PHILOSOPHY: What is a person?

Most of the argument detailed below was generated in a discussion forum for The Sci Phi Show podcast.



Jesse's first pass on the argument for what makes a person, a person:

(1) Persons are humans who have the will and capacity to demand the rights of personhood (rights are not innate to our or any other special species).

(2) Humans who are incapable of demanding their rights have none not granted by fiat (this includes, zygotes, fetuses, babies humans in comas, children unable to communicate, the demented etc.).

(3) Humans classified in (2) may in practice be treated as persons by actual persons. Parents often treat their children, as proto-persons. In doing so they are teaxching their children the skills needed for become a person. Further, people who are asleep, or in comas are at most quasi-persons (they may return to full personhood but in comas or asleep they are non-persons). We make special exception by fiat that those who are unconcsious temporarily are not excluded from personhood. Those without advocates can be subject to a collective agreement on what makes them subject to fiat or not - this would allow for society or individual persons to extend personhood rights to non-persons.

(4) Fiats are arbitrary commands by persons to other persons and not laws of nature.

So.... I can dress up my dog and call it a person - but if the society doesnt respect it as such it is still a dog - unable to assert personhood on its own - if it bites someone it may get taken away from me and destroyed - something that wouldn't happen to a person.

I also think it is wrong to imply that the road to Auschwitz is paved by the idea of personhood. Adult Jews, Romany and Homosexuals were not incapable of asserting their right to exist as persons - they asserted their rights and were murdered despite them. When Nazi Germany implemented a strategy to kill the congenitally deaf they did so based on their fiat that the deaf were an impurity in the human race and not because they were an impurity to personhood. I think what you were talking about with "human exceptionism" - the specialness of man is more likely the culprit of arrogance than is personhood.

On the other hand it the debate on issues of birth control, abortion and euthenasia of people in comas is entirely a matter of fiat. None of the aforementioned can demand their rights - so debate is merely a way of justifing a policy decision based on what we persons collectively want to think about them as and not what they actually are (not persons).

Critcism of the first pass (Jason Rennie):

Do you realise what you are saying ?

The weaker and more defenseless you are, the less right to life you have.

It seems odd to say that the weakest and most vulnerable are the most deserving of having no rights. Yet you are arguing exactly that. Doesn't this make a mockery of the notion of rights themselves ? The whole purpose of a right is to provide protection to those who are weak and vulnerable against those who would simply exploit them from a position of power. Those with the power don't need rights at all, they have power to do their bidding.

You take exception to suggesting that this sort of talk was not a road to Auschwitz. Yet it is talk like this that started the Germans down that road. Keep in mind that Germany between the wars has a strong "euthanasia" movement (a mockery of the term) that provided many of the logical underpinnings for the Germans unique approach to solving the problem of "defectives" in the population. They spoke of "Life unworthy of life".

You are saying some segment of the population is "sub-human" (You use terms demonstrating "less than humanness" above) and as such has no right to life and claim of protection from the rest of the society. Is there really a difference between being a "non-person" and being "racially unfit". The critieria have slipped around a bit, but you are still saying that there exist human beings who maybe treated as objects of only instrumental value.

What good can come from saying, "The more vulnerable to abuse you are, the more deserving of that abuse you are" ?

Jesse's response to Jason Rennie's critism:

That is one way to look at it. I don't think of it as being the heart of any contraversy though - zygotes for example are pretty darned weak in the sense they can't shout for their rights. But so are puddles and birds and piles of sulfur. Some substance, no matter its composition that has the potential to come together possibly some day and demand its "rights" is by far the weaker than one that can wake up after eight hours of sleep and ask for a cup of coffee.

Deserving doesnt enter into it. Rights of the kind I'm talking about are powers and privileges one is able to make a claim for oneself. Those who are able can also try to extend their rights to those without or a group can enforce a collective will forcibly. Any person that can communicate to another has this power so the congenitally deaf aren't excluded from having rights, or even having reduced personhood. We have a model - children. Children do not have the same rights as adults - they don't have the right to vote - they are forcibly schooled - and made to eat their vegetables. They are protected by persons but are not persons themselves - best to call them proto-persons.

