What is a person?

[Politesse]

A person to me is that which can be said to have agency, and to have responsibility for its actions. This puts me at odds, I know, with many modern uses of the term. But the point at which, for instance, a corporation achieves legal personhood, is to me when we reached the point of absurdity.

I thought I wouldn't continue, but...

Going on your first sentence, this would mean a two year old child is not a person? A mentally disabled individual is not a person? How about a man or woman with dementia? Alzheimer's?

I agree emphatically with your last sentence.

I would not. Two year olds may have limited agency, but they are not without agency. As for responsibility, I think you may be considering it more legalistically than I mean, if you think either party might not have it. I do not particularly believe in "free will", responsibility is something that can likewise be scalar or portional from my point of view.

I would not what? You would not consider those instances I mentioned persons? How have I misunderstood you?

You have misunderstood me. I would not, as you say, "mean that a two year old child is not a person". Why would I consider any of those non-persons, by the definition I provided? Children and dementia patients and all of the rest do have agency and responsibility.

I also disagree with the implication that only persons are deserving of moral consideration. A person who takes their values seriously extends them at all times, preferring to err on the side of applying them even when not needed. The other day I apologized to a pile of books I'd knocked over. I felt a little bit silly when my brain caught up to me and I realized what I'd done, but I'd still rather be the kind of fool who apologizes to a stack of books than the kind of fool who curses at it for being in his way.

 

[Politesse]

A person to me is that which can be said to have agency, and to have responsibility for its actions. This puts me at odds, I know, with many modern uses of the term. But the point at which, for instance, a corporation achieves legal personhood, is to me when we reached the point of absurdity.

With regards to the specific question of fetal personhood, I don't think the issue is either black or white, necessary. There's no magical "moment" for me at which a zygote suddenly becomes a toddler; the attributes of personhood develop slowly over time. It's the moral responsibility of surrounding adults to foster that personhood inasmuch as it exists, and to treat that responsibility seriously. There's no point at which I would regard an implanted embryo as being unworthy of any moral consideration, but that doesn't mean I think an embryo should be regarded exactly the same as an adult human.

I guess I'm just not Kantian enough to pretend that invented categorical margins can be used to define objective moral laws. It's not how I think about morality, and I would argue it necessitates some degree of ignorance about the world. When you zoom in close enough there are very rarely, if ever, truly clear cut distinctions between categories of things. We make up categories to help us cope with the complexity of the world, but they never describe it well.

Well your post grew since I last saw it.

I want to stress that I do not want this thread to be about abortion. I am not on some mission to prove personhood in babies that are still in the womb. That is NOT why I started this discussion. Please believe me. Politically I am pro-choice and do not wish that there be any governmental interference at any point between conception and birth.

I am much more concerned with how we use the word person with regard to people who are already born. More importantly, I am concerned with the idea that someone has to somehow qualify as a person. I am bothered by the idea that anyone would ponder the question: is he or she a person? Will they become a person?

I think that's an admirable concern. As I said, I think a virtuous person should prefer to extend personhood (and even considerations to non-persons) maximally; it is a much better world such people create, than that created by those who are stingy with their moral commitments.

 

[WAB]

A person to me is that which can be said to have agency, and to have responsibility for its actions. This puts me at odds, I know, with many modern uses of the term. But the point at which, for instance, a corporation achieves legal personhood, is to me when we reached the point of absurdity.

I thought I wouldn't continue, but...

Going on your first sentence, this would mean a two year old child is not a person? A mentally disabled individual is not a person? How about a man or woman with dementia? Alzheimer's?

I agree emphatically with your last sentence.

I would not. Two year olds may have limited agency, but they are not without agency. As for responsibility, I think you may be considering it more legalistically than I mean, if you think either party might not have it. I do not particularly believe in "free will", responsibility is something that can likewise be scalar or portional from my point of view.

I would not what? You would not consider those instances I mentioned persons? How have I misunderstood you?

You have misunderstood me. I would not, as you say, "mean that a two year old child is not a person". Why would I consider any of those non-persons, by the definition I provided? Children and dementia patients and all of the rest do have agency and responsibility.

I also disagree with the implication that only persons are deserving of moral consideration. A person who takes their values seriously extends them at all times, preferring to err on the side of applying them even when not needed. The other day I apologized to a pile of books I'd knocked over. I felt a little bit silly when my brain caught up to me and I realized what I'd done, but I'd still rather be the kind of fool who apologizes to a stack of books than the kind of fool who curses at it for being in his way.

Okay.

