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Personhood or personality is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person (either a natural or a juridical person) has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability. Personhood continues to be a topic of international debate and has been questioned critically during the abolition of human and nonhuman slavery, in debates about abortion and in fetal rights and/or reproductive rights, in animal rights activism, in theology and ontology, in
ethical theory Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...
, and in debates about corporate personhood and the beginning of human personhood. Processes through which personhood is recognized socially and legally vary cross-culturally, demonstrating that notions of personhood are not universal. Anthropologist Beth Conklin has shown how personhood is tied to social relations among the Wari' people of
Rondônia Rondônia () is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northern subdivision of the country (central-western part). To the west is a short border with the state of Acre, to the north is the state of Amazonas, in the east is Mato Grosso, ...
, Brazil. Bruce Knauft's studies of the Gebusi people of Papua New Guinea depict a context in which individuals become persons incrementally, again through social relations. Likewise, Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.


Philosophy

In philosophy, the word "person" may refer to various concepts. The concept of personhood is difficult to define in a way that is universally accepted, due to its historical and cultural variability and the controversies surrounding its use in some contexts. Capacities or attributes common to definitions of personhood can include human nature,
agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that ...
,
self-awareness In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
, a notion of the past and future, and the possession of rights and duties, among others.


Definitions

Boethius, a philosopher of the early 6th century CE, gives the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ("''Naturæ rationalis individua substantia''"). According to the naturalist
epistemological Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
tradition, from Descartes through
Locke Locke may refer to: People *John Locke, English philosopher *Locke (given name) *Locke (surname), information about the surname and list of people Places in the United States *Locke, California, a town in Sacramento County *Locke, Indiana *Locke, ...
and
Hume Hume most commonly refers to: * David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher Hume may also refer to: People * Hume (surname) * Hume (given name) * James Hume Nisbet (1849–1923), Scottish-born novelist and artist In fiction * Hume, the ...
, the term may designate any human or non-human
agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
who possesses continuous consciousness over time; and is therefore capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on them. According to Charles Taylor, the problem with the naturalist view is that it depends solely on a "performance criterion" to determine what is an agent. Thus, other things (e.g. machines or animals) that exhibit "similarly complex adaptive behaviour" could not be distinguished from persons. Instead, Taylor proposes a significance-based view of personhood: Others, such as philosopher
Francis J. Beckwith Francis J. "Frank" Beckwith (born November 3, 1960) is an American philosopher, professor, scholar, speaker, writer, and lecturer. He is currently Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Affiliate Professor of Political Science and ...
, argue that personhood is not linked to function at all, but rather that it is the underlying personal unity of the individual: This belief in the underlying unity of an individual is a metaphysical and moral belief referred to as the substance view of personhood. Philosopher
J. P. Moreland James Porter Moreland (born March 9, 1948), better known as J. P. Moreland, is an American philosopher, theologian, and Christian apologist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology at Biola Univ ...
clarifies this point: Harry Frankfurt writes that, in reference to a definition by
P. F. Strawson Peter Frederick Strawson (; 23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that, he w ...
, "What philosophers have lately come to accept as analysis of the concept of a person is not actually analysis of ''that'' concept at all." He suggests that the concept of a person is intimately connected to free will, and describes the structure of human volition according to first- and second-order desires: According to Nikolas Kompridis, there might also be an
intersubjective In philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, intersubjectivity is the relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives. Definition is a term coined by social scientists to refer to a variety of types of human inter ...
, or interpersonal, basis to personhood: Mary Midgley defines a "person" as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person (
self-awareness In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and lifesty ...
). She also wrote that the law can create persons. Philosopher Thomas I. White argues that the criteria for a person are: is alive, is aware, feels positive and negative sensations, has emotions, has a sense of self, (controls its own behaviour, recognises other persons and treats them appropriately, and has a variety of sophisticated cognitive abilities. While many of White's criteria are somewhat anthropocentric, some animals such as dolphins would still be considered persons. Some animal rights groups have also championed recognition for animals as "persons". Another approach to personhood, Paradigm Case Formulation, used in
descriptive psychology Descriptive psychology is primarily a conceptual framework for the science of psychology. Created in its original form by Peter G. Ossorio at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the mid-1960s,Ossorio, P.G. (1995). ''Persons''. Ann Arbor, ...
and developed by
Peter Ossorio Peter G. Ossorio (4 May 1926 – 24 April 2007) was an American psychologist best known for his development of descriptive psychology, a pragmatic and theory neutral pre-empirical approach to the study of behavior. Ossorio in his 2006 volume, ...
, involves the four interrelated concepts of 1) The Individual Person, 2) Deliberate Action, 3) Reality and the Real World, and 4) Language or Verbal Behavior. All four concepts require full articulation for any one of them to be fully intelligible. More specifically, a Person is an individual whose history is, paradigmatically, a history of Deliberate Action in a Dramaturgical pattern. Deliberate Action is a form of behavior in which a person (a) engages in an Intentional Action, (b) is cognizant of that, and (c) has chosen to do that. A person is not always engaged in a deliberate action but has the eligibility to do so. A human being is an individual who is both a person and a specimen of Homo sapiens. Since persons are deliberate actors, they also employ hedonic, prudent, aesthetic and ethical reasons when selecting, choosing or deciding on a course of action. As part of our "social contract" we expect that the typical person can make use of all four of these motivational perspectives. Individual persons will weigh these motives in a manner that reflects their personal characteristics. That life is lived in a "dramaturgical" pattern is to say that people make sense, that their lives have patterns of significance. The paradigm case allows for nonhuman persons, potential persons, nascent persons, manufactured persons, former persons, "deficit case" persons, and "primitive" persons. By using a paradigm case methodology, different observers can point to where they agree and where they disagree about whether an entity qualifies as a person.Schwartz, Wynn. (1982) The Problem of Other Possible Persons: Dolphins, Primates, and Aliens. in, Advances in Descriptive Psychology, vol 2, (eds: Davis & Mitchel), Greenwich, CT: JAI Press


