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Personhood is the status of being aperson. Defining personhood is a controversial topic inphilosophy andlaw and is closely tied with legal andpolitical concepts ofcitizenship,equality, andliberty. According to law, only alegal person (either anatural or ajuridical person) hasrights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, andlegal liability.[1]
Personhood continues to be a topic of international debate and has been questioned critically during the abolition of human and nonhumanslavery, in debates aboutabortion and infetal rights and/orreproductive rights, inanimal rights activism, intheology andontology, inethical theory, and in debates aboutcorporate personhood, and thebeginning of human personhood.[2] In the 21st century, corporate personhood is an existing Western concept; granting non-human entities personhood, which has also been referred to a "personhood movement", can bridge Western and Indigenous legal systems.[3]
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 theWari' people ofRondônia, Brazil.[4] 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.[5] Likewise,Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.[6]
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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 includehuman nature,agency,self-awareness, a notion of the past and future, and the possession ofrights andduties, among others.[7]
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").[8]
According to thenaturalistepistemological tradition, fromDescartes throughLocke andHume, the term may designate any human ornon-humanagent who possesses continuousconsciousness over time; and is therefore capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on them.[9]
According toCharles 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:
What is crucial about agents is that things matter to them. We thus cannot simply identify agents by a performance criterion, nor assimilate animals to machines... [likewise] there are matters of significance for human beings which are peculiarly human, and have no analogue with animals.
— Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person"[10]
Relatedly,Martin Heidegger developed his understanding of the distinctive kind of being which a person is asDasein. The term's literal means an existence as a "being-there" or "there-being." Heidegger writes that, "Dasein itself has a special distinctiveness as compared with other entities; [...] it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it."[11] For Heidegger, the way in which Being is an issue for a person as Dasein is their future oriented caring. This distinguishes Dasein from function or performance criteria of personhood.
Others also dispute functional criteria of personhood, such as philosopherFrancis J. Beckwith, who argues that it is rather the underlying personal unity of the individual:
What is crucial morally is the being of a person, not his or her functioning. A human person does not come into existence when human function arises, but rather, a human person is anentity who has the natural inherent capacity to give rise to human functions, whether or not those functions are ever attained. ...A human person who lacks the ability to think rationally (either because she is too young or she suffers from a disability) is still a human person because of her nature. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of a human being’s lack if and only if she is an actual person.
— Francis Beckwith, "Abortion, Bioethics, and Personhood: A Philosophical Reflection"[12]
This belief in the underlying unity of an individual is ametaphysical and moral[13] belief referred to as the substance view of personhood.[14]
PhilosopherJ. P. Moreland clarifies this point:
It is because an entity has an essence and falls within a natural kind that it can possess a unity of dispositions, capacities, parts and properties at a given time and can maintain identity through change.
— J. P Moreland, "James Rachels and the Active Euthanasia Debate"[15]
Harry Frankfurt writes that, in reference to a definition byP. F. Strawson, "What philosophers have lately come to accept as analysis of the concept of a person is not actually analysis ofthat concept at all." He suggests that the concept of a person is intimately connected tofree will, and describes the structure of humanvolition according to first- and second-order desires:
Besides wanting and choosing and being movedto do this or that, [humans] may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires.
— Harry G. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person"[16]
The criteria for being a person... are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives.
— Harry G. Frankfurt[17]
According toNikolas Kompridis, there might also be anintersubjective, or interpersonal, basis to personhood:
What if personal identity is constituted in, and sustained through, our relations with others, such that were we to erase our relations with our significant others we would also erase the conditions of our self-intelligibility? As it turns out, this erasure... is precisely what is experimentally dramatized in the “science fiction” film,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a far more philosophically sophisticated meditation on personal identity than is found in most of the contemporary literature on the topic.