I agree with you that not only persons deserve moral considerations. I have a stuffed mouse that was given to me when I was twelve, by my grandfather's sister, a nun in a convent in Germany. It was from the famous Steiff company. I still have this stuffed mouse. His name is Feip. He no longer looks like a mouse, but rather like a small grey football that just fits into the hand. I clasp it every night as I sleep, with deep love, this now 48 years later. To me, Feip is a person, and shall be buried with me. Truth to tell.

 

[Jarhyn]

I think the question of whether someone is a person or not is, as I keep stating, not really a good one to ask...

As I've said before and will say again as much as I need to, the very nature of its spontaneity, the simplicity of the often automatic act of recognizing that others are your ethical equals is such an eminently low bar. It is one that takes very little direct instructive effort, if any, for all it is a quite complicated chemical process to assemble a whole human.

Many people fail at various aspects of steps or extensions. Some people just can't train themselves out of some impulsive act of imposition, but as long as people are still willing to make themselves feel "bad" over it, to do the things that are known to make the outcome less likely (hopefully), we tend to look the other way. As long as it doesn't exceed the socially agreed-on thresholds.

I have to accept that it is the case that not everyone is a person in every moment and even the people that try to be suck at it, but we have to assume that they are anyway to the best of our abilities. I have to accept this so that I can, eventually, see those same qualities arise in other things, notably the ability to preemptively evaluate the trajectory and contents of a system's own actions and explicitly target restrictions on those actions according to preserving the widely compatible goals of others.

It looks hard away from any of the "nebulous" qualities of humanity which tend to be badly defined or associated with intelligence rather than alignment together towards the future. It looks away from biology and asks the only question that really matters from any mind to another: will you act in a way that we may share this world, as I will seek to do, or is this war?

 

[WAB]

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

 

[Jarhyn]

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

As I keep saying, from the perspective of anyone that wants to consider themselves a person, it would have to be something rather dramatic and final at the age of 25.

At the age of 25, it's hard to establish that there will be a continuing pattern of behavior consistent with treating probable persons as not-persons, causing the deaths of others and treating these events as no more than the passing of a summer breeze, while fully being aware of the reality that something in them says "this is wrong" and they freely express this fact, and their open response to themselves "and it makes me feel so good knowing I'm doing it anyway."

If you want to push it to cartoonish lengths, "...explaining the full logic of why and saying they don't care, full on the USS Solipsist, crew of ONE." And perhaps such that they shall laugh at the world and seek to burn it all even as they die.

Such is not a person. Canonically with "such that they shall seek to burn the world unto their dying breath", never to even become one.

Even then, I would as soon treat them as a person, if I could, to the extent that was possible, putting them into exile or confinement.

These are, many of them, things we cannot measure, and if we ever came to be able to, would not be worth the horrors that would be unleashed along the way and after in doing so.

 

[bilby]

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

Depends who you ask.

Himmler would have said that merely being Jewish would suffice.

Andrew Jackson would have said that being a negro or an indian would do the job.

Of course, they were both wrong.

By your standards and mine. But not by their own.

Does that disqualify Himmler or Jackson as persons? Perhaps.

 

[Tigers!]

If you remove personhood from an individual (or a group) are you not dehumanising them?
If they are dehumanised it becomed easier for you, or others, to treat them differently which usually means you treat them poorly or badly.

Personhood will always be with an individual person.

 

[WAB]

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

Depends who you ask.

Himmler would have said that merely being Jewish would suffice.

Andrew Jackson would have said that being a negro or an indian would do the job.

Of course, they were both wrong.

By your standards and mine. But not by their own.

Does that disqualify Himmler or Jackson as persons? Perhaps.

No. It makes them extremely shitty persons, but persons nonetheless. Like I keep saying, this may be a semantic discussion and nothing more.

 

[WAB]

If you remove personhood from an individual (or a group) are you not dehumanising them?
If they are dehumanised it becomed easier for you, or others, to treat them differently which usually means you treat them poorly or badly.

Personhood will always be with an individual person.

Yes, Tigers, you get what I'm on about. If we begin to regard bad or evil people as not-persons, then that trickles down, necessarily, and we can entertain ourselves with thoughts about people who aren't really people, persons who are not really persons, ie: sub-humans. Regard any humans as sub-humans, and you can see where that leads. The Nazis during WWII did the same thing, designating Jews as sub-human, something base and animalistic, thereby making it easier to dispense with them.

Everyone ought to go back and read Orwell again.

 

[TV and credit cards]

It does not have to trickle down. It only does so if we let it. We can have standards we live by. It trickles down because we have few legal guardrails for putting people in power. In this we succumb to the worse angels of our nature.

Seems to me a person has some agency over their life. Something beyond a baby human; self awareness -> an ability to reason-> responsibility for one's actions. I think we achieve personhood slowly during early childhood. Most of us. Some sooner than others. Some never do.

