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Sunday, July 22, 2018

Beginning of human personhood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Human embryo at 8-cell stage

The beginning of human personhood is the moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion as to the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates relating to abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.

Scope

Traditionally, the concept of personhood has entailed the concept of soul, a metaphysical concept referring to a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human being. However, in modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of human being previously considered to be characteristics of the soul.[1][2] With regard to the beginning of human personhood, one historical question has been: when does the soul enter the body? In modern terms, the question could be put instead: at what point does the developing individual develop personhood or selfhood?[3]

Related issues attached to the question of the beginning of human personhood include both the legal status, bodily integrity, and subjectivity of mothers[4] and the philosophical concept of "natality" (i.e. "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning", which a new human life embodies).[5]

Philosophical and religious perspectives

Answers to the question of when human life begins and when personhood begins have varied among social contexts, and have changed with shifts in ethical and religious beliefs, sometimes as a result of advances in scientific knowledge; in general they have developed in parallel with attitudes to abortion[6] and to the use of infanticide as a means of reproductive control.

Since the zygote is genetically identical to the embryo, the fully formed fetus, and the baby, questioning the beginning of personhood could lead to an instance of the Sorites paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap.[7]

Neil Postman has written that in pre-modern societies, the lives of children were not regarded as unique or valuable in the same way they are in modern societies, in part as a result of high infant mortality. However, when childhood began to develop its own distinctive features (including graded schools to teach reading, children's stories, games, etc.) this view changed. According to Postman, "the custom of celebrating a child's birthday did not exist in America throughout most of the eighteenth century, and, in fact, the precise marking of a child's age in any way is a relatively recent cultural habit, no more than two hundred years old."[8]

Ancient writers held diverse views on the subject of the beginning of personhood, understood as the soul's entry or development in the human body. In Panpsychism in the West, David Skrbina noted the various kinds of soul envisioned by the early Greeks.[9]

Generally, the question of the ensoulment of the fetus revolved around the question of when the rational soul entered the body, whether it was an integral part of the bodily form and substance, or whether it was pre-existent and subject to reincarnation or pre-existence.

The Stoics, holding a belief in the pneuma, held that the soul enters the body when the newborn takes its first breath.

Aristotle developed a theory of progressive ensoulment. In On the Generation of Animals, he declared that the soul develops first a vegetative soul, then animal, and finally human, adding that abortions were permissible early in pregnancy, before certain biological processes began. He believed that the female substance was passive, the male active, and that it required time for the male substance to "animate" the whole.[10]

Hippocrates and the Pythagoreans stated that fertilization marked the beginning of a human life, and that the human soul was created at the time of fertilization.

According to Hinduism Today, Vedic literature states that the soul enters the body at conception.[11]

Concepts of pre-existence are found in various forms in Plato, Judaism, and Islam.

The Jewish Talmud holds that all life is precious but that a fetus is not a person, in the sense of termination of pregnancy being considered murder. If a woman's life is endangered by a pregnancy, an abortion is permitted. However, if the "greater part" of the fetus has emerged from the womb, then its life may not be taken even to save the woman's, "because you cannot choose between one human life and another".[12]

Some medieval Christian theologians, such as Marsilio Ficino, held that ensoulment occurs when an infant takes its first breath of air. They cite, among other passages, Genesis 2:7, which reads: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."[13]

The Early Church held various views on the subject, primarily either the ensoulment at conception or delayed hominization. Tertullian held a view, traducianism, which was later condemned as heresy. This view held that the soul was derived from the parents and generated in parallel with the generation of the physical body. This viewpoint was deemed unsatisfactory by St. Augustine, as it did not account for original sin. Basing himself on the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22, he affirmed the Aristotelian view of delayed hominization.

St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo held the view that fetuses were "animated" (using Aristotle's term for ensoulment) near the 40th day after conception.[6] However, both held that abortion was always gravely wrong.[14][15][16]

In general, the soul was viewed as some kind of animating principle; and the human variety was referred to as the "rational soul".

