personhood

[FlashDangerpants]

I didn't intend it in a legalistic sense really. The concept of personhood applies to the set of objects that we choose to consider persons, alike in some relevant way to ourselves.

The properties that said object must have to be considered a person by people are not automatically the same as those for it to be considedered a person in matters of law. I'm not certain on the details but in some juridictions companies are considered persons as a point of law because they can sign contracts and be the registered owner of property. But the legal technicality that makes corporations people by law doesn't mean that people see them as persons.

[commonsense]

but is that all it is? is a legal definition the sum of personhood or does it go deeper?

that's what I wanna get into some back & forth about...once more folks come to supper

I see what you’re saying. I just think that persons who have already established their personhood must decide who else is a person, and this consensus is in effect a de facto law and therefore pretty much legal.

again: is this legalistic, bestowed, personhood the sum of it?

I believe, with reason, there's more to it than that

OK. Let me follow your thinking. Can you tell me why you think it’s soulistic.

[henry quirk]

I didn't intend it in a legalistic sense really.

but, broadly, that's what it is: bestowal of status...the declaration this baby is a person or this company is a person are part & parcel

legalistic or bestowed personhood exists: of the three categories bestowed is the easiest to defend

but, is it, as category, all there is to personhood?

[Immanuel Can]

If personhood is bestowed, not intrinsic, then it can be taken away by the same agent that bestowed it, for any reason at all.

If a baby is only a baby if society admits that it's a baby, then it can be killed whenever society declares it "not a baby." And the same goes for the personhood of everyone else...the elderly, the handicapped, minorities, women, children or even healthy, male adults. And there have been many situations in which each and all of the above have been declared undeserving of life, by the authorities.

No lives matter, then, except to the extent the personhood-granting agency wants them to matter. And against being declared "not-a-person," a person has no grounds of appeal at all.

[Belinda]

but is that all it is? is a legal definition the sum of personhood or does it go deeper?

that's what I wanna get into some back & forth about...once more folks come to supper

I see what you’re saying. I just think that persons who have already established their personhood must decide who else is a person, and this consensus is in effect a de facto law and therefore pretty much legal.

again: is this legalistic, bestowed, personhood the sum of it?

I believe, with reason, there's more to it than that

You could be right. But let's be practical. What is the difference between a person and a non-person when there is a delicious cake to be divided up?

[Immanuel Can]

What is the difference between a person and a non-person when there is a delicious cake to be divided up?

The non-person has no defensible claim to any cake. That's the difference.

[henry quirk]

I see what you’re saying. I just think that persons who have already established their personhood must decide who else is a person, and this consensus is in effect a de facto law and therefore pretty much legal.

again: is this legalistic, bestowed, personhood the sum of it?

I believe, with reason, there's more to it than that

You could be right. But let's be practical. What is the difference between a person and a non-person when there is a delicious cake to be divided up?

I'll give my cat a bit of cake cuz I care for it, not cuz it's a person; my chair, which I'm fond of, gets no cake at all

[henry quirk]

If personhood is bestowed, not intrinsic, then it can be taken away by the same agent that bestowed it, for any reason at all.

If a baby is only a baby if society admits that it's a baby, then it can be killed whenever society declares it "not a baby." And the same goes for the personhood of everyone else...the elderly, the handicapped, minorities, women, children or even healthy, male adults. And there have been many situations in which each and all of the above have been declared undeserving of life, by the authorities.

No lives matter, then, except to the extent the personhood-granting agency wants them to matter. And against being declared "not-a-person," a person has no grounds of appeal at all.

roy sez ther's nuthin' to recognize or bestow cuz personhood is illusion

flash sez we bestow the status of person accordin' to manufactured criteria

you & me say personhood is natural, inherent and can only be recognized (not bestowed) or ignored (but never negated)

the first is nonsensical to me

the second, while conventionally true, is a surface event, like the scarecrow's diploma or the tin man's watch

the third seems to me to be the state of affairs


circling back a bit: what qualities or characteristics are associated with personhood?

what powers are essential to a person?

form? function?

[Immanuel Can]

circling back a bit: what qualities or characteristics are associated with personhood?

Well, therein lies the problem...the one secular thought can't solve.

If we make personhood conditional on "powers," then there is no specific "power" or group of "powers" a person can have that another cannot have more or less of.

Intelligence? Some people have more, and some less. Athleticism? Height? Weight? Sex? Skin colour? Age? Creativity? Limbs? Eyesight and hearing? Language? Contribution to society? Wisdom? Practical skill? Education? Agreeableness? Popularity? Beauty? Usefulness...and on, and on. It doesn't matter how many others we add, in combinations or singly.

If "powers" are the deep basis of personhood, then it's inescapable that people also have more or less personhood, based on whether they have more or less of these "powers." There is no way we're ever going to get an idea that the lesser "powered" people have equal personhood with the more "powered".

