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What makes a person a person

Skeptic Bob

Skeptic Bob

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What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
 
I want to say that if a being is aware of themselves as a being/person/whatever, they can be counted as a person.
 
A person is by definition a human being.
Person | Define Person at Dictionary.com

What you are refering to would fall more in the category of sentient being. Which human beings (well most of us at least, I`m an optimist) fall into.
 
BrewerBob said:
What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
Click to expand...



Kudos for an interesting topic, broadly framed.


Self-awareness is often cited; that is, the knowledge of oneself as a distinct and individual, and finite, being... separate from the environment and pack/herd/tribe. However, this may be too narrow to stand alone.


"Sapient" is a favorite term from science fiction... sometimes cited as a combination of self-awareness and a certain level of intelligence. "What level of intelligence?" of course is the question that naturally follows.


It's hard to nail down and quantify. It may be like what a former SCOTUS judge said about the difference between art and porn: "I can't explain what the difference is, but I know it when I see it." :D


Another science fiction writer, postulating human-level AI, said "the point at which we will know we've created true AI is when we tell the machine to do something, and it asks "What's in it for me?" :D


I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I look forward to the discussion.
 
THere are a couple of different issues to come to mind. To me, a person (scientifically) qualifies as a person, due to DNA. To me, the fetus is a person, although I support the right to choose.

Now, if you're asking what makes a person a personal thing to me, it's that I care about them at some personal level, so that their absence would impact the meaning in my life.
 
I think personality is what makes a person. If they have definable attributes and quirks of their minds. This is why I think some species besides humans can be "people". A cat or a dog can have personality enough to be a unique individual. This is also why a fetus is not a person. It has no individual mind with attributes and traits. A person has preferences and ideas and can express them, even in a rudimentary way.
 
BrewerBob said:
What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
Click to expand...

The way I think of it morally and intellectually, a person exibits high intellect combined with the ability to relate.

In a way, it's more of a feeling of being "seen" that defines what a person is.

I think an AI or a different species could certainly be considered a person, if not a human in the strict sense.
 
A person is a human being.... As long as it's a whole organism that is genetically a distinct human being... it's a person.

This is semantics, but they are needed. Other words are better at describing other phenomenon like a sentient being etc. etc.

There isn't a viable criteria for a unborn person to be anything else other than it is.... and that is that it's inconvenient to those that don't want it, because once it's born, other people can see it and empathize with it/hear it's cries, when it's hidden in the womb many can care less . Since it's directly-physically dependent on the mother and the mother only to survive, people believe the mother has the power to take the life of that person. Or at least...separate it's dependence, which then implies the person dying.

I am one that believes life/biological beings will always hold more value than the sentient AI ones, but I do think AI could one day have rights and such, kind of like how animals have rights.
But an AI's life will always be lesser than a Biological one.
Why? because we will hold AI's to higher standards, and they deserve to be held to higher standards, they are not limited by the things biological organisms are. They have the capability to be much more perfect than we are, evil/selfishness should never exist in an AI. And since this is true... they always have the responsibility to "be the better man"
 
To me it is when the spirit enters the womb. It has not been revealed when exactly that happens. The LDS believe that each of our spirits lived prior to being born on this earth.
 
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BrewerBob said:
What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
Click to expand...
My relationship to it. A beloved pet can be much more of a person than some street punk thinking I'm his mark. I assign no objective attributes, "person" describes the relationship, not the object.
 
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BrewerBob said:
What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
Click to expand...
I agree that "Data" from "Star Trek TNG" would be a person, because an independent android that makes its own decisions is thereby sentient and alive.

I also see a human fertilized egg is a person being killed in an abortion, and even though it is not sentient it does have a form of intelligence to grow into a human being, so my view of intelligence does not have to be sentient, because by definition then all animals are sentient, and it is arguable that even trees and plants have their own kind of sentience and thereby still sentient.

Of course even a sentient tree would not be considered as a person by most people (some people do see a tree as a person).

I read a really cool book long ago called "Watership Down" which was a story about rabbits that talked and had adventures, so the author used the word "people" in reference to the rabbits and it made sense because he was referring to talking rabbits and not about the rabbits as animals. That imprinted into my memory as it was such a peculiar thing to read the book about talking rabbits who were thereby people.

I myself view real life animals as entitled to life and liberty so I stopped eating animals as food some 19 years ago and will continue that way until I die. The animals feel pain and they do try to resist the butchers and they feel fear and they fight for their life so that is a demonstration that every animal is an intelligent and sentient life whether we call them as a person or not.
 
Homo sapiens
--and--
the ability to consciously act on society
--and--
the ability of society to consciously act on it

It does not cover the comotose/brain dead however. If someone once reaches the status of 'person,' can that status be taken away?
 
BrewerBob said:
What makes a person a person? I am not talking about legal definitions but moral or philosophical definitions. I almost put this in the abortion forum but I think it has wider applications than just that, just as artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, and potential extraterrestrial intelligence.

For me, I don't think one has to be a human being to be a person. A truly sentient artificial intelligence, such as the fictional character Data from Star Trek, would be a person in my book. Sufficiently advanced alien life could be potential persons.

But I am really having difficulty pinning down the necessary criteria for philosophical personhood. But what are the criteria? I certainly think one has to be sentient. A person should have the right to life and liberty. A person has a responsibility to respect the life and liberty of other persons.

Maybe some smarter people than I can better flush this out. What do YOU consider a person?
Click to expand...

Perception.
 
being aware of your existence determines it
 
zyzygy said:
Yes, being born is the only requisite for being a person.
Click to expand...

That's the legal definition in the US (which I agree with).

Some people do not agree with that tho, and seek to define 'person' in moral or philosophical terms.

I dont really agree with that. I'm good with:

human=Homo sapiens, born or unborn (biological definition)

person=born human protected by the rights enumerated in DOI and Constitution (legal definition)

human being=???? To me, that is the one is a semantic gray area with moral and philosophical areas that are open to debate. (However US law also states that a 'human being' must also be born.)

Just IMO.
 
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