Fetal personhood in law

Ecclesiastical courts

Following the decline of the Roman Empire, ecclesiastical courts held wide jurisdiction throughout Europe. According to Donald DeMarco, PhD,[17] the Church treated the killing of an unformed or "unanimated" fetus as a matter of "anticipated homicide", with a corresponding lesser penance required. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the following statement regarding the beginning of human life and personhood is provided:
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.[18]

Common law

Although abortion in the United Kingdom was traditionally dealt with in the ecclesiastical courts, English common law addressed the issue from 1115 on, beginning with first mention in Leges Henrici Primi. In this treatise, abortion, even of a "formed" fetus, was a "quasi-homicide", carrying a penalty of 10 years' penance. This was a much lesser penalty than would accrue to full homicide. With the exception of Bracton, later writers insisted that killing a fetus was "great misprision, and no murder", as formulated by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes of the Lawes of England. Coke noted that the murder victim must have been "a reasonable creature in rerum natura", in accordance with the standards of murder in English law. This formulation was repeated by Sir William Blackstone in England and in Bouvier's Law Dictionary in the United States.

The reasonableness of the creature is of some considerable weight in the legal conception of personhood. Children are not considered full persons under the law until they reach the age of majority.

Nonetheless, children have been treated as persons with respect to bodily offences, beginning with Offences against the Person Act 1828, although this protection did not prevent children from being sold by their parents, as in the Eliza Armstrong case, long after the slave trade had been abolished in England.

In addition, "a child en ventre sa mere" (in utero) was regarded by common law as "in being," or "as born" when ensuring that wills and trusts do not run afoul of the rule against perpetuities; nine (or sometimes ten) months of gestation were allotted for this purpose.[19]

Biological markers

One of the possible basic requirements for personhood is individuality, which entails differentiation between the person and its parents. Biology offers a number of stages in the life cycle that have been seen as candidates for personhood:

Fertilization

Fertilization is the fusing of the gametes, that is a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell), to form a zygote. At this point, the zygote is genetically distinct from either of its parents.

Fertilization was not understood in ancient times. Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar were reputed to have been conceived without fertilization (virgin birth). Hippocrates believed that the embryo was the product of male semen and a female factor. But Aristotle held that only male semen gave rise to an embryo, while the female only provided a place for the embryo to develop,[24] (a concept he acquired from the preformationist Pythagoras). Sperm cells were discovered in 1677 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who believed that Aristotle had been proven correct.[25] Some observers believed they could see an entirely pre-formed little human body in the head of a sperm.[26] The human ova was first observed in 1827 by Karl Ernst von Baer.[25] Only in 1876 did Oscar Hertwig prove that fertilization is due to fusion of an egg and sperm cell.[24]

Many members of the medical community accept fertilization as the point at which life begins. Dr. Bradley M. Patten from the University of Michigan wrote in Human Embryology that the union of the sperm and the ovum "initiates the life of a new individual" beginning "a new individual life history." In the standard college text book Psychology and Life, Dr. Floyd L. Ruch wrote "At the time of conception, two living germ cells—the sperm from the father and the egg, or ovum, from the mother—unite to produce a new individual." Dr. Herbert Ratner wrote that "It is now of unquestionable certainty that a human being comes into existence precisely at the moment when the sperm combines with the egg." This certain knowledge, Ratner says, comes from the study of genetics. At fertilization, all of the genetic characteristics, such as the color of the eyes, "are laid down determinatively." James C. G. Conniff noted the prevalence of the above views in a study published by The New York Times Magazine in which he wrote, "At that moment conception takes place and, scientists generally agree, a new life begins—silent, secret, unknown."[27]

