Personhood

Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty.

[4] 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.

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.

[7] Boethius, a philosopher of the early 6th century CE, gives the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ("Naturæ rationalis individua substantia").

[8] 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.

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.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?

[21] 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.

Since persons are deliberate actors, they also employ hedonic, prudent, aesthetic and ethical reasons when selecting, choosing or deciding on a course of action.

[26] According to Black's Law Dictionary,[27] 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) to include "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development."

Effective January 1, 1988, the laws of this state shall be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state, unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.The beginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy.

[32] 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.

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.

[41] 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.

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.

"[43] 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.

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".

[61] 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[62][63] 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.

For example, some fetal homicide laws have resulted in jail time for women suspected of drug use during a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, like one Alabama woman who was sentenced to ten years.

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.

Commonly named species in this context include the apes, cetaceans, parrots, cephalopods, corvids, elephants, bears, pigs, leporids and rodents, because of their apparent intelligence, sentience, and intricate social rules.

[88] A squirrel would value agility and balance in defining personhood; a tree might grant personhood on the basis of height and longevity, and a long-time academic, "a human being with a fully functioning cerebral cortex who resides in a social context where the workings of this part of the brain are particularly prized", would just as predictably value the qualities that benefited his own life and overlook the ones that had little relationship to his own life.

[88] Wynn Schwartz has offered a Paradigm Case Formulation of Persons as a format allowing judges to identify qualities of personhood in different entities.

[96] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[106] 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.

[111] The law was challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds by Drewes Farms Partnership, with the state government of Ohio joining as an intervenor.

According to other sources, which also admit that the origin of the term is not completely clear, persona could be related to the Latin verb per-sonare, literally: sounding through, with an obvious link to the above-mentioned theatrical mask, which often incorporated a small megaphone.

The word 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.

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.