Talk:Personhood

Untitled

Question: are there any other organizations within this movement other than Personhood USA and its affiliates? If so, what are they? -- Gigacephalus (talk) 19:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Move to "Personhood legislation"?

The focus on the movement may be mistaken. I'm inclined to think that our coverage should be at Personhood legislation, with a section in that article about the people advocating such legislation. In another article, I'm doing an edit referring to the legislation, which I'll make a piped link here while waiting to see what other editors think about a move. JamesMLane t c 20:13, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Move to "Personhood"?

This article is about a variety of issues related to "personhood" not just one movement. USchick (talk) 01:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Women

Whether the 14th Amendment prohibits sex discrimination or not is not a question of women's "personhood" as defined in this article. If the Constitution required discrimination, then it would obviously be relevant to personhood. But at most, according to Scalia who believes that it does not prohibit sex discrimination, the Constitution is silent regarding women's personhood. In fact, Scalia would argue that the Constitution also does not prohibit discrimination against men as a class. If neither men nor women are persons, then who is left? Obviously, this controversy has nothing to do with personhood and does not belong in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.156.84.229 (talk) 08:13, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

The debate continues in the U.S Supreme Court over "personhood" as defined by law and in this article. If that's not relevant, I don't know what is. The information is sourced. Please do not revert without consensus. USchick (talk) 00:58, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well the article is ot about personhood in US legislation. I think it is rather irrelevant to the larger topic of personhood how any particular American judge chooses to interpret the American constitution. Also it's recentism. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Parochial

The article reads fairly parochial in its focus on many US specific constitutional debates such as Roe vs Wade and the recent commentary on the personhood of women. Such debates do not matter for the personhood of the vast majority of the world's population. In comparison the article doesn't even mention important debates such as the Valladolid debate of 1550 where Spanish colonizers debated whether the people of the new world should be considered full persons with legal and religoius rights. Women's rights and abolition movements were not US specific movements either.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Added. Kortoso (talk) 20:32, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Merge proposal

There is an article, non-human, that currently acts as a content fork to the non-human personhood section in this article. In addition to being completely unsourced, it also has an incomprehensible section on artificial intelligence and has a title that is an adjective (something we try to avoid. I think the article is completely salvageable and should go the way of non-human animals (i.e. a redirect). Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with merging this article with the personhood wiki page. As previously stated by another author on December 8, 2011 "This article is about a variety of issues related to "personhood" not just one movement." The term non-human is a general term that covers a variety of uses. For example, www.dictionary.com defines non-human like this:

1.not human.

2.not displaying the emotions, sympathies, intelligence, etc., of most human beings.

3.not intended for consumption by humans: nonhuman products such as soaps and detergents.

This definition doesn't restrict the term solely to the animal right/personhood arguement. I do agree that there needs to be more sources and references for this article, but the lack of sources doesn't justify merging it with the personhood article. It means we need to add more sources. In regards to to the section which you find incomprehensible, please tell me what you don't understand and I will rewrite it so that it is more understandable.DivaNtrainin (talk) 02:30, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I disagree as well due to the inclusion of non-human (Artificial Intelligence) which has nothing to do with personhood. The AI usage of "non-human" is used across the Internet Advertising industry to refer to any online activity not performed by a human. If you want to merge the first portion of this article with the personhood article feel free, but the other portion needs to be retained in some fashion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:4898:80E0:EE43:0:0:0:4 (talk) 23:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the articles should be merged; also the quality of what few sources this article uses are questionable and the part on hypothetical beings is completely un-sourced. It would actually look more journalistic to call that section "In popular culture" and to just be quoting science fiction stories than to be using original research. Even if someone actually knows some sentient machines, or happens to be an alien; half animal, or some kind of undead or spirit, than unless that information has been published before, and read by a substantial amount of people, than there's no reason to be mentioning it here. CensoredScribe (talk) 18:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Circular reasoning Circular definition

This is circular reasoning circular definition because:
Personhood is the status of being a person. But simultaneously:
A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood,[...] 85.193.232.131 (talk) 03:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It is not circular reasoning, because it doesnt involve any reasoning. It is just a definition of two mutually definitory concepts. Definitions are by definition circular.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Indeed, it is not circular reasoning but it is a circular definition. According to you "definitions are by definition circular" Are you serious? 85.193.232.131 (talk) 05:08, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

