Personhood

1

• Personhood

2
Debate

• Cigarette smoking should be banned in public
  areas
• Support Oppose
• Fish Ida
• Julius Lok Kit

3
Video Project

• If you havent yet, discuss the topic of your
  project with me today.
• Projects are due on November 16th.
• Videos will be shown in class on and November
  23rd and 30th.

4

• 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 ones pleasure and
  suffering matter morally

5
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?

6

• 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

7

• 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

8

• 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)
• Kants 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

9
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

10

• 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?

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• Apes and Persons

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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

13
Human-like abilities in apes

• Self-consciousness
• The mirror test
• Learning through imitation
• Tool use
• Rationality
• Creativity
• Communication
• Social organization
• Moral sense

14
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 apes 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

15
Ape rights success

• 2007 Balearic Islands (province of Spain) passed
  worlds first laws to grant rights to great apes
• 2008 Spanish parliament drafted bill to grant
  primates right to life and liberty

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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

17
Readings

• Required
• Singer, Peter, All Animals are Equal, available
  at
• www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.ht
  m
• 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/