Debates

Various specific debates focus on questions about the personhood of different classes of entities.


Abortion


Ireland

In 1983, the people of Ireland added the Eighth Amendment to their constitution that "acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right." This was repealed in 2018 by the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.


United States

A person is recognized by law as such, not because they are human, but because rights and duties are ascribed to them. The person is the legal subject or substance of which the rights and duties are attributes. An individual human being considered to be having such attributes is what lawyers call a " natural person". According to Black's Law Dictionary, a person is: In Federal law, the concept of legal personhood is formalized by statute (1
USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...
§8) to include "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." That statute also states that "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive' as defined in this section." According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, many US States have their own definition of personhood which expands upon the federal definition of personhood, and '' Webster v. Reproductive Health Services'' declined to overturn the state of Missouri's law stating that As an application of social psychology and other disciplines, 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. Various other scientific/medical disciplines address the myriad of issues in the development of personality. The beginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy. With respect to the abortion debate, personhood is the status of a human being having individual human rights. The term was used by Justice Blackmun in ''
Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States conferred the right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and st ...
''. A political movement in the United States seeks to define the beginning of human personhood as starting from the moment of fertilization with the result being that abortion, as well as forms of birth control that act to deprive the human embryo of necessary sustenance in implantation, could become illegal. Supporters of the movement also state that it would have some effect on the practice of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), but would not lead to the practice being outlawed. Jonathan F. Will says that the personhood framework could produce significant restrictions on IVF to the extent that reproductive clinics find it impossible to provide the services. Currently, the personhood movement is led by the Personhood Alliance, a coalition of state and national personhood organizations headquartered in Washington DC. The Personhood Alliance was founded in 2014 and currently has 22 affiliated organizations. A significant number of the state affiliates of the Personhood Alliance were once affiliates of National Right to Life. Organizations like Georgia Right to Life, Cleveland Right to Life, and Alaska Right to Life left National Right to Life and joined the Personhood Alliance after refusing to support National Right to Life's proposed legislation that included exceptions like the rape and incest exceptions. The Personhood Alliance describes itself as "a Christ-centered, biblically informed organization dedicated to the non-violent advancement of the recognition and protection of the God-given, inalienable right to life of all human beings as legal persons, at every stage of their biological development and in every circumstance." A precursor to the Personhood Alliance was Personhood USA, a Colorado-based umbrella group with a number of state-level affiliates, which describes itself as a nonprofit Christian ministry. and seeks to ban abortion. Personhood USA was co-founded by Cal Zastrow and Keith Mason in 2008 following the Colorado for Equal Rights campaign to enact a state constitutional personhood amendment. Proponents of the movement regard personhood as an attempt to directly challenge the ''Roe v. Wade'' U.S. Supreme Court decision, thus filling a legal void left by Justice Harry Blackmun in the majority opinion when he wrote: "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment." Some medical organizations have described the potential effects of personhood legislation as potentially harmful to patients and the practice of medicine, particularly in the cases of ectopic and
molar pregnancy A molar pregnancy also known as a hydatidiform mole, is an abnormal form of pregnancy in which a non-viable fertilized egg implants in the uterus. A molar pregnancy is a type of gestational trophoblastic disease that used to be known as a ''hyda ...
.
Susan Bordo Susan is a feminine given name, from Persian "Susan" (lily flower), from Egyptian ''c:Lotus flower (hieroglyph), sšn'' and Coptic ''shoshen'' meaning "lotus flower", from Hebrew ''Shoshana'' meaning "lily" (in modern Hebrew this also means "ros ...