You are right not all definitions are circular, but definitions of concepts do tend to rely on eachother for meaning.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:32, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Nice! MaynardClark (talk) 04:12, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The circular definition is nice? ;-) 85.193.232.131 (talk) 05:08, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I like it. :) USchick (talk) 06:41, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Would you like to suggest a different definition? Personhood has legal status and a legal definition that means something in court. A person is a being. USchick (talk) 06:47, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The definition of personhood was correct. The real problem is with a person. All my activity here was unnecessary. Sorry about that confusion. 85.193.232.131 (talk) 09:34, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth I've long been unhappy with the circularity of definition left between this article and Person, but it's what we settled on after a lot of fruitless debate (between Manus and I, and USChick, Stevertigo, etc) and I don't have the energy to dig that all up again. I still think that, as USChick has said, a person is a being (or entity, same thing) and personhood is a status, and those are related in that a person is a being with the status of personhood, and personhood is the status of being a person, but we still need to say somewhere what constitutes that status, and that discussion of such belongs at the article Personhood, and only summarized at Person.

As for what that definition should be, of course there are lots of varying specifics but I still think the broad noncontroversial gist of it that should be in the lede (at Personhood) is that personhood is both a status of legal/moral/social importance (that is, having that status bestows importance on whoever has that status), and that it requires meeting some (variously defined) criteria that qualifies the holder of that status for that importance. I think these two quotes from Charles Taylor and Harry Frankfurt are great sources to draw on for this notion:

Taylor:

Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights. But underlying the moral status, as its condition, are certain capacities.

Frankfurt:

There is a sense in which the word 'person' is merely the singular form of 'people' and in which both terms connote no more than membership in a certain biological species. In those senses of the word which are of greater philosophical interest, however, the criteria for being a person do not serve primarily to distinguish the members of our own species from the members of other species. Rather, they 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. Now these attributes would be of equal significance to us even if they were not in fact peculiar and common to the members of our own species. What interests us most in the human condition would not interest us less if it were also a feature of the condition of other creatures as well. Our concept of ourselves as persons is not to be understood, therefore, as a concept of attributes that are necessarily species-specific. It is conceptually possible that members of novel or even of familiar nonhuman species should be persons; and it is also conceptually possible that some members of the human species are not persons.

An older version of this article had an except from that Frankfurt quote in the lede, and I still think something like that would be best. For Person, "A person is a being, such as a human, with those attributes/capacities/etc that are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves / that we regard as most important and problematical in our lives / that bestow a certain moral status such as the bearing of rights / etc"; and for Personhood, instead, "Personhood is the status of having..." such attributes/capacities/etc that are of concern/important/problematic for things like bearing rights / etc.

(Cross-posted both at Person and Personhood). --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:00, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

I personally don't have any strong feelings about it as long as no politically motivated POV is included in the definition. In my opinion, the definition should be based on philosophical and historical concepts and ideas. USchick (talk) 17:01, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

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Prehumans

Would pre-humans (Neanderthals et al.) be accorded personhood? I'm reading a few scholarly articles that look at this question.

Neanderthal Rights

Would resurrected Neanderthals have human rights?

Kortoso (talk) 20:40, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

"Personhood" as a concept is vague

The article lacks clarity of conception. The discussion presented in the following linked book review would help clarify these issues--as would a reading of the book under review in the article.

See (the proof copy .pdf file of) the review by professor Daniel Lapsley in the journal Human Development :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306023669_The_Plot_Thickens_Personality_and_Its_Development

Personhood should include a discussion of biology, not just legislation and philosophy

Former President of the National Right to Life Committee John Willke stated, "Contained within the single cell who I once was, was the totality of everything I am today." This is a biological argument, distinct from religious or philosophical arguments. The personhood debate, upon which state legislative attempts are based, SHOULD consider this. I have a PhD in developmental biology (the study of embryonic development) so I have a dog in this race. But the personhood section is such a mess I don't know where to begin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tchad49 (talk • contribs) 23:31, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

create page: personhood-yielding computer

Please create a dedicated article. The personhood-yielding computer is an important field of study.