The view that life begins at fertilization reached acceptance from mainstream sources at one point. In 1967, New York City school officials launched a large sex education program. The fifth grade textbook stated "Human life begins when the sperm cells of the father and the egg cells of the mother unite. This union is referred to as fertilization. For fertilization to take place and a baby to begin growing, the sperm cell must come in direct contact with the egg cell." Similarly, a textbook used in Evanston, Illinois stated: "Life begins when a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell) unite."[28] Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft goes so far as to say:[29]
Well, every biology textbook in the world, before Roe v. Wade, was not in doubt in answering the question, "When does an individual life of any mammalian species begin?" The answer is, "When the genetic code is complete." When instead of the haploid ovum and the haploid sperm, you get the diploid embryo. And at that point, something happens that is totally different, because the thing that's there seems totally different.
One objection raised to the fertilization view is that not all of the objects created by the union of a sperm and an egg are human beings. Objects such as hydatidiform moles, choriocarcinomas, and blighted ovums are clearly not. Neither will every normal zygote develop into an adult. There are many fertilized eggs that never implant and are "simply washed away" after fertilization,[30] though this can be answered by the fact that not every child becomes an adult; organisms die at various developmental stages. Therefore, within the fertilization view, these objects may be recognized as malformations of the fertilized sperm and egg. The indication of these objects itself seems to evidence the fact that they are aberrations from nature, rather than the norm.[citation needed]

The unique genetic identity of the zygote is also challenged.[citation needed] In fertilization, chromosomes from each parent are combined in the same cell nucleus but remain independent; every chromosome in a diploid cell can be traced to one parent and not the other. Only during meiosis, in which gametes are formed, do these chromosomes cross over, exchanging bits of DNA to form unique genes not found in either parent, though this objection would also apply to the genome of an adult. However, gametes are not commonly considered to have personhood, perhaps because most of them are never involved in fertilization and are haploid cells.[29]

Biopsychologist Michael Gazzaniga has stated that an embryo or early fetus may be compared to a not-yet-constructed house:
You don't walk into a Home Depot and see thirty houses. You see materials that need architects, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to create a house. An egg and a sperm are not a human. A fertilized embryo is not a human—it needs a uterus, and at least six months of gestation and development, growth and neuron formation, and cell duplication to become a human. To give an embryo created for biomedical research the same status even as one created for in vitro fertilization (IVF), let alone one created naturally, is patently absurd. When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not "30 Houses Burn Down." It is "Home Depot Burned Down."[31]
Others have disputed this view. Law professor and ethicist Richard Stith has written that the proper word for the growth of a fetus is not construction, as of a house or car, but development, as of a (pre-digital-era) photograph or a tree sapling:
Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flatly erroneous.... We know with certainty that quickening is an illusion, that the child is developing from the beginning, not being made from the outside, for its form lies within it, in its active potency, in its activated DNA.[32]
That a human individual's existence begins at fertilization is the accepted position of the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pontifical Academy for Life declared: "The moment that marks the beginning of the existence of a new 'human being' is constituted by the penetration of sperm into the oocyte. Fertilization promotes a series of linked events and transforms the egg cell into a 'zygote'."[33] The more authoritative Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also has stated and reaffirmed: "From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth."[34] Eastern Orthodox churches and most of the more conservative Protestant denominations also teach this view of life.

Implantation

In his book Aborting America, Bernard Nathanson argued that implantation should be considered the point at which life begins.[35]
Biochemically, this is when alpha announces its presence as part of the human community by means of its hormonal messages, which we now have the technology to receive. We also know biochemically that it is an independent organism distinct from the mother. [Note: in writing the book, "alpha" was Nathanson's term for any human before birth.]
In their book, When Does Human Life Begin?,[36] John L. Merritt, MD and his son J. Lawrence Meritt II, MD, present the idea that if "the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7) is oxygen, then a blastocyst starts taking in the breath of life from the mother's blood the moment it successfully implants in her womb, which is about a week after fertilization. If the end-point to human life is the moment the body stops using oxygen, then it may follow that the corresponding starting-point is the moment the body starts using oxygen.