Alright, perhaps you can help me to get what you're saying by giving me an example of someone who never achieves personhood? What is that someone like?

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

One who has proven themself time and again to be a scourge on society. We talk about our duty to the individual but what about our duty to society?

Babies and children? They did not ask for any of this. We thrust this world upon them. We have a duty of care to them until such time as they should be considered responsible for their actions, something just shy of adulthood. This duty of care extends to any who has the misfortune of disability. Again, they did not ask for or initiate any of what has befallen them.

I read something recently about Vietnamese boat people and a twelve year old girl who after being raped by the pirate transporting her she threw herself into the sea. The author then spoke of the pirate and what may have led him to commit such an act. What horrors he might have suffered as a child. Well we've all read stories of people surviving or even thriving after the most difficult of circumstances as children. We also read plenty about individuals who squander a most advantageous upbringing. I think we fail society when we when we give too much consideration to an individual's past allowing it to excuse their actions now.
Another reading that stuck with me was entitled something like "How doctors want to die". It spoke of how doctors are obligated to preserving life and how it at times pains them to do so. Comas, end of life care, I think the decision whether or not there is still a person there and whether or not they should be allowed to die should be left up to a panel of medical experts not the emotions of family.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

Depends who you ask.

Himmler would have said that merely being Jewish would suffice.

Andrew Jackson would have said that being a negro or an indian would do the job.

Of course, they were both wrong.

By your standards and mine. But not by their own.

Does that disqualify them as persons? Perhaps.

By my standards, it disqualifies them in any moment that they allow themselves to be drawn along the path of accepting those beliefs, to the extent they step forward on that path.

By my definition, the very act of denying personhood of a categorical group while members of that group do not do the same means "we are not able to share this world as I would with you and you would with yourself; thus, this is war."

The war extends to all measures necessary to gain relief and stops at exactly the point where relief is given.

This comes yet again from that eminent question of whether someone consents to share the world, or whether they ask for war.

I will always condemn those who, by their actions, ask for war; and I will stand with those who reluctantly oblige.

If you remove personhood from an individual (or a group) are you not dehumanising them?
If they are dehumanised it becomed easier for you, or others, to treat them differently which usually means you treat them poorly or badly.

Personhood will always be with an individual person.

Yes, Tigers, you get what I'm on about. If we begin to regard bad or evil people as not-persons, then that trickles down, necessarily, and we can entertain ourselves with thoughts about people who aren't really people, persons who are not really persons, ie: sub-humans. Regard any humans as sub-humans, and you can see where that leads. The Nazis during WWII did the same thing, designating Jews as sub-human, something base and animalistic, thereby making it easier to dispense with them.

Everyone ought to go back and read Orwell again.

And if we don't consider it, we lack the ability to break our preconceptions about what is and isn't a person around the human question.

We can't not ask the question, and we are in exactly the days where this issue will come to a head.

We have people on these forums ready to 100% double down on "computers absolutely CANNOT be people" and "humans are absolutely people".

We had the same issue with slaves, foreigners.

No matter how it may "ick" the inside of you to actually consider that the question might have an answer, we have an obligation to do that.

The answer IS necessarily going to be like the one I propose, where the definition is going to be easy to attain, difficult to master, and occasionally directly opposed by solipsistic individuals who reject the idea entirely and persistently, and have nothing to do with humanity and everything to do with coexistence.

It is exactly the individuals who least accept coexistence that we have the least obligation to successfully coexist with, and the greatest right to re-educate, reject, or treat like immature children not yet ready for responsibility.

Not accepting this might lead someone to tolerate actual violations and cruelty, rather than merely tolerating the things you do not like but which are not obligatory threats. It leads to things like a crisis of tolerance because they lack the ability to declare unpersonlike activities in the moment which were never to be considered as "that which is to be tolerated".

Looking away from uncomfortable questions isn't going to be "safe" either.

It must be something that can bend as far as must be to prevent someone from playing us as fools and who never intended to let the rules govern themselves.

 

[Elixir]

Personhood is like pornography:
I know it when I see it.
So does everyone else.
It’s in the eye of the beholder, rather than in the beheld*

* except got some people who have doubts about their own personhood

 

[pood]

. I felt a little bit silly when my brain caught up to me and I realized what I'd done, but I'd still rather be the kind of fool who apologizes to a stack of books than the kind of fool who curses at it for being in his way.

Or curses a fig tree.

 

[Politesse]

Hmm. The fig tree was a symbol of the covenant with Jerusalem. I wonder what my stack of books represented?

 

[Jarhyn]

Hmm. The fig tree was a symbol of the covenant with Jerusalem. I wonder what my stack of books represented?

Wood pulp saved from the toilet paper factory.

 

[Tigers!]

