8. Origin of the concept of personhood
The word "person" in English is believed to
be ultimately derived from the Etruscan word
phersu meaning "mask", and clearly passed
through the Latin persona, with the triple
meaning "mask", "character in a play", and
"person", suggesting the word's close
association with the aspects of human
individuals that elicit portraying them in
performances
9. Personhood in theology
Person and personhood were used in concepts in
the early Christian theological tradition, during the
first centuries A.D. by the Church Fathers. The
very concept of person (prosopon in Greek) was
the result of a theological dispute, how God,
according to the Christian (Orthodox) teaching,
can be One and three at the same time. Further
explication of the problem led to the formulation
that there is one substance (or being) and three
persons (hypostases): God Father, God Son and
God Holy Spirit, but still just one God, not three.
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10. This theological concept of the person as
something that has a specific identity and holds
the fullness of being, was applied to the human
being as well. The Church Fathers interpreted the
"icon of God" in man as human ability to exist as
a person, having his/her own unique identity in
communion with other persons. Later in the West
the concept was translated into Latin as persona
and was explained by Boethius and St. Augustine
as something characterized by rational capacities.
11. Scientific approach
Phenomena such as the perception and
attribution of personhood have been
scientifically studied. Typical questions
addressed in Social Psychology are the
accuracy of attribution, processes of
perception and the formation of bias and
reason. Various other scientific/medical
disciplines address the myriad of issues in
the development of personality.
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12. Individual rights and responsibility
There is also the debate on the definition of
personhood, the relationship between persons'
individual rights, and ethical responsibilities.
Many philosophers would agree that all and only
people are expected to be ethically
responsible, and that all people deserve a
varying degree of individual rights. There is
less consensus on whether only people deserve
individual rights and whether people deserve
greater individual rights than non-people. The
rights of animals are an example of contention on
this issue.
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13. Who is a person?
Human beings - Once human beings are
born, personhood is considered
automatic.
Exceptions: - Exceptions to this are often emotive
and controversial. Some people have given
opinions that fetuses, the disabled, the profoundly
and long term brain damaged, those in coma or
other persistent vegetative states, may be
dubious as regards personhood. Such views are
strongly debated from both sides.
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14. Animals - Some philosophers and those involved in
animal welfare, ethology, animal rights and related
subjects, consider that certain animals should also be
granted personhood. Commonly named species in
this context include the Great Apes and possibly
cetaceans or elephants, due to the acknowledged
intelligence and intricate societies of such species.
Certain societal constructs - certain social entities, are
considered legally as persons, for example some
corporations and other legal entities. This is known
as legal, or corporate, personhood.
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15. Who is a person?
In addition speculatively, there are three other likely
categories of beings where personhood might be at
issue:
1. Unknown intelligent life-forms - for example, should
alien life be found to exist, under what
circumstances would they be counted as 'persons'?
2. Artificial life - at what point might human-created life
be considered to have achieved personhood?
Artificial intelligence - assuming the eventual
creation of an intelligent and self-aware system of
hardware and software, what criteria would be used
to confer or withhold the status of person?
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16. 3. Modified living beings - for example, how much of a
human being can be replaced by artificial parts before
personhood is lost?
1. Further, if the brain is the reason people are considered
persons, then if the human brain and all its thought patterns,
memories and other attributes could also in future be
transposed faithfully into some form of artificial device (for
example to avoid illness such as brain cancer) would the
patient still be considered a 'person' after the operation?
Such questions are used by philosophers to clarify
thinking concerning what it means to be human, or
living, or a person.
17. Implications of the person/non-person debate
The personhood theory has become a pivotal
issue in the field of ethics. While historically most
humans did not enjoy full legal protection as
persons (women, children, non-landowners,
minorities, slaves, etc.), from the late 18th through
the late 20th century, being born as a member of
the human species gradually became secular
grounds for the basic rights of liberty,
freedom from persecution, and humanitarian
care.
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18. Since modern movements emerged to oppose
animal cruelty (and advocate vegan philosophy)
and theorists like Turing have recognized the
possibility of artificial minds with human-
level competence, the identification of
personhood protections exclusively with human
species membership has been challenged.
19. While the former advocates tend to be
comfortable constraining personhood status
within the human species based on basic
capacities (e.g. excluding human stem cells,
fetuses, and bodies that cannot recover
awareness), the latter often wish to include all
these forms of human bodies even if they
have never had awareness (which some would
call pre-people) or had awareness, but could
never have awareness again due to massive
and irrecoverable brain damage (some would
call these post-people).
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20. The idea of extending personhood to all animals has
the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz
and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, and
animal law courses are now taught in 92 out of 180
law schools in the United States. On May 9, 2008,
Columbia University Press published Animals as
Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal
Exploitation by Professor Gary L. Francione of
Rutgers University School of Law, a collection of
writings that summarizes his work to date and makes
the case for non-human animals as persons.
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21. The theoretical landscape of the personhood
theory has been altered recently by
controversy in the bioethics community
concerning an emerging community of
scholars, researchers, and activists
identifying with an explicitly Transhumanist
position, which supports morphological
freedom, even if a person changed so
much as to no longer be considered a
member of the human species (by
whatever standard is used to determine that).
21
22. Strawson, P.F. 1959. Individuals. London: Methuen: 104.
Locke, John. 1961. Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
London:Dent: 280.
Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church
(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1997). ISBN 978-
0881410297
Person Perception. Second Edition. Schneider, Hastdorf, and
Ellsworth. 1979, Addison Wesley ISBN 0-201-06768-4
Second-Language Fluency and Person Perception in China and the
United States
Dershowitz, Alan. Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the
Origins of Rights, 2004, pp. 198–99, and "Darwin, Meet Dershowitz,"
The Animals' Advocate, Winter 2002, volume 21.
"'Personhood' Redefined: Animal Rights Strategy Gets at the
Essence of Being Human", Association of American Medical
Colleges, retrieved July 12, 2006.
"Animal law courses", Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Wikipedia-Personhood- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood
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