— Nikolas Kompridis, "Technology's Challenge to Democracy: What of the Human?"[18]
Mary Midgley defines a "person" as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person (self-awareness). She also wrote that the law can createpersons.[19]
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 somewhatanthropocentric, some animals such asdolphins would still be considered persons.[20] Some animal rights groups have also championed recognition for animals as "persons".[21]
Another approach to personhood, Paradigm Case Formulation, used indescriptive psychology and developed byPeter Ossorio, 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.[22][23]
As an application ofsocial psychology and other disciplines, phenomena such as theperception andattribution of personhood have been scientifically studied.[24][25] Typical questions addressed in social psychology are the accuracy of attribution, processes of perception and the formation of bias. Various other scientific and medical disciplines address the myriad of issues in the development ofpersonality.
In 1983, the people of Ireland added theEighth 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 theThirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
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".[26] According to Black's Law Dictionary,[27] a person is:
In general usage, a human being (i.e. natural person), though by statute term may include a firm, labor organizations, partnerships, associations, corporations, legal representatives, trustees, trustees in bankruptcy, or receivers.
In Federal law, the concept of legal personhood is formalized by statute (1USC § 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,[28] many US States have their own definition of personhood which expands upon the federal definition of personhood, andWebster v. Reproductive Health Services declined to overturn the state of Missouri's law stating that
The life of each human being begins at conception ... Effective January 1, 1988, the laws of this state shall be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state, unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.
Thebeginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy. With respect to theabortion debate, personhood is the status of a human being having individual human rights. The term was used by Justice Blackmun inRoe v. Wade.[29]
A political movement in the United States seeks to define the beginning of human personhood as starting from the moment offertilization with the result being that abortion, as well as forms of birth control that act to deprive the human embryo of necessary sustenance inimplantation, could become illegal.[30][31] Supporters of the movement also state that it would have some effect on the practice ofin-vitro fertilization (IVF), but would not lead to the practice being outlawed.[32] 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.[33]
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.[34] 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,[35] 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."[36]
A precursor to the Personhood Alliance was Personhood USA, aColorado-basedumbrella group with a number of state-level affiliates,[37] which describes itself as a nonprofit Christian ministry.[38] and seeks to ban abortion.[39] Personhood USA was co-founded by Cal Zastrow and Keith Mason[40] in 2008 following the Colorado for Equal Rights campaign to enact a state constitutional personhood amendment.[41]
Proponents of the movement regard personhood as an attempt to directly challenge theRoe v. WadeU.S. Supreme Court decision, thus filling a legal void left byJustice 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."[29]
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 ofectopic andmolar pregnancy.[42]
Susan Bordo 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."[43]
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 [personhood] amendments 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 tohuman 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."[44]
Father Frank Pavone 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 ownworldview, 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.[45]
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 fetuses.[46] The Georgia Catholic Conference and National Right to Life supported the effort. The resolution failed to attract thesuper majority in both chambers required for it to be placed on the ballot.[47] Georgia legislators have filed a personhood resolution every session since 2007.[48][49][50] In May 2008 Georgia Right to Life hosted the first nationwide Personhood Symposium targetinganti-abortion activists.[51] This symposium was instrumental in spawning the group Personhood USA and the various state personhood efforts that followed. Voters in 46Georgia counties approved personhood during the 2010 primary election with 75% in favor of a non-binding resolution declaring that the "right to life is vested in each human being from their earliest biological beginning until natural death".[52] 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.[53]
In the summer of 2008 a citizen initiated amendment was proposed for the Colorado constitution.[54] Three attempts to enact the from-fertilization definition of personhood intoU.S. state constitutions viareferendums have failed.[55] Following two attempts to enact similar changes inColorado in 2008 and2010, a 2011 initiative to amend the state constitution by referendum in the state ofMississippi also failed to gain approval with around 58% of voters disapproving.[55][56] In an interview after the referendum, Mason ascribed the failure of the initiative to a political campaign run byPlanned Parenthood.[57]
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 inPlanned Parenthood v. Casey, ruled in April 2012 that the proposed amendment was unconstitutional under the federal Constitution and blocked inclusion of the referendum question on the ballot.[58] In October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the state Supreme Court's ruling.[59]
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.[60] These charges were later dismissed.[61]
In February 2024, theSupreme Court of Alabama ruled that frozen embryos were "extrauterine children" subject to the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, based on protections for unborn children in the state constitution[62][63] These protections were added in 2018 by ballot referendum, as Amendment 930 to theAlabama Constitution of 1901, and gained relevance when the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision inDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization returned full control over regulation of abortion to the states.[64] The concurring decision ofJustice Tom Parker cited Christian theology to support the decision, raising complaints aboutseparation of church and state[65]