And who decides? Who gets to pick (without being merely arbitrary) what makes a person a person? Whoever that is, they are the most powerful entity on the planet, literally deciding the basic value of all other life forms. Who made them that?

[commonsense]

I didn't intend it in a legalistic sense really.

legalistic or bestowed personhood exists: of the three categories bestowed is the easiest to defend

but, is it, as category, all there is to personhood?

No, I don’t think that it expresses all that there is. I think ensoulment is part of personhood, but I think it is encompassed by bestowement, as one of the criteria that are usually applied.

[henry quirk]

If we make personhood conditional on "powers," then there is no specific "power" or group of "powers" a person can have that another cannot have more or less of.

well, a power that seems unique to men, to persons, is agency or free will...as agency is not a substance, not a discrete quantity, it's not possible to say this person possesses more while that person possesses less

if I were listing powers exclusive to, and definin' of personhood, agency or free will would be on the list

[henry quirk]

I didn't intend it in a legalistic sense really.

legalistic or bestowed personhood exists: of the three categories bestowed is the easiest to defend

but, is it, as category, all there is to personhood?

No, I don’t think that it expresses all that there is. I think ensoulment is part of personhood, but I think it is encompassed by bestowement, as one of the criteria that are usually applied.

if a man becomes pariah in his culture or nation, and his status as person is revoked, does he become a non-person as a matter of fact, or does he continue to be a person who is treated as a non-person?

[Immanuel Can]

well, a power that seems unique to men, to persons, is agency or free will...as agency is not a substance, not a discrete quantity, it's not possible to say this person possesses more while that person possesses less

I must confess, though, I don't see any reason to think that's true.

Some people are obviously more conformist and less free-thinking than others. Some, being of lower intelligence, imagination or bodily ability, are able to use their agency less than those with more of those qualities.

But perhaps, if we think of having-any-free-will-at-all, rather than the having of more or less of it, we might have something that would ground an equal right. (The Determinists will deny that's possible anyway, of course, but I think we can dismiss them because to argue at all is to presume free will. If they can't stay consistent with their own first premise, I would suggest we don't have to take them very seriously.) But the problems continue. Animals do seem to make choices. Human beings in comas or vegetative states seem to make none. And yet we want to say that the person in a vegetative state is a person, and the animal is not. How do we justify that, if the mere having of a will is our index?

Still, let's fight through all that, to the more essential question: if human beings merely have a thing we label free will, what makes that particular property so special it is capable of conferring personal value on its possessor? After all, human beings also have opposable thumbs; but nobody thinks the reason we have rights and value is that we have opposable thumbs, do they? Both are merely contingent facts, not values.

So the mere having of a feature doesn't get us as far as being able to justify using it to confer such a special status as personhood. It is, as Hume might have put it, a brute fact with no obvious or self-evident correlation to the conferring of value. But to say that something is a "person" is not merely a biological claim, but is a claim about their value.

[FlashDangerpants]

circling back a bit: what qualities or characteristics are associated with personhood?

Well, therein lies the problem...the one secular thought can't solve.

Agreed - I explicitly said as much right from the start. However, if the only way out of the problem is to have everyone believe the same religious thing as you do, then there isn't a solution. And as that would be an is from an ought, we cannot extrapolate from this sort of criticism of irreligion to any viable argument for any religion.

This is yet another thread that risks becoming a broken-wheeled vehicle for proselytisation.

As for whether it is actually a problem, well it seems to be just a statement of how things work, so the problem lies in disagreements over the utilisation of the tool, not so much the tool itself.

[FlashDangerpants]

I didn't intend it in a legalistic sense really.

but, broadly, that's what it is: bestowal of status...the declaration this baby is a person or this company is a person are part & parcel

legalistic or bestowed personhood exists: of the three categories bestowed is the easiest to defend

but, is it, as category, all there is to personhood?

As long as we don't take the metaphor of bestowal and start treating it as a litteral, I guess that's fine. But taking it beyond it's realistic extent and treating personhood as something actually decidable by a formal process in committee would be misleading. We recognise that something is a car by looking at it and seing a bunch of wheels on a platform, we recognise a horse by noticing an object that neighs instead of moos. We recognise a person by seeing similarities with ourselves and we deny personhood by not seeing similarity. Personhood is just a bit trickier than other categories because the list of similarities that are optional is hard discern.

if a man becomes pariah in his culture or nation, and his status as person is revoked, does he become a non-person as a matter of fact, or does he continue to be a person who is treated as a non-person?

So in this case, it unlikely that observers would conclude he suddenly stopped being a person. The political and legally constructed concept of the non-person as somebody who has offended a dictator and whose existence now and in the past cannot be aknowledged affects a bunch of photos that need some airbrushing, and some old polemics and histories that need abbreviation, but it has no effect on how our concept of personhood operates under use.