has suggested that the focus on the issue of personhood in abortion debates has often been a means for depriving women of their rights. She writes that "the legal double standard concerning the bodily integrity of pregnant and nonpregnant bodies, the construction of women as fetal incubators, the bestowal of 'super-subject' status to the fetus, and the emergence of a father's-rights ideology" demonstrate "that the current terms of the abortion debate – as a contest between fetal claims to personhood and women's right to choose – are limited and misleading." Others, such as Colleen Carroll Campbell, say that the personhood movement is a natural progression of society in protecting the equal rights of all members of the human species. She writes, "The basic philosophical premise behind these ersonhoodamendments is eminently reasonable. And the alternative on offer – which severs humanity from personhood – is fraught with peril. If being human is not enough to entitle one to human rights, then the very concept of human rights loses meaning. And all of us – born and unborn, strong and weak, young and old – someday will find ourselves on the wrong end of that cruel measuring stick."
Father Frank Pavone A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive fathe ...
agrees, adding, "Nor is this a dispute about the state imposing a religious or philosophical view. After all, your life and mine are not protected because of some religious or philosophical belief that others are required to have about us. More accurately, the law protects us precisely in spite of the beliefs of others who, in their own worldview, may not value our lives. …To support Roe vs. Wade is not merely to allow a medical procedure. It is to acknowledge that the government has the power to say who is a person and who is not. Who, then, is to limit the groups to whom it is applied? This is what makes "personhood" such an important public policy issue. The Vatican has recently been advancing a human exceptionalist understanding of personhood theory. Catechism 2270 reads: "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life." In March 2007 Georgia became the first state in the nation to introduce a legislative resolution to amend the state constitution to define and recognize the personhood of the pre-born. The Georgia Catholic Conference and National Right to Life supported the effort and it failed to attract a
super majority A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority r ...
in both chambers in order to be placed on the ballot. Georgia legislators have filed a personhood resolution every session since 2007. In May 2008 Georgia Right to Life hosted the first nationwide Personhood Symposium targeting
anti-abortion Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respons ...
activists. This symposium was instrumental in spawning the group Personhood USA and the various state personhood efforts that followed. Voters in 46 Georgia counties approved personhood during the 2010 primary election with 75% in favor of a non-binding resolution declaring the equal rights of all human beings from conception. During the 2012 Republican primary a similar question was placed on the ballot statewide and passed with a super-majority (66%) of the vote in 158 of 159 counties. The summer of 2008 a citizen initiated amendment was proposed for the Colorado constitution. Three attempts to enact the from-fertilization definition of personhood into U.S. state constitutions via referendums have failed. Following two attempts to enact similar changes in Colorado in 2008 and
2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...
, a 2011 initiative to amend the state constitution by referendum in the state of Mississippi also failed to gain approval with around 58% of voters disapproving. In an interview after the referendum, Mason ascribed the failure of the initiative to a political campaign run by
Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
. Personhood proponents in Oklahoma sought to amend the state constitution to define personhood as beginning at conception. The state Supreme Court, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's 1992 decision in ''
Planned Parenthood v. Casey ''Planned Parenthood v. Casey'', 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of ''Roe v. Wade'' (1973) and is ...
'', ruled in April 2012 that the proposed amendment was unconstitutional under the federal Constitution and blocked inclusion of the referendum question on the ballot. In October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the state Supreme Court's ruling. In 2006, a 16-year-old girl was charged in Mississippi with murder for the still-birth of her daughter on the basis that the girl had smoked cocaine while pregnant. These charges were later dismissed.


