WHAT IS A PERSON The 18 th century

WHAT IS A PERSON

The 18 th century philosopher __________________ defined a person as “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing , in different times and places, which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking. “ For Locke the basic ingredients of personhood were: His definition however was considered: 1) Farsighted – it allowed for the possibility that other non-human creatures might have the requisite cognitive properties to be worthy of the title of person. 2) ____________– as it did not claim that all persons are human beings nor did it claim that all human beings are persons.

Daniel Dennett, a contemporary American philosopher tried to improve on Locke's concept by identifying 6 basic conditions of personhood. They are: Ø. Ø Conscious mental states and intentionality Ø Being the subject of a special stance or attitude of regard by other persons Ø Reciprocating this person-regarding stance Ø The capacity for verbal communication Ø. Like Locke his definition is broad enough to allow non-human creatures like apes into the community of persons. At the same time however, this definition might ___________ certain human beings.

Dennett believed that a creature’s treatment as a person makes it a person. In other words, the very fact that a creature is _______________as a person by other persons helps to make it a person. Contemporary moral philosopher Mary Ann ________ has discussed the concept of a person form the point of view of the debate over abortion. The question she asks is puzzling: just when does person hood begin? Is a one month old fetus a person? What about a eight month old? Does personhood begin at conception or birth? Warren assumes that once society has a ______________ of “person”, people will be in a position to know whether abortion is morally right or wrong.

Like Locke and Dennett, Warren identified several essential conditions of personhood as follows; Ø Consciousness of objects and events and the ability to feel pain Ø. Ø The ability to carry out self-motivated activities Ø The ability to communicate messages of an indefinite variety of types Ø The presence of self-concepts and ___________ She qualified her position by stating that a creature need not satisfy all these conditions to be considered a person. Meeting the first two or three might be enough.

Some have argued that the criteria set out by these three philosophers are ______________ because they might exclude infants, people who are developmentally challenged, and those who have suffered brain damage. These people are certainly considered persons. An eight-day old baby might not be able to use language but would be considered a person. Similarly, someone suffering from late- stage Alzheimer’s may have lost the ability to reason, but would not make him/her any less of a person.

________________ a contemporary American ethicist (specialist on ethics), is critical of theories that present personhood as a test that some entities pass or fail. She feels that they too often reflect the ___________views of those who design them. The tests also tend to set up conditions, such as consciousness and rationality, that assign greater importance to individual cognitive powers and personal memory than to interpersonal dynamics and ________________. The underlying assumption is that persons are moral atoms and disconnected from others. She purpose a _______________ of persons as embodied, interpersonally responsive, and dependent creatures.

Notable Facts: A quick look at history shows that the criteria governing who is admitted into the community of persons have changed over the years. In ancient Greece, for example, only land-owning men were considered to be persons. Children slaves and women were not. With changes in the concept of person have come new forms of inclusion or exclusion and with them new forms of tolerance and new forms of discrimination.

Corporate personhood - In 1819, corporations were recognized as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce those contracts. In 1886 the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth amendment. Despite not being natural persons, corporations are recognized by the law to have rights and responsibilities like natural persons ("people"). Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state, and they can themselves be responsible for human rights violations.

PERSONAL IDENTITY How is it that people can go through so much change and yet remain the same person? Think about your life – you shed old habits and develop new ones, your social circles beliefs and atitudes change, you go through a continual cycle of loss and growth, and during all this your body ages. Cells are dying and constantly being replaced.

• Does anything remain the same in the midst of this flux – are you the same person from one time to another? Despite these changes most people regard themselves as the same person over time. • What makes you the same person over time? Is it something in your physical make up, such as your genetic code? Or is it something psychological, such as your memories or plans? Or is it something spiritual, such as your soul that resists change/decay as we age?

Traditional Western View • Humans endure through time • _____________________ • While you may change physically, your essence (persona, mind or soul) is constant. • For example, Descartes believed that it was his ________________ mind that made him an enduring person.

Critique of the Traditional View • People can ___________ their personalities drastically and seemingly become “someone else” For example: -Mental illness can change a person dramatically (Alzheimer’s, multiple personality disorders) -People change careers suddenly -People change partners: i. e. divorce (people often cite not being the same person as when they married) John ____________ was one of the first philosophers to address the problem of personal identity.

Locke believed that neither the brain nor the body loomed large when deciding upon personal identity. Because bodies come and go, change and decay, he viewed the body as a kind of housing for personhood. He also believed that spiritual substance –or the soul, was unimportant. For him, the most important part of personal identity is “___________________. ” By this he meant the ability to remember, to relive, to take responsibility for past actions, _______________________________________________

In his view you remain the same person as long as your _________________ can place you in the past, thereby enabling you to relive the past with some of the same feelings that you had at the time. If there is a break in the continuity of your consciousness, such as a gap caused by amnesia, Locke maintained that you are no longer the same person. If there are two or more distinct consciousnesses that cannot communicate with each other, then there are two or more persons.

Locke’s thinking raised many questions about personal identity. Will the person who bears my name five years from now be the same person I am today? Is the person who bore my name ten years ago the same person I am today? British philosopher Derek Parfit argued that what really matters is people’s _____________or their continued existence over time, not their identity over time. He said survival is a much less metaphysically demanding concept than ___________ because identity is an all or nothing proposition.

Survival, by contrast, is a matter of degree. __________________________________________________ But what are the parts that overlap? In his view they are simply psychological links such as memories or intentions. For survival, it is not necessary for all of these to overlap. Over a lifetime, people can expect only parts of their current selves to survive. By the time you are 85, for example, much of your 16 year-old self will be faded away. He said that people are connected psychologically to other stages of their life by overlapping links of memory, rather than some sort of metaphysical glue.

These links are like those of a chain link fence; each link is connected to another, but no single thread runs through the entire fence to hold it together. Parfit’s views on personal identity have unusual _______________________ though. For example, if your current self fades over time, you may not deserve the penalty you received 15 years ago for a crime you committed. Similarly, a promise that you made to a friend 5 years ago may no longer apply with the force of a promise made today, because the promise you made was not made by you, but by a past self, and was made to the past self of your friend.