Persons make the law. Humans live under it.

The eugenic movement was not only in Nazi Germany. The Nazis were however particularily interested in a pseudoscientific mystical blood cult that along with eugenics made their human cleansing programs particularily vile. I think it not only unfair but also untrue to label this a problem of personhood - they knew they were killing persons - they just didn't mind.

I think the whole holocaust issue here is a red herring. Nobody who can demand their rights is threatened by the concept of personhood. It is only those that cannot who are at threat and that is what we have political debates and rulings of common law to ajudicate. And I don't buy it as a slippery slope - this is a BINARY issue. Either you can assert your rights or you can't.

I don't think there is any population of Homo Sapiens that is Sub-human. There are however segments of Homo Sapiens that are not persons. I don't see which terms you're quoting the 'less than humanness' from. And yes there is a really big difference between being a "non-person" and being "racially unfit". Race for instance is a fiction whereas humans aren't. Humans exist. Race is a box you check on a government form.

If we want to pretend that dogs dressed up like people and pennies and automobiles are all persons and extend rights under the law to them we an do that - but it isn't connected with the fact that only persons can actually maintain their own rights.

Critcism by Jeff Henderson:

I kind of agree with you Jason, but I commend him for being intellectually honest. Most people who have this kind of 'personhood' theory do not admit where that theory leads, but he readily admits that children would not be included under this definition.

I'm still not convinced of his position. For example if the criterion for being a 'person' is being able to declare your rights as a person, I could easily create a program on a Mac Powerbook that has more rights than a two-year-old. This makes me suspect that your definition is not quite adequate.

Jesse's response to Jeff Henderson's critism:

That is exactly right, children aren't persons. But many become them. We treat children increasingly as persons as they develop but they start off as little more than detached parasites. Societies throughout the world have different age cuttoff points where they say 'hey now you are a person" - in Canada that cuttoff is staggered out - age 14 for sexual activity - age 16 for driving (in BC) - age 18 for drinking and voting (in BC). The legistlation that covers this is what I was calling the societal debate.

My criterion for being a person is not to be able to say "I have rights" it is to both communicate it and also have the ability to back it up. When your power book can not only say "I have rights" and also can pick up a kalashnikov and demand them - or can convince someone else to do so by proxy then it would indeed be a person. I think that's why the issue of personhood and Blade Runner are so tied together. The Replicants, or androids in the novella, are capable of doing both. An artifical owl will never be a real animal, an artifical human may become a person.

Notes on follow-ups from Jason Rennie:

-Either you're able to assert rights or not - if the latter then it is not a person. And that creature is is subject to whatever a society agrees upon - basically the way we treat animals.

-"Sub-persons" is a nonsensical idea.

-Any disability advocacy group that is operated by those who are so actually diabled is proof that they are persons, ipso facto!

-Groups which are made up of persons who aren't what they are advocating for are not proof that what they are advocating are persons. That's why if I made a group called "Give The Unborn Rights" I'd not prove anything about the personhood of the unborn by advocating. Similarily any group, like say "Humans In Comas Are People Too" would by necessity unable to be made up of the actively comatose. The unborn and the comatose aren't persons. Diabled humans can most certainly be persons.

-Those who have power are by the fact that they have power assertting their rights.


-There is a big difference between humans, persons and races. Races are a fiction, perpetuated by racists. Humans are the species known as Homo Sapiens and persons are any creature able to demand its rights.

-Racial fitness is a fiction.

-Inferiority doesnt enter into personhood it only fuctions in ideology, either one is a person or one is not.

-If you are talking about humans in comas it would be clearer to say "was a person", just as we do for dead people. If we are talking about the unborn, we could say "has the potential to be a person". If you wanted to extend some kinds of protections to the "was a persons" and the "has the potential to be a persons" we can certainly disucuss it and come to some collective policy decision on it. I have no problem with that at all.