Segmentation

Non-conjoined monozygotic twins form up to day 14 of embryonic development, but when twinning occurs after 14 days, the twins will likely be conjoined.[20] Some argue that an early embryo cannot be a person because "If every person is an individual, one cannot be divided from oneself."[37]

However, Fr. Norman Ford stated that "the evidence would seem to indicate not that there is no individual at conception, but that there is at least one and possibly more."[citation needed] He went on to support the idea that, similar to processes found in other species, one twin could be the parent of the other asexually. Theodore Hall agreed with the plausibility of this explanation saying, "We wonder if the biological process in twinning isn't simply another example of how nature reproduces from other individuals without destroying that person's or persons' individuality."[38]

Brain function (brain birth)

In the years since the designation of brain death as a new criterion for death, attention has been directed towards the central role of the nervous system in a number of areas of ethical decision-making. The notion that there exists a neurological end-point to human life has led to efforts at defining a corresponding neurological starting-point. This latter quest has led to the concept of brain birth (or brain life), signifying the converse of brain death. The quest for a neurological marker of the beginning of human personhood owes its impetus to the perceived symmetry between processes at the beginning and end of life, thus if brain function is a criterion used to determine the medical death of a person, it should also be the criterion for its beginning.

Just as there are two types of brain death - whole brain death (which refers to the irreversible cessation of function of both the brain stem and higher parts of the brain) and higher brain death (destruction of the cerebral hemispheres alone, with possible retention of brain stem function), there are two types of brain birth (based on their reversal) - brain stem birth at the first appearance of brain waves in lower brain (brain stem) at 6–8 weeks of gestation, and higher brain birth, at the first appearance of brain waves in higher brain (cerebral cortex) at 22–24 weeks of gestation.[23]

Fetal viability

International status of abortion law
UN 2013 report on abortion law.

  Legal on request
  Legal for maternal life, health, mental health, rape and/or fetal defects, and also for socioeconomic factors
  Illegal with exception for maternal life, health, mental health and/or rape, and also for fetal defects
  Illegal with exception for maternal life, health and/or mental health, and also for rape
  Illegal with exception for maternal life, health, and/or mental health
  Illegal with exception for maternal life
  Illegal with no exceptions
  No information[40]

"Until the fetus is viable, any rights granted to it may come at the expense of the pregnant woman, simply because the fetus cannot survive except within the woman's body. Upon viability, the pregnancy can be terminated, as by a c-section or induced labor, with the fetus surviving to become a newborn infant. Several groups believe that abortion before viability is acceptable, but is unacceptable after" is the perspective of Planned Parenthood, a major abortion provider.[41][42][43] In some countries, early abortions are legal in all circumstances, but late-term abortions are limited to circumstances where there is a clear medical need. While there is no sharp limit of development, gestational age, or weight at which a human fetus automatically becomes viable,[44] a 2013 study found that "While only a small proportion of births occur before 24 completed weeks of gestation (about 1 per 1000), survival is rare and most of them are either fetal deaths or live births followed by a neonatal death." [45]

Birth

While, at one end of the ideological spectrum, some believe human personhood begins at fertilization, at the other end of the spectrum others believe that as long as the fetus is still inside the body of the woman (whether it is viable or not), it does not have any rights of its own.[46]

Other markers

There are also other ideas of when personhood is achieved:
  • at ensoulment
  • at "formation" – an early concept of bodily development (see Preformationism).
  • at the emergence of consciousness
  • at the emergence of rationality (see Kant)
Human personhood may also be seen as a work-in-progress, with the beginning being a continuum rather than a strict point in time.[47]

Individuation

Philosophers such as Aquinas use the concept of individuation. In regard to the abortion debate, they argue that abortion is not permissible from the point at which individual human identity is realised. Anthony Kenny argues that this can be derived from everyday beliefs and language and one can legitimately say "if my mother had had an abortion six months into her pregnancy, she would have killed me" then one can reasonably infer that at six months the "me" in question would have been an existing person with a valid claim to life. Since division of the zygote into twins through the process of monozygotic twinning can occur until the fourteenth day of pregnancy, Kenny argues that individual identity is obtained at this point and thus abortion is not permissible after two weeks.[48]