Women

In the United States, the personhood of women has important legal consequences. Although in 1920 the 19th Amendment guaranteed women in the right to vote, it was not until 1971 that the US Supreme Court ruled in ''
Reed v. Reed ''Reed v. Reed'', 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. In ''Reed v. Reed'' the Supreme Court rule ...
'' that the law cannot discriminate between the sexes because the 14th amendment grants equal protection to all "persons". In 2011, Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia Antonin Gregory Scalia (; March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. He was described as the intellectu ...
disputed the conclusion of Reed v. Reed, arguing that women do not have equal protection under the 14th amendment as "persons" because the Constitution's use of the gender-neutral term "Person" means that the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex, but also does not prohibit such discrimination, adding "Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that." Many others, including law professor Jack Balkin disagree with this assertion. Balkin states that, at a minimum "the fourteenth amendment was intended to prohibit some forms of sex discrimination – discrimination in basic civil rights against single women." Many local marriage laws at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified (as well as when the original Constitution was ratified) had concepts of coverture and "head-and-master", which meant that women legally lost rights upon marriage, including rights to ownership of property and other rights of adult participation in the political economy; single women retained these rights, however, and voted in some jurisdictions. Other commentators have noted that some of the ratifiers of the US Constitution (in 1787) also, in contemporaneous contexts, ratified state level Constitutions that saw women as Persons and required them to be treated as such, including granting women rights such as the right to vote. Professor Jane Calvert argues that the 17th and 18th Century Quaker concept of Personhood applied to women, and the prevalence of Quakers in the population of several colonies, such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, at the time that the original Constitution was drafted and ratified likely influenced the choice of the term "Person" for the Constitution instead of the term "Man", which was used in the Declaration of Independence and in the contemporaneously drafted
French Constitution of 1791 The French Constitution of 1791 (french: Constitution française du 3 septembre 1791) was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the . One of the basic precepts of the French Revolution ...
. The personhood of women also has consequences for the ethics of abortion. For example, in "
A Defense of Abortion "A Defense of Abortion" is a moral philosophy essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson first published in ''Philosophy & Public Affairs'' in 1971. Granting for the sake of argument that the fetus has a right to life, Thomson uses thought experiments to argue ...
", Judith Jarvis Thomson argues that one person's right to bodily autonomy trumps another's right to life, and therefore abortion does not violate a fetus's right to life: Instead abortion should be understood as the pregnant women withdrawing her own body from use, which causes the fetus to die. Questions pertaining to the personhood of women and the personhood of fetuses have legal and ethical consequences for reproductive rights beyond abortion as well. For example, some fetal homicide laws have resulted in jail time for women suspected of drug use during a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, like one Alabama woman who was sentenced to ten years.


Slavery

In 1772, Somersett's Case determined that slavery was unsupported by law in England and Wales, but not elsewhere in the British Empire. In 1868, under the 14th Amendment, black men in the United States became citizens. In 1870, under the 15th Amendment, black men got the right to vote. In 1853,
Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
became famous for asking '' Ain't I a Woman?'' and after slavery was abolished, black men continued to fight for personhood by claiming, '' I Am A Man!.''


Original peoples

The legal definition of persons excluded Original peoples, in some States.


Children

The legal definition of persons may include or exclude children depending on the context. The US
Born-Alive Infants Protection Act The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 ("BAIPA" , ) is an Act of Congress. It affirms legal protection to an infant born alive after a failed attempt at induced abortion. It was signed by President George W. Bush. Legislative history ...
of 2002 provides a legal structure that those born at any gestational stage that are either breathing, have heartbeat, umbilical cord pulsation, or any voluntary muscle movement are living, individual human persons.


Disabled

Adults with cognitive disabilities are regularly denied rights generally granted to all adult persons such as the right to marry and consent to sex, and the right to vote. They may also lack legal
competence Competence may refer to: *Competence (geology), the resistance of a rock against deformation or plastic flow. *Competence (human resources), a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job *Competence (law), the me ...
. Philosophical arguments have been made against the cognitively disabled being able to have
moral agency Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral choices based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong." Developm ...
. In many countries, including the US, psychiatric illness can be cited to imprison an adult without due process. Those who become disabled later in life often experience a change in how they are perceived, including others infantilizing them or assuming cognitive disability due to the existence of physical disability. The concept of disability as being worse than death can be seen as a denial of disabled people's personhood, such as when medical professionals suggest
euthanasia Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different eut ...
to non-suicidal disabled patients.