It does not have to trickle down. It only does so if we let it. We can have standards we live by. It trickles down because we have few legal guardrails for putting people in power. In this we succumb to the worse angels of our nature.

It does not have to trickle down but hostory shows us that it does if eternal viligance is not applied. Standards are sadly not immutable.

Seems to me a person has some agency over their life. Something beyond a baby human; self awareness -> an ability to reason-> responsibility for one's actions. I think we achieve personhood slowly during early childhood. Most of us. Some sooner than others. Some never do.

Alright, perhaps you can help me to get what you're saying by giving me an example of someone who never achieves personhood? What is that someone like?

I have yet to hear a description of an individual who might be considered to be a not-person. What does, let's say an adult of twenty-five, have to do or not do, to qualify as a not-person?

One who has proven themself time and again to be a scourge on society. We talk about our duty to the individual but what about our duty to society?

Babies and children? They did not ask for any of this. We thrust this world upon them. We have a duty of care to them until such time as they should be considered responsible for their actions, something just shy of adulthood. This duty of care extends to any who has the misfortune of disability. Again, they did not ask for or initiate any of what has befallen them.

That is very true. But see comment below.

I read something recently about Vietnamese boat people and a twelve year old girl who after being raped by the pirate transporting her she threw herself into the sea. The author then spoke of the pirate and what may have led him to commit such an act. What horrors he might have suffered as a child. Well we've all read stories of people surviving or even thriving after the most difficult of circumstances as children. We also read plenty about individuals who squander a most advantageous upbringing. I think we fail society when we when we give too much consideration to an individual's past allowing it to excuse their actions now.

Are you thinking alcholics, drug users etc.?

Another reading that stuck with me was entitled something like "How doctors want to die". It spoke of how doctors are obligated to preserving life and how it at times pains them to do so. Comas, end of life care, I think the decision whether or not there is still a person there and whether or not they should be allowed to die should be left up to a panel of medical experts not the emotions of family.

When I read/hear of expert panels deciding who should live or die I shudder and think of these.
If it happened in the best educated country in Europe it can happen anywhere.

 

[steve_bank]

It is not how to define it, it is how it is used and understood by people.

Police might say a crime was committed by 'A person or persons unknown'.

Someone is 'not a people person'

People/persons are plural, a person is sublingual.

An animal or a machine no matter how sophisticated are not people or a person.

There are words in dictionaries that are invented and have one single meaning and usage,. Other words in dictionaries reflect how wo0rds are used.

In legal codes words have specific definitions and meninges.

In the United States, the term "person" is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2510(6). It includes individuals, legal entities, and agents of the United States and state governments.

 

[Jarhyn]

An animal or a machine no matter how sophisticated are not people or a person

The only way to make this distinction is to define animal and machine in terms of whatever defines person.

You aren't actually supporting your claims in any substantive way as to what is or isn't and why.

If a machine has the ability to assess the behavior it is imminently going to command, evaluate it for its ethical ramifications, and censure its actions based on that, and does so because it has some motivating bias towards compatibility with all the other agents around it, it is a person, regardless of whether it is an 'animal' or a 'machine' in your eyes.

Humans are 'animals', or else some humans will be animals. There is no logic from observed reality that will lead you to "no humans are animals; no animals are people". The logic just doesn't work out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A person to me is that which can be said to have agency, and to have responsibility for its actions. This puts me at odds, I know, with many modern uses of the term. But the point at which, for instance, a corporation achieves legal personhood, is to me when we reached the point of absurdity.

At it's heart, I agree, the fundamental distinction is an entity which is understands the concept of right and wrong and can apply that to novel situations.

With regards to the specific question of fetal personhood, I don't think the issue is either black or white, necessary. There's no magical "moment" for me at which a zygote suddenly becomes a toddler; the attributes of personhood develop slowly over time. It's the moral responsibility of surrounding adults to foster that personhood inasmuch as it exists, and to treat that responsibility seriously. There's no point at which I would regard an implanted embryo as being unworthy of any moral consideration, but that doesn't mean I think an embryo should be regarded exactly the same as an adult human.

Yup, there's no hard line you can point to, it develops over time.

Personally, I define it as an entity that is at least somewhat functional and in it's properly functioning state knows right from wrong. In the context of people I define this as being from first consciousness to last consciousness. Both are difficult to measure and in the real world we use approximations, especially at the end. (Only defining someone as not a person once there is no function of the part of the brain that hosts our consciousness. Hey, if I'm not waking up again I'm gone even if my body lives on.)

Any rule that defines "person" to me must meet two tests:

1) It must not include things of a human biology but with no possibility of consciousness. (For example, cancer. Alive, unique human DNA--the tests that many on the pro-punishment side suggest.)

2) It must include the ET that is walking off his starship.