controversial possibly
allows for some non-human with reasoning but
may remove the title from some humans.

Daniel Dennett
Contemporary

American Philosopher
builds on Locke with 6 Conditions:
1. Rationality
2. Conscious mental states and
intentionality
3. Being the subject of a special stance or
attitude of regard by other persons
4. Reciprocating this person regarding
stance
5. Capacity for verbal communication
6. Self-consciousness

Dennett
Conditions

also are too broad to include

some non-human animals but too
narrow to include all humans.
Interesting element of person regarding
stance may eliminate this problem
though.
The social element of people being
people once other people see them as a
person. Being recognized as a person
helps you be a person

Mary Ann Warren

Contemporary American Philosopher
Took the question from the viewpoint of the
abortion debate. When does Personhood begin?
Essential Components
1. Consciousness of objects, events and the
ability to feel pain
2. Reasoning and problem solving ability
3. Ability to carry out self-motivated activities
4. Ability to communicate messages of an
indefinite variety of types
5. Presence of self-concepts and self-awareness

Warren
Warren

qualified her position by

claiming that a creature may not need
to satisfy all 5 conditions but maybe
only 2 or 3.

Annette Baier
American

Ethicist is critical of the

theories because person tests are
based on narrow values of those who
design them ie) thinkers. Too much
importance on cognitive powers rather
than interpersonal dynamics and social
roles.

Do any of these proposals

work?
Some

believe Locke, Dennett and

Warren are too restrictive because they
may exclude infants or mentally
challenged. The possibility of adding the
word potential has been suggested to
allow for inclusion but how potential
would be established has been
questioned.

Video Clips
https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1L071CBJ
Gw
Rodney Brooks What are Persons?
(very quiet)