Non-human animals

Some philosophers and those involved in animal welfare, ethology, the rights of animals, and related subjects, consider that certain animals should also be considered to be persons and thus granted legal personhood. Commonly named species in this context include the apes,
cetacean Cetacea (; , ) is an infraorder of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel them ...
s, parrots,
cephalopod A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head ...
s, corvids, elephants,
bear Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Nor ...
s, pigs, leporids and rodents, because of their apparent intelligence and intricate social rules. The idea of extending personhood to all animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and and Laurence Tribe of
Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...
, and animal law courses are (as of 2008) 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. Those who oppose personhood for non-human animals are known as human exceptionalists or human supremacists, and more pejoratively speciesists. Other theorists attempt to demarcate between degrees of personhood. For example, Peter Singer's two-tiered account distinguishes between basic sentience and the higher standard of self-consciousness which constitutes personhood.
Wynn Schwartz Wynn R. Schwartz (born 1950) is an American clinical and experimental psychologist, research psychoanalyst, best known for his work on the Person Concept and his contributions to Descriptive psychology. Background Wynn Schwartz did his undergraduat ...
has offered a Paradigm Case Formulation of Persons as a format allowing judges to identify qualities of personhood in different entities.P.G Ossorio, The Behavior Of Persons, Ann Arbor: Descriptive Psychology Press, 2013
Julian Friedland Julian may refer to: People * Julian (emperor) (331–363), Roman emperor from 361 to 363 * Julian (Rome), referring to the Roman gens Julia, with imperial dynasty offshoots * Saint Julian (disambiguation), several Christian saints * Julian (gi ...
has advanced a seven-tiered account based on cognitive capacity and linguistic mastery. Amanda Stoel suggested that rights should be granted based on a scale of degrees of personhood, allowing entities currently denied any right to be recognized some rights, but not as many. In 1992, Switzerland amended its constitution to recognize animals as ''beings'' and not ''things''. A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union member to do so. The New Zealand parliament included restrictions on the use of 'non-human hominids' in research or teaching when passing the Animal Welfare Act (1999). In 2007, the parliament of the
Balearic Islands The Balearic Islands ( es, Islas Baleares ; or ca, Illes Balears ) are an archipelago in the Balearic Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago is an autonomous community and a province of Spain; its capital is ...
, an autonomous province of Spain, passed the world's first legislation granting legal rights to all great apes. In 2013, India's Ministry of Forests and Environment banned the importation or capture of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) for entertainment, exhibition, or interaction purposes, on the basis that "cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive" and that it "is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment." It noted that "various scientists" have argued they should be seen as "non-human persons" with commensurate rights, but did not take an official position on this, and indeed did not have the legal authority to do so. In 2014, a hybrid, zoo-born orangutan named Sandra was termed by the court in Argentina as a "non-human subject" in an unsuccessful habeas corpus case regarding the release of the orangutan from captivity at the Buenos Aires zoo. The status of the orangutan as a "non-human subject" needs to be clarified by the court. Court cases relevant to this orangutan are continuing in 2015. Finally, in 2019, Sandra was granted nonhuman personhood and freed from captivity to a Florida sanctuary. In 2015, for the first time, two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, were thought to be "legal persons", having been granted a writ of habeas corpus. This meant their detainer,
Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...
, had to provide a legally sufficient reason for their imprisonment. This view was rejected and the writ was reversed by the officiating judge shortly thereafter.


Corporations

Today, in statutory and corporate law, certain social constructs are legally considered persons. In many jurisdictions, some corporations and other organizations are considered juridical persons (a subtype of legal persons) with standing to own, possess, enter contracts, as well as to sue or be sued in court, or even to be indicted, in selected jurisdictions. This is known as legal or corporate personhood. In 1819, the US Supreme Court ruled in ''
Dartmouth College v. Woodward ''Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward'', 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518 (1819), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision in United States corporate law from the Supreme Court of the United States, United States ...
'', that corporations have the same rights as natural persons to enforce contracts.


Environmental entities


Bolivia

In 2006,
Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
passed a law recognizing the rights of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".


Ecuador

In 2008, Ecuador approved a constitution to recognize that nature "...has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution."


India

In 2017, a court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand recognized the Ganges and Yamuna as legal persons. The judges cited Whanganui river in New Zealand as precedent for the action.