Paragraphs:

1. human brain; neuroscience; the biological brain[s]
   • Personhood is gradient (gradience of personhood). Not only a single brain architecture can be personhooded enough and equivalent to the human brain
   • criteria: all the Brodmann areas and their combined functions not the exact cytological in different possible brain architectures but the generic data-processing (memory, default mode network, senses, procedural abilities, understanding abilities, memoremotional wiring to yield memories and physicalize emotions via a cascade of physical impacts based on data = emotion is to procedurally physicalize data via complicated data-processing centers of different function// consciousness is a vague term, the correct is data-coherence centers and procedure-coherence centers = many centers of consciousness [but the term consciousness is too vague and for some becomes supernatural = undefinable by mistake and biased perspective)
2. personhood-yielding digital computer: program-based, electronic-based (with physical processing units which are task-specific and not generic) and the best option: hybrid digital brain = based on programming, generic processing units and task-specific processing units (GPUs + CPUs + Non-Wafer PUs + program-based non-general PUs all in one system)
   • same as the biological brain: No single personhood-yielding brain architecture is possible, but the basic data-processing modalities of the Brodmann areas have to be met (no cytological focus)
3. soul: simple (philosophy) = has no proper parts; impossible to have modalities = Brodmann-like areas. The soul doesn't meet the axiomatic prerequisites for physical foundations to self-exist; neither any logic to have identity (it is only a lay narrative) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.92.62.203 (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Phrases

Atheistic

• the non-personocentricity of physics ⚫ personhood isn't the most fundamental natural phenomenon, neither it is cosmogonous

Theistic

• (please add data)

German philosophical ideas

1. personhood cannot exist within the pre-Universal nothingness because it is shaped socially within an environment, 2. personhood has components of memory which are more fundamental than the person (god is not god being non-fundamental), 3. scientific cosmogony has nothing to do with personhood (watch: Before the Big Bang 4 and all the other episodes), 4. everything is a process and a phenomenon (even statues are processes a. their atoms vibrate - otherwise we have no matter, b. a piece of rock becomes an artefact of sculpture only within the symbolic processing of the artist and the viewer) - personhood is one out of many natural phenomena, and certainly a secondary/high level (study: high level program) and non-fundamental (personhood requires many components and processes, most of which aren't exclusively related to persons)

non-personocentricity, non-personocentrality

non-personocentricity, non-personocentrality

The state of a phenomenon or process which does not have a person or persons as its basic constituent, or a procedure non related to persons at all.

make page: personocentrism = personocentricity = personocentrality

http://nmkav.ru/en/archive/2012/3/tsennosti-molodezhi-v-sovremennom-rossijskom-obshchestve-ot-sotsiotsentrizma-k-personotsentrizmu

We should make different pages for politics, philosophy etc

• make page: personocentrism (metaphysics) = personocentricity (metaphysics) = personocentrality (metaphysics)

1. the belief that at least one personhood (or person, but personhood causes us to analyze what we mean and definitions matter in encyclopedias) may exist before the universe
2. the belief that at least one personhood created the universe
3. the belief that at least one personhood is the central deeper final cause of actions within the universe
4. the belief that persons are the reason the universe exists (the reason the initial cause was planned, here not the cosmogonous cause itself but the Demiurge's thought prior to that - note: the Demiurge is also a person)
5. the belief that personhood is the most fundamental phenomenon which causes all other phenomena (here the centrality is a permanent part of the process and not merely part of cosmogony)
6. the belief that personhood is immortal (but not necessarily other phenomena or habits; some art movements might end, personhood never)
7. the belief that personhood is superior than science, or that science isn't complete without the additional causes which serve the purposes of some personhood(s); or that science is wrong altogether but the cosmomechanics (= the way the cosmos works) of personhood is correct and central or the only parameter

Not all theorists accept all the above. Other options not mentioned here exist.