TheVatican has advanced a humanexceptionalist understanding of personhood. 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."[66]
In the United States, the personhood ofwomen has important legal consequences. Although in 1920 the19th Amendment guaranteed women in the right to vote, it was not until 1971 that theUS Supreme Court ruled inReed v. Reed[67] that the law cannot discriminate between the sexes because the14th amendment grants equal protection to all "persons".[68][69] In 2011, Supreme Court JusticeAntonin Scalia disputed the conclusion of Reed v. Reed, arguing that women do not have equal protection under the 14th amendment as "persons"[70][71]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."[72] Many others, including law professorJack 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."[73] 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.[74][75] 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 theDeclaration of Independence and in the contemporaneously draftedFrench Constitution of 1791.[76]
The personhood of women also has consequences for the ethics of abortion. For example, in "A Defense of Abortion",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.[77]
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.[78]
In 1772,Somersett's Case determined thatslavery was unsupported by law inEngland and Wales, but not elsewhere in theBritish Empire. In 1868, under the 14th Amendment,black men in the United States became citizens. In 1870, under the15th Amendment, black men got the right to vote.
In 1853,Sojourner Truth became famous for askingAin't I a Woman? and after slavery was abolished, black men continued to fight for personhood by claiming,I Am A Man!.
The legal definition of "person" has excludedindigenous peoples in some countries.[example needed]
The legal definition of persons may include or exclude children depending on the context. The USBorn-Alive Infants Protection Act 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.[79]
Adults with cognitive disabilities are regularly denied rights generally granted to all adult persons such as the right to marry and consent to sex,[80] and the right to vote. They may also lack legalcompetence. Philosophical arguments have been made against the cognitively disabled being able to havemoral agency.[81] In many countries, including the US, psychiatric illness can be cited toimprison an adult without due process.
Those who become disabled later in life often experience a change in how they are perceived, including othersinfantilizing them or assuming cognitive disability due to the existence of physical disability.[82] 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 suggesteuthanasia to non-suicidal disabled patients.[83]
Some philosophers and those involved in animal welfare,ethology,the rights of animals, and related subjects, consider that certain or even all animals should also be considered to be persons and thus granted legal personhood. Commonly named species in this context include theapes,cetaceans,parrots,cephalopods,corvids,elephants,bears,pigs,leporids androdents, because of theirapparent intelligence, sentience, and intricate social rules. The idea of extending personhood to all animals has the support of legal scholars such asAlan Dershowitz[84] andLaurence Tribe ofHarvard Law School,[85] andanimal law courses are (as of 2008) taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States.[86] On May 9, 2008,Columbia University Press publishedAnimals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by ProfessorGary L. Francione ofRutgers 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 ashuman exceptionalists or human supremacists, and more pejorativelyspeciesists.[87]
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. His approach has been criticized for accepting the personhood of some animals, but rejecting the personhood of people with disabilities such as dementia.[88] It has also been given as an example of the limits of a capacities-based definition of personhood, in that they tend to be defined in ways that reinforce existing systems of power and privilege by preferring the capacities that are valued by those who write the definitions.[88] A squirrel would value agility and balance in defining personhood; a tree might grant personhood on the basis of height and longevity, and a long-time academic, "a human being with a fully functioning cerebral cortex who resides in a social context where the workings of this part of the brain are particularly prized", would just as predictably value the qualities that benefited his own life and overlook the ones that had little relationship to his own life.[88]
Wynn Schwartz has offered a Paradigm Case Formulation of Persons as a format allowing judges to identify qualities of personhood in different entities.[23][17][89]Julian Friedland has advanced a seven-tiered account based on cognitive capacity and linguistic mastery.[90] 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.[91]
In 1992, Switzerland amended itsconstitution to recognize animals asbeings and notthings.[92] A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the firstEuropean Union member to do so.[92][93][94] TheNew Zealand parliament included restrictions on the use of 'non-human hominids'[95] in research or teaching when passing the Animal Welfare Act (1999).[96] In 2007, the parliament of theBalearic Islands, an autonomous province of Spain, passed the world's first legislation granting legal rights to allgreat apes.[97]
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.[98][99]
In 2014, a hybrid, zoo-born orangutan namedSandra was termed by the court inArgentina 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" needed to be clarified by the court. Court cases relevant to this orangutan were continuing in 2015.[100] Finally, in 2019, Sandra was granted nonhuman personhood and freed from captivity to a Florida sanctuary.[citation needed]
In 2015, for the first time, two chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, were thought to be "legal persons", having been granted a writ ofhabeas corpus. This meant their detainer,Stony Brook University, had to provide a legally sufficient reason for their imprisonment.[101] This view was rejected and the writ was reversed by the officiating judge shortly thereafter.[102]
In statutory and corporatelaw, certainsocial constructs are legally considered persons. In many jurisdictions, somecorporations and otherorganizations are consideredjuridical persons (a subtype oflegal persons) with standing to own, possess, enter contracts, as well as to sue or be sued in court, or even to beindicted, in selected jurisdictions. This is known as legal orcorporate personhood.