Ethical perspectives

The distinction in ethical value between existing persons and potential future persons has been questioned.[49] Subsequently, it has been argued that contraception and even the decision not to procreate at all could be regarded as immoral on a similar basis as abortion.[50] Subsequently, any marker of the beginning of human personhood doesn't necessarily mark where it is ethically right or wrong to assist or intervene. In a consequentialistic point of view, an assisting or intervening action may be regarded as basically equivalent whether it is performed before, during or after the creation of a human being, because the end result would basically be the same, that is, the existence or non-existence of that human being. In a view holding value in bringing potential persons into existence, it has been argued to be justified to perform abortion of an unintended pregnancy in favor for conceiving a new child later in better conditions.[51]

Legal perspectives

Ireland

The 1983 Eight Amendment grants the full right to life, and personhood, to any "unborn". As such abortion is banned in nearly all cases, except to save the life of the mother. This was repealed on 25 May 2018 by a 66% voting margin.

United States

In its 1885 decision McArthur v. Scott, the US Supreme Court affirmed the common law principle that a child in its mother's womb can be regarded as "in being" for the purpose of resolving a dispute about wills and trusts.[52]

In 1973, Harry Blackmun wrote the court opinion for Roe v. Wade, saying "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate."

In 2002, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was enacted, which ensures that the legal concepts of person, baby, infant, and child include those which have been born alive in the course of a miscarriage or abortion, regardless of development, gestational age, or whether the placenta and umbilical cord are still attached. This law makes no comment on personhood in utero but ensures that no person after birth is characterized as not a person.[53][54]

In 2003, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was enacted, which prohibits an abortion if "either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother."[55]

In 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law.[56] The law effectively extends personhood status[57] to a "child in utero at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb"[58] if they are targeted, injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed violent crimes. The law also prohibits the prosecutions of "any person for conduct relating" to a legally consented to abortion.

Today, 38 U.S. States legally recognize a human fetus or "unborn child" as a crime victim, at least for the purpose of homicide or feticide laws.[59] According to progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America, "Further, a prenatal personhood measure might subject a woman who suffers a pregnancy-related complication or a miscarriage to criminal investigations and possibly jail time for homicide, manslaughter or reckless endangerment. And because so many laws use the terms "persons" or "people," a prenatal personhood measure could affect large numbers of a state's laws, changing the application of thousands of laws and resulting in unforeseeable, unintended, and absurd consequences." [60]

Some U.S. States have enacted laws specifically defining human life to begin at fertilization. Kansas enacted such a law in 2013.[61] Other states have enacted laws prohibiting the killing of a fetus with a heartbeat.
at

Personhood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a natural person or legal personality 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 theology, in debates about abortion and in fetal rights and/or reproductive rights, in animal rights activism, in theology and ontology, in ethical theory, and in debates about corporate personhood and the beginning of human personhood.[2]

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, Brazil.[3] 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.[4] Likewise, Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.[5]

Overview

Capacities or attributes common to definitions of personhood can include human nature, agency, self-awareness, a notion of the past and future, and the possession of rights and duties, among others.[6] However, the concept of a person 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.

Western philosophy

In philosophy, the word "person" may refer to various concepts. According to the "naturalist" epistemological tradition, from Descartes through Locke and Hume, the term may designate any human (or non-human) agent who: (1) possesses continuous consciousness over time; and (2) who is therefore capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on them.[7]

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:
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.
— [8]
Others, such as American Philosopher Francis J. Beckwith, argue that personhood is not linked to function at all, but rather that it is 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 an entity 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.
— [9]
Philosopher J. 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.
— [10]
Harry G. Frankfurt writes that, "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:
Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to 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.
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
According to Nikolas Kompridis, there might also be an intersubjective, 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.
Other philosophers have defined persons in different ways. Boethius gives the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ("Naturæ rationalis individua substantia").[14] Mary Midgley defines a “person” as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person (self-awareness).[15]

