Personhood

- Chris P

A person, according the oxford English dictionary, is a "living soul and self-conscious being". The definition of personhood is a very controversial topic among philosophers and human right campaigners as it plays a crucial role it influencing whether or not abortion is morally acceptable. Many different scholars and philosophers have their own idea of what being a person is, and when you become this person. Most experts agree that simply having the particular genetic information of a certain species doesn't make you a person, and also that humans are one of the few species of animal alive on earth who are actually persons, most philosophers agree that what separates us from other animals is the complexity of our psychology. Aristotle the Greek philosopher claimed that our ability to use reason and be rational makes us a person, he believed that our ability to use complex language to communicate ideas is proof of this rationality, compared to other animals who seem to use a much simpler, basic form of communication. Aristotle believed it was our ability to weigh up the pros and cons of doing a specific action is an example of our reason, he believed that our ability to engage in moral deliberation was further proof of this and making these ethical decisions involved thinking about your own feelings and interests and acting upon them. Others believe personhood is defined by a possession of a network of beliefs or moral values, only a person could form beliefs about the world solely through the use of reason, rather than through observation, we can form a whole network of beliefs through our own experiences and that our capacity to do this is a characteristic belonging only to persons. Part of this idea of a network of beliefs is that we are able to use history in order to look into and try to predict the future, for example I may not eat a certain sandwich type because in the past it has made me feel ill, some believe that something who does not have personhood, such as a dog, would not think like this, he may instinctively avoid eating the sandwich but the concept of "this particular sandwich makes me sick" does not exist in their heads, because they are not persons. Another major predicate of being a person is the idea of self-awareness and knowing what and who you are, this idea is mostly credited to Descartes who believed that consciousness is what characterises the mind. Some followers believe that what most animals experience is sentience, as in they experience sensations and emotions through a spectrum but they lack many of the other features of human psychology and so cannot be persons. Humans and potentially some other great apes differ from this simple idea of sentience because we are self-conscious. This is different from being sentient because when you are self-aware, you aren't just mindful of what is happening, you are aware to whom the experiences are happening to, self-awareness is the ability to recognize yourself as a particular thing and call it "I", it is the ability to reflect upon your previous actions and, again, be aware that it was you all throughout your memory doing those actions, it is the ability to realise that all your intentions, motives, beliefs and desires all belong to the same "you" and that cannot change. This is probably the most widely accepted predicate in defining personhood, it is important to distinguish the different between sentience and self-awareness however because they are entirely different things.