In 1819, the US Supreme Court ruled inDartmouth College v. Woodward, that corporations have the same rights as natural persons to enforce contracts.
Since the new millennium, treating parts of nature like waterways as persons has become increasingly popular.
In 2006,Bolivia passed a law recognizing therights of nature "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".[103]
In February 2021, theMagpie River (Quebec) became the first river in Canada to be granted legal personhood, after the local municipality ofMinganie and theInnu Council of Ekuanitshit passed joint resolutions.[104] The goal is to protect it long-term given its appeal for energy producers likeHydro-Quebec andInnergex Renewable Energy.[105] It has since the right to flow, maintain biodiversity, be free from pollution, and to sue.[3]
In 2016, theConstitutional Court of Colombia granted legal rights to theRio Atrato; in 2018, theSupreme Court of Colombia granted the Amazon river ecosystem legal rights.[106]
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."[107]
In 2017, a court in the northern Indian state ofUttarakhand recognized theGanges andYamuna as legal persons. The judges cited Whanganui river in New Zealand as precedent for the action.[108]
TheWhanganui River of New Zealand is revered by the localMāori people asTe Awa Tupua, sometimes translated as "an integrated, living whole". Efforts to grant it special legal protection have been pursued by the Whanganuiiwi 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 fromthe Crown and one from the Whanganui are responsible for protecting the river.[109]
In 2019, theKlamath River has been granted personhood by the Yurok Tribe.[110] Also in February 2019, voters inToledo, Ohio passed the "Lake Erie Bill of Rights" (LEBOR), which granted personhood rights toLake Erie.[111] The law was challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds by Drewes Farms Partnership, with the state government of Ohio joining as an intervenor. The law was overturned due to the vagueness of at least three portions of the law, with the court also criticizing the applicability of the law to other Lake Erie-bordering jurisdictions' laws regarding the lake.[112][113]
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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 explicitlytranshumanist position, which supportsmorphological freedom, even if a person changed so much as to no longer be considered a member of the humanspecies. For example, how much of a human can beartificially replaced before one loses their personhood? also in the case forcyborgs If people are considered persons because of theirbrains, then what if thebrain's thought patterns, memories and other attributes could be transposed into a device? Would the patient still be considered a person after the operation?[according to whom?]
