Personhood
Personhood is the status of having outstanding moral worth. Yet the specific criteria that qualify someone as a person are controversial. In the West, personhood tends to be defined in terms of ";" yet, in other societies, such as sub-Saharan Africa, personhood is more often understood as a . 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 legal person 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 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. 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.
Processes through which personhood is recognized socially and legally vary cross-culturally, demonstrating that notions of personhood might not be universal. Philosophers Nancy S. Jecker and Caesar A. Atuire have argued for a cross-border view of from social relational processes involving human beings. They write that a person "emerges out of a complex configuration of relationships involving human beings; we might say they become a ‘being-in-relationship.’ The emergent ‘being-in-relationship’ is a person, showing aspects, including superlative moral worth, not present before the relationships came together." Anthropologist Beth Conklin has shown how personhood is tied to social relations among the Wari' people of Rondônia, Brazil. 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. Likewise, Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.
Philosophical definitions
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 include human nature, agency, self-awareness, a notion of the past and future, and the possession of rights and duties, among others.Boethius, a philosopher of the early 6th century CE, gives the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature".
According to the naturalist epistemological tradition, from Descartes through Locke and Hume, the term may designate any human or non-human agent who possesses continuous consciousness over time; and is therefore capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on them.
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 that exhibit "similarly complex adaptive behaviour" could not be distinguished from persons. Instead, Taylor proposes a significance-based view of personhood:
Relatedly, Martin Heidegger developed his understanding of the distinctive kind of being which a person is as Dasein. 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." 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 philosopher Francis J. Beckwith, who argues that it is rather the underlying personal unity of the individual:
This belief in the underlying unity of an individual is a metaphysical and moral belief referred to as the substance view of personhood.
Philosopher J. P. Moreland clarifies this point:
Harry Frankfurt writes that, in reference to a definition by P. F. Strawson, "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:
According to Nikolas Kompridis, there might also be an intersubjective, or interpersonal, basis to personhood:
Mary Midgley defines a "person" as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person. She also wrote that the law can create persons.
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, 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 engages in an Intentional Action, is cognizant of that, and 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.
Philosophical Critiques of Personhood
Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito has written a trilogy of books covering the paradigm of the person in modern political thought: Third Person, Two, and Persons and Things. Esposito’s metapolitical analysis of personhood draws together three unique bodies of literature: critiques of the proprietary prejudice in liberal political philosophy, Martin Heidegger’s critique of the humanist model of the proper subject, and Foucauldian biopolitics. Esposito argues that the "dispositif of the person” that animates modern thought creates a series of divisions in humanity. In juridical-political terms, the person is an exclusive model of private individual who is immunized from the obligations and duties that are required of individuals to be a part of a community. In biopolitical terms, the dispositif of the person creates a division in humanity, which separates proper life from animal, or improper life. This schism works on a collective and individual level. Collectively, only proper lives who are recognized by law as legal persons are treated as rights-bearing subjects. Individually:Esposito’s solution is to conceptualize a notion of the “impersonal.” Starting from a critique of the Roman legal and Christian theological concept of the person, he develops a notion of the “impersonal” understood as the form of a possible reunification between biological life and intellectual life, body and person. The impersonal represents a break from the private, rights-bearing, and immunized individual in modern liberalism. It creates an opening for developing an affirmative notion of biopolitical life and for being in community.
Research
As an application of social psychology and other disciplines, phenomena such as the perception and attribution of personhood have been scientifically studied. 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 of personality.Unborn
Ireland
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." This was repealed in 2018 by the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.United States
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". According to Black's Law Dictionary, a person is:In Federal law, the concept of legal personhood is formalized by statute 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, many US States have their own definition of personhood which expands upon the federal definition of personhood, and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services declined to overturn the state of Missouri's law stating that
The beginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy. With respect to the abortion debate, personhood is the status of a human being having individual human rights. The term was used by Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade.
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. Supporters of the movement also state that it would have some effect on the practice of in-vitro fertilization, but would not lead to the practice being outlawed. 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.
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. 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, 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."
A precursor to the Personhood Alliance was Personhood USA, a Colorado-based umbrella group with a number of state-level affiliates, which describes itself as a nonprofit Christian ministry. and seeks to ban abortion. Personhood USA was co-founded by Cal Zastrow and Keith Mason in 2008 following the Colorado for Equal Rights campaign to enact a state constitutional personhood amendment.
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."
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.
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."
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 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."
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.
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. The Georgia Catholic Conference and National Right to Life supported the effort. The resolution failed to attract the super majority in both chambers required for it to be placed on the ballot. Georgia legislators have filed a personhood resolution every session since 2007. In May 2008 Georgia Right to Life hosted the first nationwide Personhood Symposium targeting anti-abortion activists. 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 that the "right to life is vested in each human being from their earliest biological beginning until natural death". During the 2012 Republican primary a similar question was placed on the ballot statewide and passed with a super-majority of the vote in 158 of 159 counties.
In the summer of 2008 a citizen initiated amendment was proposed for the Colorado constitution. Three attempts to enact the from-fertilization definition of personhood into U.S. state constitutions via referendums have failed. 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. In an interview after the referendum, Mason ascribed the failure of the initiative to a political campaign run by Planned Parenthood.
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. In October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the state Supreme Court's ruling.
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. These charges were later dismissed.
In February 2024, the Supreme 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 These protections were added in 2018 by ballot referendum, as Amendment 930 to the Alabama Constitution of 1901, and gained relevance when the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization returned full control over regulation of abortion to the states. The concurring decision of Justice Tom Parker cited Christian theology to support the decision, raising complaints about separation of church and state