-Abortion is not like the holocaust. Abortion is the killing of potential persons not actual persons. If I burn a pile of wood I don not burn down your house. I may have burned wood that could one day have been built into your house.

-I contend that one cannot sensibly advocate that an object should have the same rights as persons. No matter how many books we write, how many laws we agree to agree on a stone will never have the rights of a person.

-Just as we stopped trying to put animals on trial for witchcraft we should try to stop pretending that things that are not persons are persons.

Jeff Henderson second Criticism:

I noticed on your first post that you started by pointing out that Jason didn't make any arguments, just assertions that stem from his worldview. But then in the next paragraph you proceded to do the same thing. You offered no reason as to why we should accept that the ability to declare one's rights is the criterion for personhood, you just asserted it. But an alternate explanation is not a refutation.

Anyways, I'm not really convinced that you believe we have rights in any objective sense. It seems like under your view, someone who violates what I call my 'rights' is not actually wrong, but he will evoke a really annoying response from me (like demanding rights, staging revolts etc.). Since my response is sufficiently irritating, he will refrain from infringing my 'rights' again.

ut what if you say that outward response isn't important so much as the cognitive ability to be consciously aware of these rights? Let's assume for the sake of argument that this is true: How then do I know that you are a 'person'? Any action that is produced by conscious awareness could also be produced without any such awareness. But since your mental processes are private, I have no way to judge whether it was your conscious awareness that caused the action (of you declaring/defenfing your rights) or something else. But then that definition of personhood is useless because then the only human I could judge is myself.

It's like that old ventriliquist gag ("You're the dummy" "No, you're the dummy" "No, your the dummy" etc.). The problem is that under your view, I would honestly have no way to judge which one was the "person" because they are both declaring their rights.

Jesse's response to Jeff Henderson's second criticism:

I'm not sure that I can refute Jason's argument - it is hard to reconstruct the premises Jason is using.

So far what I think I've uncovered of his argument looks something like this:

Premise 1. Christian values (*or some set of christianvalues) are correct.

Premise 2. Christian values (*or some set of christianvalues) state that human life should never be taken.

Premise 3. The not-innocent are the exception to Premise 2.
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Conclusion 3. Unborn humans, people in comas and the disabled are innocent and humans and are therefore entitled to life.

^
|
----Did I get this about right Jason?

Were I to attempt to analyize Jason's argument as I've reconstructed it so far I would have to say that Premise 2 and Premise 3 seem to be in logical conflict with each other and that premise 1 is not self evident. I'd have to guess that there is a hidden premise somewhere something along the lines of...

Hidden 1. Christianity is true in that it acurrately describes the world as it is.

Second pass on the argument for what a person is/why we treat non-persons as persons:

Here's my argument.

Premise 1. Persons are those creatures which can demand their rights.

Premise 2. Unborn humans and humans in irreversible comas cannot demand their rights.

Premise 3. Persons have the ability to come to collective policy agreements.
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Conclusion 4: Persons can by collective agreement classify non-persons as protected.




If you want to characterize it in those terms you have to include some indeterminacy in whether you have rights at any given time. And that is an issue of interest for sure!

WWII in Europe could be seen as a case of that working itself out. The Polish state is invaded by Germany - and Polish citizens "lose" their rights - or have them "taken" away. But if you joined the Polish resistance - if you took up arms to forcibly retake your rights and eventually succeed then you have regained your rights. So the question of rights is about ability to demand them. But one need not always take up arms to defend one's rights. Ghandi's home rule protest movement advocated non-violent protest and eventually he "gained" the right for Indians to home rule India. Did Indians always have the right to home rule? It is all a matter of seeing what actually happens isn't it? When I ask an irriversible coma patient if he minds being unplugged he can't reply, ipso facto he can't have the right to life. We who can answer can agree to have a policy on the unplugged/plugged status of irriversible coma patient though. In fact it makes a lot of sense to come to some policy decision.