Philosopher Thomas I. White argues that the criteria for a person are as follows: (1) is alive, (2) is aware, (3) feels positive and negative sensations, (4) has emotions, (5) has a sense of self, (6) controls its own behaviour, (7) recognises other persons and treats them appropriately, and (8) 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.[16] Some animal rights groups have also championed recognition for animals as "persons".[17]

Another approach to personhood, Paradigm Case Formulation, used in Descriptive Psychology and developed by Peter 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.[18][19]

American law

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."[20] According to Black's Law Dictionary,[21] 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 (1 USC §8) as a "member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development."

As an application of social psychology and other disciplines, phenomena such as the perception and attribution of personhood have been scientifically studied.[22][23] 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.

Debates

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

Humans

Beginning of personhood

The beginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy. With respect to abortion, 'personhood' is the status of a human being having individual human rights. The term was used by Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade.[24]

Personhood protest in front of the United States Supreme Court

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.[25][26] 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.[27] 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.[28]

A representative organization within this movement is Personhood USA, a Colorado-based umbrella group with a number of state-level affiliates,[29] which describes itself as a nonprofit Christian ministry.[30] and seeks to ban abortion.[31] Personhood USA was co-founded by Cal Zastrow and Keith Mason[32] in 2008 following the Colorado for Equal Rights campaign to enact a state constitutional personhood amendment.[33]

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.”[24]

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.[34]

Legal analysis from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy[35] and other medical organizations[36] hold that personhood measures will have no effect on medical intervention intended to save human life.

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."[37]

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 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."[38]

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 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.[39]

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.”[40]
United States
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.[41] The Georgia Catholic Conference and National Right to Life supported the effort and it failed to attract a super majority in both chambers in order to be placed on the ballot.[42] Georgia legislators have filed a personhood resolution every session since 2007.[43][44][45] In May 2008 Georgia Right to Life hosted the first nationwide Personhood Symposium targeting pro-life activists.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48]

The summer of 2008 a citizen initiated amendment was proposed for the Colorado constitution.[49] Three attempts to enact the from-fertilization definition of personhood into U.S. state constitutions via referenda have failed.[50] Following two attempts to enact similar changes in Colorado in 2008 and 2010, 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.[50][51] In an interview after the referendum, Mason ascribed the failure of the initiative to a political campaign run by Planned Parenthood.[52]

Several state Supreme Courts have rejected challenges to personhood measures brought by opponents in states including Colorado,[53] Ohio,[54] Nevada,[55] and Mississippi.[56] In the Mississippi majority opinion, Justice Randy G. Pierce wrote:
Essentially, Plaintiffs ask this Court to render judgment upon the substance of Intervenors’ initiative – its constitutionality – in advance of the election. …This Court is without power to interfere with pre-election proposals, because to do so may place the administration of government at the footstool of the judiciary.

This Court will exercise judicial restraint and follow the reasoning of the majority of courts throughout the United States, both federal and state, which: “have articulated a policy of deference toward direct legislation processes.” …We cannot invade the territory of the Legislature or the electorate to review the substantive validity of a proposed initiative, and thereby, we will honor the maxim embodied in the constitutional mandate of separation of powers.
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, ruled in April 2012 that the proposed amendment was unconstitutional under the federal Constitution and blocked inclusion of the referendum question on the ballot.[57] In October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the state Supreme Court's ruling.[58]

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.[59] These charges were later dismissed.[60]

In 2014 a new national group formed, National Personhood Alliance. Founded by Daniel Becker, then President of Georgia Right to Life, the new group formed to house the growing state personhood movement and to provide educational resources and training to the burgeoning state personhood affiliates.[61]
International
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.”

