I might say that personhood is a legal status granted to certain 'companies' (bunches of people with property?) when they have ritually drawn up and signed certain documents of 'incorporation'.
It is also usually granted to any live birth, and in some places under some conditions to the unborn. There have been recent cases seeking to grant personhood to rivers, and possibly other natural features.
It answers the question of the thread title, but this is more interesting:-

Think back to your earliest memories, then ask yourself, is this the start of me? Or did I begin when I entered this world? When did I enter it? When I remember, when I was born, when my parents first gifted me with moral consideration, or when I was conceived? If I had been lost before I was born, would I have caused my parents the same grief as if I’d died at the age of 1? — Mark Dennis

I used to have a recurring dream, very frightening, and almost beyond description. I was in a field, and then I was being crushed by an enormous weight that I couldn't escape. Then one day, about eleven yrs, when i learned where babies came from, I realised it was a birth contraction memory, and never had that dream again. I also had another recurring nightmare, that I realised was an actual birth canal journey memory, and I never had that one again after I recognised it as real but past. So what is in the gift of others is certainly vital to any life of a social being, but it is a line of declaration - of passionate declaration, by all means, that is any parents' necessity of love - to say that this bud is a rose, and it is none of anyone's business to measure the loss between one person and another. My sister lost a teenage child, and still every year fifty years later posts his picture on facebook on his birthday.

Mark, I wish that you will have a child and have much joy, and I am sure that you will always have the sadness of your loss too, and they are both immeasurable and incomparable.

I’m sorry but this here is nonsensical. If someone isn’t part of our moral community then they are a person. In philosophy personal identity “persona” and your “personhood” are not the same. One is metaphysical, the other is a purely moral term.

If something that isn’t on the time-space continuum can’t be valuable then why would philosophers ever think thought experiments, fictional literature, movies, TV and art ever be worth discussing through any form of value theory? Ethics is largely the study of value.

You need to understand one thing in particular, the idea that foetus’s don’t have personhood is the very idea that leads to people causing harm to the grieving parents of miscarried children through denying their grief as real or equal to that of losing a child. Does a foetus have a persona or a personal identity as it where? No, is it part of our moral community? Yes. Are it’s parents? Yes. Can we see an allegory to real life racism within the world of Harry Potter? Yes? Does Harry Potter try to prescribe us ways of overcoming prejudice through virtues? Absolutely. So, if Harry Potter is a part of our moral community, by the way philosophy as a field defines it, Harry Potter has Personhood and so does my 10week miscarried child.

Anywho: what is the "legitimate, non-religious, non-moralistic" case you're referring to? (Assuming you're not referring to Mark's theory.) — NKBJ

The fertilized egg, at the moment of fertilization, has all the material needed to create a fully functioning human being. To me, it's not unreasonable to say that it has some moral standing. I guess that's the same as saying it has some intrinsic value, although I hate the intrinsic vs. extrinsic distinction. Ending it should not be a matter of casual indifference. Using abortion as just another method of birth control, no matter when in the term, devalues human life.

People are hurt when an abortion is performed. I'm sure it's not always true, but it often is. There's a pretty good chance that the potential mother and father will look back sometime in the future, maybe when they finally do have children, and wonder what they have done.

Ok, at the time of conception, we agree that the fetus is not a person. Do we also agree that five minutes before birth, it is? Whatever value life has, it's bullshit to talk about it as having extrinsic value. Whatever value it has is universal, I guess that means intrinsic. It has unalienable rights.

'Animals' is a very large category. It ranges from mollusks to the great apes. I think great apes, dolphins, and dogs (for example) are persons. I think clams mostly likely are not persons. And I'm uncertain about insects and the like, though I have read some interesting articles about the cognitive abilities of spiders, which pushes me toward a strong maybe. — NKBJ

This seems like a very dangerous idea to me. Saying humans are to be valued in the same manner as spiders may increase the respect paid to animals, but it will devalue the respect due to people.

If something that isn’t on the time-space continuum can’t be valuable then why would philosophers ever think thought experiments, fictional literature, movies, TV and art ever be worth discussing through any form of value theory? — Mark Dennis

If you really think that fictional characters are persons, i.e. as you said, are worthy of moral consideration, then I think you mean something completely different than I and the other posters on this thread do when you say "personhood." I would say the same thing about @NKBJ's idea that spider's might be persons also. Both trivialize our humanity.