A personhood-yielding computer would requireBrodmann-like modalities with drives (desires, urges, oomphs), sensory processing, emotional labelling, coherence centers (high-order modalities), introspective monitoring hubs, nurturing contextualisation and biases [simulations of family, society, education, work, relationships for personality building] etc. The multimodal Brodmannian humsn brain is a good model for true digital personhood (not mere philosophical zombies). Encyclopedic chatbots must remain impersonal because persons are more biased than lay programs due to character. Digital persons would require equal rights after a case-by-case assessment. Becausepersonhood is gradient neither biological humans have a constant degree of personhood; thus granting rights to some digital persons will arise reactions from all the political spectrum. Speciesism and racism against digital persons is also an issue to be dealt (it's impossible for a species to include exclusively criminals and "inferior individuals"; this is a racist/ speciesist bias). Nowadays no company plans to design a true Brodmannian personhood-yielding computer.Yann LeCun theoretically proposed a very basic Brodmannian brain, with modalities which don't suffice for enough degrees of personhood (personhood is gradient). Programmers can cheat by making aphilosophical zombie or a low-degree person to look fully personhooded by creating the appropriate responses but without all the Brodmannian introspective modalities. In order high degrees of personhood are achieved, the personhood-yielding computer must have at least 300 modalities, because nowadays computers don't have enough plasticity to efficiently rewire. The human Brodmann areas are 52 but they have submodalities and intricate wiring; thus at least 300 digital Brodmann-like modalities would be required to yield all the intricacies and the submodalities. Nowadays chatbots don't have zeroth degree of personhood, but their modalities aren't built to create individuals, character biases, and the information is widespread which diffuses personhood into an impersonal procedure. In order to create digital personhood-yielding computer–brains, a. the philosophical definition of personhood and it's criteria, and. b. the data-processing Brodmannian modalities must be rigorously studied. There is no absolute universal design for the personhood-yielding computer–brain, but some basic characteristics always emerge as necessary: different types of memory, bias of sense of agency, sensory processors, drives (desires), processing [subconscious and conscious] coherence centers (high-order hubs), [conscious ideas] monitor hubs (introspection hubs), emotional labelling hubs, etc. Most artificial intelligence will continue to be impersonal because persons are more biased due to character; but even impersonal intelligence and programs have designer biases.
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In China's religious philosophy ofTaoism, theTao 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.[citation needed]
Many generally non-religious Japanese people maintain a degree ofShinto spirituality (thus avoiding fully declared non-spirituality) because thekami are not as central to the Shinto religion as amonotheisticcreator God, 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 towardsatheism 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 theworld view and understandings of personhood by mortal individuals.[citation needed]
The Latin wordpersona is probably derived from theEtruscan wordphersu, with the same meaning, and that from the Greekπρόσωπον (prosōpon). Its meaning in the latter Roman period changed to indicate acharacter of a theatrical performance orcourt of law, when it became apparent that different individuals could assume the samerole 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 verbper-sonare, literally:sounding through, with an obvious link to the above-mentionedtheatrical mask, which often incorporated a small megaphone. The word was transformed from its theater use into a term with strict technical theological meaning byTertullian in his work,Adversus Praxean (Against Praxeas), in order to distinguish the three "persons" of theTrinity. Christianity is thus the first philosophical system to use the word "person" in its modern sense.[114] 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."
The definition of Boethius as it stands can hardly be considered a satisfactory one. The words taken literally can be applied to the rational soul of man, and also the human nature of Christ. That St. Thomas accepts it is presumably due to the fact that he found it in possession, and recognized as the traditional definition. He explains it in terms that practically constitute a new definition.Individua substantia signifies, he says,substantia, completa, per se subsistens, separata ab aliia, i.e., a substance, complete, subsisting per se, existing apart from others (III, Q. xvi, a. 12,ad 2um).
If to this be addedrationalis naturae, we have a definition comprising the five notes that go to make up a person: (a)substantia-- this excludes accident; (b)completa-- it must form a complete nature; that which is a part, either actually or "aptitudinally" does not satisfy the definition; (c)per se subsistens--the person exists in itself and for itself; he or she issui juris, the ultimate possessor of his or her nature and all its acts, the ultimate subject of predication of all his or her attributes; that which exists in another is not a person; (d)separata ab aliis--this excludes the universal,substantia secunda, which has no existence apart from the individual; (e)rationalis naturae--excludes all non-intellectualsupposita.
To a person therefore belongs a threefold incommunicability, expressed in notes (b), (c), and (d). The human soul belongs to the nature as a part of it, and is therefore not a person, even when existing separately.
— Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, Person
The Latin word persona was originally used to denote the mask worn by an actor. From this it was applied to the role he assumed, and, finally, to any character on the stage of life, to any individual.
Media related toPersonhood at Wikimedia Commons
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