New Zealand

The
Whanganui River The Whanganui River is a major river in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the country's third-longest river, and has special status owing to its importance to the region's Māori people. In March 2017 it became the world's second natura ...
of New Zealand is revered by the local Māori people as ''Te Awa Tupua'', sometimes translated as "an integrated, living whole". Efforts to grant it special legal protection have been pursued by the Whanganui iwi since the 1870s. In 2012, an agreement to grant legal personhood to the river was signed between the New Zealand government and the Whanganui River Māori Trust. One guardian from the Crown and one from the Whanganui are responsible for protecting the river.


Spain

Mar Menor Mar Menor (, "minor/smaller sea") is a coastal saltwater lagoon in the Iberian Peninsula located south-east of the Autonomous Community of Murcia, Spain, near Cartagena. Its name is the opposite of the Mediterranean, which is the (greater/larg ...
in Spain can be the first entity or ecosystem to become an environmental entity in Europe. The procedure begun a
popular legislative initiative In political science, an initiative (also known as a popular initiative or citizens' initiative) is a means by which a petition signed by a certain number of registered voters can force a government to choose either to enact a law or hold a pu ...
(PLI) that obtained more than 600,000 signatures of Spaniards (the needed minimum is 500,000). After obtaining these signatures, it has become a legislative proposition and has begun the procedure in the Cortes Generales (State's Parliament) to become a law, the first in Europe.


Modified humans

The theoretical landscape of 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. For example, how much of a human can be
artificially Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality ...
replaced before one loses their personhood? If people are considered persons because of their brains, then what if the brain's thought patterns, memories and other attributes could be transposed into a device? Would the patient still be considered a person after the operation?


Hypothetical beings

Speculatively, there are several other likely categories of beings where personhood is at issue.


Aliens

If alien life were found to exist, under what circumstances would they be counted as "persons"? Do we have to consider any "willing and communicative (capable to register its own will) autonomous body" in the universe, no matter the species, an individual (a person)? Do they deserve equal rights with the human race?


Artificial intelligence or life

If artificial intelligences, intelligent and self-aware system of hardware and software, are eventually created, what criteria would determine their personhood? Likewise, at what point would human-created biological life achieve personhood? Digital technologies have been argued to hold the potential to give rise to notions of posthumous personhood, where the digital remains of the dead are reanimated through artificial intelligence and allow the dead to maintain interactions with the living. If they were to closely resemble a person in its interaction with others, they could be considered persons.


Religion

In China's religious philosophy of Taoism, the
Tao ''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophy, East Asian religions, or any other philo ...
is a path of life and a divine field; not exhibiting personhood of itself, but "if well-nourished", is supposedly beneficial towards persons and the components of personhood. Many generally non-religious Japanese people maintain a degree of Shinto spirituality (thus avoiding fully declared non-spirituality) because the kami are not as central to the Shinto religion as a
monotheistic Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford ...
creator God A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatris ...
, thus having an indirect impact on the formation of an individual's personality. The non-centrality of the kami allow an individual to take an ambivalent stance towards atheism or theism and deism. Religiously speaking, the degree of personhood granted to a deity (along with their universal centrality to a given religion) may be seen to have an impact on the world view and understandings of personhood by mortal individuals.


Christianity

The Latin word '' persona'' is probably derived from the
Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities **Etruscan ...
word ''phersu'', with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον (''prosōpon''). Its meaning in the latter Roman period changed to indicate a
character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
of a theatrical performance or court of law, when it became apparent that different individuals could assume the same role and that legal attributes such as rights, powers, and duties followed the role. The same individuals as actors could play different roles, each with its own legal attributes, sometimes even in the same court appearance. According to other sources, which also admit that the origin of the term is not completely clear, ''persona'' could be related to the Latin verb ''per-sonare'', literally: ''sounding through'', with an obvious link to the above-mentioned theatrical mask, which often incorporated a small megaphone. The word was transformed from its theater use into a term with strict technical theological meaning by Tertullian in his work, ''Adversus Praxean'' (''Against Praxeas''), in order to distinguish the three " persons" of the Trinity. Christianity is thus the first philosophical system to use the word "person" in its modern sense.Met. John Zizioulas, ''Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church''. Crestwood: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1997, pp. 27–49 Subsequently, Boethius refined the word to mean "an individual substance of a rational nature." This can be re-stated as "that which possesses an intellect and a will."


See also

* Abortion debate *
Speciesism Speciesism () is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions within the relevant literature. A common element of most definitions is that speciesism involves t ...
*
Valladolid debate The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of an indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was ...
* Environmental personhood


References


External links

* {{Social class Abortion debate Democratic rights Egalitarianism Equality rights Human rights Transhumanism