“To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged. It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable. However, when we ask why we think humans are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged, we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive.”

“To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged. It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable. However, when we ask why we think humans are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged, we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive.” — Mark Dennis

I liked your idea that a person is someone worthy of moral consideration. Now I'm thinking it doesn't really work. Dogs are not persons, but they are worthy of moral consideration. I have a bond with and a responsibility to other people that is greater than that I have for animals.

it’s not my idea. This is how personhood is delivered in a philosophy class. As someone part of the moral community worthy of moral consideration. Not my idea at all. While personal Identity has its place in the discussion, it isn’t the same concept or definition as personhood.

Now, if people want to discuss the different levels of personhood I’m all ears. I would never agree that Harry Potter has the same level of personhood as a dog, nor a dog a human. Some philosophers even argue it is possible for a human to lose their personhood by committing extreme violating acts against another person.

Personhood is in itself subjective, however since we can only ever operate from a human universe of discourse and normative relativism doesn’t tell us anything about how we act and think as individuals, the best argument is the pragmatically ethical approach. So, we need to think about the modality of ethics and how we can find an objective truth that works within the human universe of discourse. Morality outside of us has no empirical basis, morality for us does and it’s evidence lies within our bodies and in the world around us through scientific inquiry. If we philosophers ignore new facts and data coming from fields like neuroscience, endocrinology and psychology then we are simply denying the world around us as we are capable of knowing it.

Parents feel grief whether it is an unborn child or a child that has been born. You cannot grieve for something you pay no moral consideration to, without moral consideration we cannot fit the minimum criteria for personhood. If parents give moral consideration to the unborn then the unborn is meeting the minimum criteria for personhood. However, if the mothers personhood is being violated by the baby, due to being unwanted and the father mirrors this lack of consideration, then the unborn child doesn’t have personhood. Even if the father still wants it, he can’t violate the mother by forcing her to carry to term. Now, In this instance it should be noted that the mother is still violating the wishes of the father, which would justify him to terminate the relationship with this woman if he feels he cannot forgive her or doesn’t feel it can work after this for whatever reason, but certainly not justification to violate her body by forcing her to term.

Maybe the way we should be discussing Personhood and Personal identity shouldn’t be based around figuring out when we have it, as figuring out when it starts to form and when it is fully formed and what are the phases of the formation?

We all are aware that our personal identity changes every day and as we age we get varying degrees of moral consideration which means our personhood itself can change.

It remains, that nomatter the level of personhood a being has, it is still a person.

I’m sorry but this here is nonsensical. — Mark Dennis

Okay...

If someone isn’t part of our moral community then they are a person. — Mark Dennis

Did you mean to say "aren't"? Cause I'm not sure what you're saying here otherwise.

In philosophy personal identity “persona” and your “personhood” are not the same. One is metaphysical, the other is a purely moral term. — Mark Dennis

Persona is actually a psychology term, but okay.
Personhood is a metaphysical concept in philosophy that has ethical implications. Like so much in philosophy, the categories overlap here. Like, whenever you debate "murder" in philosophy, you must first define what that means and then what the ethical implications are.

If something that isn’t on the time-space continuum can’t be valuable then why would philosophers ever think thought experiments, fictional literature, movies, TV and art ever be worth discussing through any form of value theory? Ethics is largely the study of value. — Mark Dennis

I thought I was pretty clear when I said they aren't intrinsically valuable? What you describe are all extrinsic or instrumental values.

You need to understand one thing in particular, the idea that foetus’s don’t have personhood is the very idea that leads to people causing harm to the grieving parents of miscarried children through denying their grief as real or equal to that of losing a child. — Mark Dennis

I don't know what psycho would deny that grief, but I deny the personhood of unborn babies before a certain gestational age, and yet I also understand (having, might I remind you, recently lived through it myself) that the grief is very much real.

Does a foetus have a persona or a personal identity as it where? No, is it part of our moral community? Yes. Are it’s parents? Yes. Can we see an allegory to real life racism within the world of Harry Potter? Yes? Does Harry Potter try to prescribe us ways of overcoming prejudice through virtues? Absolutely. So, if Harry Potter is a part of our moral community, by the way philosophy as a field defines it, Harry Potter has Personhood and so does my 10week miscarried child. — Mark Dennis

I was with you until you made the unjustified jump to personhood. Again, Harry Potter is valuable, but not a person just because of that. My gold watch is valuable, my laptop is valuable, heck, even my wedding dress as value to me--none of these things are persons. (Note, I am not equating the amount of value of any of these items with a fetus, merely the kind, and that only in a sense of extrinsic versus intrinsic).

