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Personhood

Personhood. Video Project. If you haven’t yet, discuss the topic of your project with me today. Projects are due on March 18 th . Videos will be shown in class on March 20 th and March 27 th . What is a person? Why does it matter?

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Personhood

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  1. Personhood

  2. Video Project If you haven’t yet, discuss the topic of your project with me today. Projects are due on March 18th. Videos will be shown in class on March 20th and March 27th.

  3. What is a person? • Why does it matter? • “Human” rights: do you have to be human to deserve human rights? • Restricted rights? Rights of protection, etc. granted to children, the severely mentally ill and others that are not granted full human rights • The right to be counted in utilitarian calculations, i.e. to have one’s pleasure and suffering matter morally

  4. What does it take to be a person? 1) A member of the species Homo sapiens • People vs. “persons” • Brain-dead, talking pig, aliens, computers, robots, apes, dolphins • Cyborgs (part human, part machine): how much of a human being can be replaced by machinery or artificial parts before personhood is lost?

  5. 2) A certain level of intelligence? • How to define? Merely quantitative or qualitative, e.g. understanding concepts, having intentionality? • Not necessary? Baby, mentally disabled • Not sufficient? Intelligent but not sentient computer, deep blue, “zombie”

  6. 3) Being consciousness and/or having feelings • Lower animals, e.g. rabbits, chickens • Does consciousness come in degrees? Is a certain degree of consciousness necessary? • How to determine consciousness? • The Problem of Other Minds

  7. 4) Moral agenthood Kant: “…rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves” (1785) Definition of a person: "a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it" (Kant, Essay on Human Understanding) • Kant’s requirements of a person: rationality, autonomy, able to understand moral judgments and choose to act morally, free will • Problem cases: Babies, mentally deficient people, apes, dolphins, computers, robots

  8. Problem cases Babies, mentally deficient people, apes, dolphins, computers, robots Morally responsible vs. morally considerable • Even if only “persons” are moral agents (hence, morally responsible) , “non-persons” may be morally considerable

  9. 5) Some combination? • Having sufficient intelligence, being a moral agent, being conscious, having free will, (being homo sapiens)? • What combination would you choose? • Are the criteria too strict? • Can fulfilling some criteria be sufficient, e.g. either being homo sapiens or being sufficiently intelligent and conscious?

  10. Apes and Persons

  11. Great Apes • Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos • Could apes fit all the criteria (except being homo sapiens)? • Do apes have: • Sufficient intelligence • Consciousness/self-consciousness • Feelings • The ability to be moral agents • Free will

  12. Human-like abilities in apes • Self-consciousness • The mirror test • Learning through imitation • Tool use • Rationality • Creativity • Communication • Social organization • Moral sense

  13. The Great Ape Project Campaigning for a United Nations Declaration on Great Apes Supported by Peter Singer, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, etc. To create a “community of equals” among people and apes • Three goals: • Right to life (except in cases of self-defense, etc.) • Right to liberty (except where in the ape’s best interest, or where necessary to protect the public) • Right to be protected from physical abuse Implications: • Ban on using apes in scientific research • Ban on eating ape-meat (bush meat) • Ban on using apes in circuses, zoos, tv commercials, pets

  14. Ape rights success • 2007 Balearic Islands (province of Spain) passed world’s first laws to grant rights to great apes • 2008 Spanish parliament drafted bill to grant primates right to life and liberty

  15. Criticisms • Apes cannot enter into a reciprocal legal relationship with people • Apes cannot be held responsible • Apes cannot enter into contracts, obey laws, etc. • Roger Scruton: only humans have duties and thus only humans have rights • People have a natural and justifiable tendency to favor their own species • Slippery slope

  16. Readings Required: Singer, Peter, “All Animals are Equal”, available at: www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm Suggested: Robert Nozick, “Moral Constraints and Animals”, available at: animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/Moral Constraints and Animals.htm The Great Ape Project at: www.greatapeproject.org/

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