Some people use anthropocentricity as personocentricity

https://www.protagon.gr/anagnwstes/o-proswpokentrismos-tis-ellinikis-kentroaristeras-30097000000

Yes humans are persons; but personocentricity is the hypernym of anthropocentricity. (it is a side-hypernym because there are various cladological/cladistical criteria (if you force one interpretation you cancel different aspects, some hypernyms are actually side-hypernyms / hypernyms under a specific interpretation or field of study).

Personocentricity and anthropocentricity are sometimes used erroneously for the purpose of rhetorical trickery. Some rightists who support the personhood of god, claim that a non-rightist party is equally personocentric as monotheistic religions, but they don't mention anthropocentricity. (Using a hypernym not because of the tendency of generalization, but because they want to fight against the enemies of personocentricity which in that case are anthropocentrists). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:411B:7500:F106:F554:E8D1:7BF7 (talk) 21:00, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

personhood-bias in religion (explicitly via a cosmogonic god or implicitly via magical support for the bearers of personhood)

Should be mentioned. Is personhood self-caused, or the fields of physics? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2149:842C:5400:C1EC:ED32:B5A7:B61A (talk) 21:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Antonym: Impersonhood

Which has three definitions:

1. Mathematically defined physics.
2. Religiously defined as an impersonal cause of the violation of physics, usually in a pro-personal (pro-personhood-bearer) manner (for example divine and impersonal field), or sometimes being consciously against people and not a mere adverse arbitrary event.
3. The definition of how the universe works, without physics, but just with theistic and religious language, simply with the addition of negation. Personhood-based atheism without a theory on how the universe works, and what replaces the negated theory. Almost all atheists who re-became theists, where personhood-based atheists who believed in the negation of the personhood-based cosmogony and mechanism of the universe, but didn't replace it with something specific. Watch the Greek pseudoatheist song of Χρήστος Δάντης, who defines atheism as the negation of the precosmic bearer of personhood, without to elaborate, not even mention the mathematical and impersonal universe (Max Tegmark, Sean M. Carroll, Steven Weinberg, Bertrand Russell, Brian Greene, etc.)

Be more specific: the notion versus the substantiality of personhood

If an orator confuses these two for persuasion; it's causally shallow word-trickery.

Is personhood precosmically self-evident?

1. Any idea, including the impersonal universe might be considered timeless.
Therefore this question is erroneously put.
The real question is concerning substantiality.

Was personhood a self-evident precosmic substantiality?

2. That's a specific question. Ideas are timeless, and makes no sense to speak generically about mere notions without the presence of thinkers. The core question is about the substantiality of a meaning/idea/semantic object/object (as defined in philosophy) which corresponds to a specific semantics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:4114:107C:784D:540A:FB23:78D0 (talk) 12:08, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

would the question of personhood in bioethics belong in the philosophy section

The philosophy section is somewhat disorganized, without clear boundaries regarding what kind of philosophical idea the people that are quoted are describing - I tried to fix that somewhat with the quotation from Francis Beckwith and noticed that much of his definition regarding personhood relates to abortion arguments - with that in mind, would viewpoints about personhood in bioethics belong in the philosophy section or the disability section? It's an important aspect of personhood that the article has not adequately addressed that I'd like to but I don't know where the information would belong. Feralcateater000 (talk) 18:33, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

A blastocyst has too few cells to exhibit complex behavior meeting the prerequisites for personhood (neuroscientifically factual; non-philosophical).

One problem is that supernaturalists (υπερφυσιστές [Greek], because υπερφυσικοί is also an adjective) ascribe personhood before it's present, to beings that will usually manifest it in later times.

Religion on personhood

We should put some informations about how Islam defines a "person". 103.47.182.22 (talk) 16:04, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

What animals that are not humans?

• Apes
• Badgers
• Bats
• Bears
• Birds (parrots, fowls, corvids, and pigeons)
• Cats
• Cattle
• Cephalopods (octopuses)
• Cetaceans
• Coatis
• Elephants
• Fowls
• Foxes
• Hares
• Horses
• Insects (dragonflies)
• Monitor lizards
• Pigs
• Rabbits
• Raccoons
• Rodents
• Snakes
• Spiders
• Testudines
• Weasels

2.98.33.84 (talk) 15:09, 22 June 2023 (UTC)