This seems like a very dangerous idea to me. Saying humans are to be valued in the same manner as spiders may increase the respect paid to animals, but it will devalue the respect due to people. — T Clark

Whether it's dangerous has no bearing on whether it's true.
But I also deny that it's dangerous, because I deny that it could devalue humans. When we recognized the personhood of black people, it did not devalue white people.

Both trivialize our humanity. — T Clark

That's just silly. We don't need to be at the apex of some silly hierarchy in order to be valued and valuable.

Ok, at the time of conception, we agree that the fetus is not a person. Do we also agree that five minutes before birth, it is? — T Clark

I've already pointed out that personhood begins sometime between conception and birth.

No personhood is not metaphysical it is purely a moralistic determination of value. I'm done talking about this with you. You arent understanding what I'm saying and you clearly lack the background knowledge of the material on this matter that I have.

I'm done talking about this with you. You arent understanding what I'm saying and you clearly lack the background knowledge of the material on this matter that I have. — Mark Dennis

I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope you can come back when your feelings about the matter are less raw.

Also, if you were familiar with the history of philosophy, you'd know that psychology used to be a branch of philosophy. If you'd been in any ethics classes you'd know that the definition of personhood always mentions the phrases Moral community and moral considerstion.

So why are you confusing personal identity and personhood as one and the same? They aren't.

I thought you were done talking to me?

I'm really very much open to having this conversation with you. I think it could be cathartic for the both of us. But it won't work if you get angry with me for disagreeing with you.

What gives you any right to deny anyones personhood or deny the definitions generations of philosophers before you have CLEARLY DEFINED?

Ive made every effort to explain to you how the discussion is framed within acadamia. You're not getting it, you're trusting some pet interpretation you have of the Person, personal identity and personhood. If you think people aught not to morally consider certain thing's thats one thing, but the reality is people morally consider non-human beings so they therefore meet the definition within philosophy of personhood. If you want to argue from a new interpretation of those words then I'll have no part of it as I know the history of where these old ideas lead and it isnt pretty.

I guess you're not ready for this conversation right now.

Let me know when you want to be kinder toward a fellow griever. I'm here for you then.

I dont think youre ready for it. Thats why I'm done. My emotions right now are more akin to frustration with a student not taking in what is being spoon fed to them, my grief is detached from this argument and it was my argument before I'd ever conceived a child so I dont really see how my bias is getting in the way as you're inferring. Personhood would have been defined the exact same way whether my fiance miscarried or not.

I dont think youre ready for it. Thats why I'm done. — Mark Dennis

Okay. You're welcome to feel that way.

It remains, that nomatter the level of personhood a being has, it is still a person. — Mark Dennis

I recognised something just the other day, while following the discussion on meaning: that when we talking about something being meaningful, it’s not quite the same as having meaning. We have a tendency to constrain what matters within its particular significance, and call the relation ‘meaning’, but in truth it doesn’t really need to have significance or value for me in order to matter.

I have a feeling the same problem is occurring here. Regardless of whether or not the experience of your unborn child had any significance or value as a person to anyone else but you, it matters. But it’s not the same thing. Whether we call it personhood or not is a matter of semantics, but I recognise this is important in terms of ethics because we relate the way in which ‘personhood’ matters so closely to the way in which this ‘personhood’ is then valued - to its significance in relation to more familiar experiences such as loss, abortion, human rights laws and even a normal social conversation.

The reality is that we don’t need to attribute our own sense of value or significance to an experience that isn’t ours in order for it to matter, despite this being a natural reaction. It’s how we interact with your relationship to the experience that counts: ‘It matters to me because it has value for you’. Unfortunately, our language isn’t very effective at making this distinction clear enough at this point.

So are you saying whether or not an individual decides to call something a person is irrelevant, so long as it at least matters to them that the being was lost?

I used to think I understood the nature of meaning. Then I read Cohens preface to logic and he confused the issue for me. I can’t even figure out why I’m confused about it now.

Yes - and I think you have found that here with most respondents. They acknowledge your grief and that - despite their own value system which in some cases excludes a ten-week old foetus within the significance of ‘personhood’ - your relationship to this experience of personhood and loss has immense value to you, and therefore matters. But you can’t expect them to value it the same way that you do.