Women

In 1920, with the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, women became protected against discrimination in their right to vote in the United States. In 1971, the US Supreme Court ruled in Reed v. Reed[62] that the 14th amendment applies to women,[63] as they are "persons" according to the US Constitution.[64] In 2011, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that women do not have equal protection under the 14th amendment as "persons"[65][66] saying that 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; he said "Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.[67] 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."[68] Many local marriage laws at the time the Fourteenth 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, including rights to ownership of property and other rights of adult participation in the political economy upon marriage; single women retained these rights, however, and voted in some jurisdictions. Also, other commentators have noted that some people who ratified the Constitution in 1787 in other contemporaneous contexts ratified state level Constitutions that saw women as Persons, required to be treated as such, including in rights such as voting.[69][70] The 17th and 18th Century Quaker concept of Personhood most certainly applied to women and the prevalence of Quakers in the population of several colonies, such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania at the time the original Constitution was drafted and ratified likely influenced the use of the term "Person" in the Constitution rather than the term "Man" used in the Declaration of Independence and in the contemporaneously drafted French Constitution of 1791.[71] The concept of personhood beginning at conception gives issues to women. Daniel Fincke states "Applying the logic to abortion she argues that an involuntarily pregnant woman has the right to refuse to let her body be used by the fetus even were we to reason that the fetus has a right to life."[72] The personhood movement may cause many more issues that just a women's right to choose. Some fetal homicide laws have caused women to be sentenced to jail time for suspected drug use during her pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, like the Alabama women who was sentenced to ten years for her suspected drug use.[73]

Slaves

Am I not a man emblem used during the campaign to abolish 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 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!

Children

The legal definition of persons may include or exclude children depending on the context. In the US, regarding liability, children or minors are not legally persons because they do not satisfy the requirements for personhood under the law.[74] However, regarding protection under the law, the US Born-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.[75]

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 great apes, cetaceans,[76] and elephants, 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[77] and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School,[78] and animal law courses are now[when?] taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States.[79] 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.

Some[who?] proponents of human exceptionalism (also referred to by its critics as speciesism or human supremacism[80]) have countered that we must institute a strict demarcation of personhood based on species membership in order to avoid the horrors of genocide (based on propaganda dehumanizing one or more ethnicities) or the injustices of forced sterilization (as occurred in many countries to people with low I.Q. scores and prisoners).[citation needed]

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 has offered a Paradigm Case Formulation of Persons as a format allowing judges to identify qualities of personhood in different entities.[12][19][81] Julian Friedland has advanced a seven-tiered account based on cognitive capacity and linguistic mastery.[82] 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.[83]

In 1992, Switzerland amended its constitution to recognize animals as beings and not things.[84] A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union member to do so.[84][85][86] New Zealand granted basic rights to five great ape species in 1999. Their use is now forbidden in research, testing or teaching.[87] In 2007, the parliament of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous province of Spain, passed the world's first legislation granting legal rights to all great apes.[88]

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.[89][90]

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.[91]

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, had to provide a legally sufficient reason for their imprisonment.[92] This view was rejected and the writ was reversed by the officiating judge shortly thereafter.[93]

Hypothetical beings

Speculatively, there are several other likely categories of beings where personhood is at issue.[19]

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?

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 replaced before one loses their personhood? If people are considered persons because of their brain, 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?

Corporations

Today, in statutory and corporate law, certain social constructs are legally considered persons. In many jurisdictions, some corporations and other legal entities are considered legal persons with standing to sue or be sued in court. This is known as legal or corporate personhood.
In 1819, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, that corporations have the same rights as natural persons to enforce contracts.

Environmental entities

Bolivia

In 2006, Bolivia 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".[94]

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."[95]

New Zealand

The Whanganui River 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.[96]

India

In 2017, 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.[97]

Religion

In animistic religion, animals, plants, and other entities may be persons or deities.[citation needed]

Christianity

Christianity is the first philosophical system to use the word "person" in its modern sense.[98] The word "persona" 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. 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." Thus, the word "person" was originally a theological term created and defined by Christians to explain Christian theological concepts.
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 added rationalis 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 is sui 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-intellectual supposita.

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
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