Meaning in relation to logic is precisely what I mean by constraining what matters within a particular system of significance. Even Cohen acknowledges that reasoning is not the only way people arrive at beliefs - he just dismisses other methods as illogical: as outside the value system of logic. That doesn’t mean they don’t matter in relation to how we interact with the world and each other as human beings.

Parents feel grief whether it is an unborn child or a child that has been born. You cannot grieve for something you pay no moral consideration to, without moral consideration we cannot fit the minimum criteria for personhood. If parents give moral consideration to the unborn then the unborn is meeting the minimum criteria for personhood. — Mark Dennis

I agree with this. Your grief is real. I don’t think any of us are denying that or that we don’t sympathize. That said, I personally wouldn’t engage in a philosophical discussion on personhood here when the feelings are still so raw. Hearing opposing views on the matter only serves to pour salt in the wound. Whatever people may say about the personhood of your lost child doesn’t change the fact that something really shitty happened. It’s understandable to take what some here have said personally... but grieving is necessary to heal. I hope the pain doesn’t sting as bad as it does now for too long, and it will get better. You will always think about what could have been, and when these thoughts come up it will hurt. But as time passes it won’t hurt as much.

But I’m sure you know all of this. Nothing anyone says here or there is going to make the shittiness go away. Grief is necessary, and it takes time.

if we are defining personhood as someone who is due moral consideration, or as someone who is getting moral consideration regardless of whether it is right that they do so; Does this change the outlook at all? — Mark Dennis

Sorry - didn't see your response until just now. In answer to your question - it is a vexed question as it is central to the abortion debate, which I personally don't want to get into. Suffice to say I don't think an unequivocal definition is possible, but I will reiterate that I equate person-hood with self-awareness.

On the other hand, you're asking why you can't consider an unborn child as 'a person' - to which I suppose I could respond, s/he was potentially a person, 'the person that might have been'. But I must confess I don't feel the need to consider the issue that way.

Yeah, the abortion issue causes extreme emotions in some. Usually I stay away from it.

“Suffice to say I don't think an unequivocal definition is possible, but I will reiterate that I equate person-hood with self-awareness.” There is a very specific reason that I would say self-awareness might not be the best place to go in regards to justifying personhood. Deadpool and Rick of Rick and Morty. Both Deadpool and Rick are fictional characters, yet both are entirely aware of their existence as such and both are considered Mad within their own worlds for this. Now, when we enter into debates about fiction and we say things like “Deadpool is a person” normally what we are really saying is “He is a person within the marvel universe of discourse.” Yet if we are saying Self-Awareness is vital for personhood within our universe of discourse then don’t we have to grant personhood to Deadpool and Rick? Should we not all come down on the writers of these franchises and demand they write better lives for these two?

Then, we have the fact that not every human has a solid sense of self-awareness. Is someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s not a person or less of a person?



For two who claim to stay away from the abortion debate, you both do a good job of it I feel. Although I’d ask why you both stay away from it? Is it just the uncomfortable taboo nature of it or to avoid potentially heated debates?

Whether it's dangerous has no bearing on whether it's true.
But I also deny that it's dangerous, because I deny that it could devalue humans. When we recognized the personhood of black people, it did not devalue white people. — NKBJ

This whole issue is one of human value, not truth. It is only true that all humans are persons in the sense we are talking about because we have decided that it is. We've agreed that it is.

As for the danger of the idea - I like spiders, but I've killed them when they were someplace I didn't want them to be with little thought or concern. I can't do that with people, but if spiders and people are somehow equal in this regard, it makes it easier to treat people badly.

That's just silly. We don't need to be at the apex of some silly hierarchy in order to be valued and valuable. — NKBJ

Well, there is a hierarchy, one we've established. It's not silly to say that human life is more valuable than animal's lives to other humans. People who call their dogs or cats their children make me angry. It shows I can't trust them to understand the true value of other people.

Riddle me how these two statements are compatible:

This whole issue is one of human value, not truth. — T Clark

I can't trust them to understand the true value of other people. — T Clark

Riddle me how these two statements are compatible:

This whole issue is one of human value, not truth.
— T Clark

I can't trust them to understand the true value of other people.
— T Clark — NKBJ

Ok, ok. Rewrite. "I can't trust them to understand the value of other people." or "I can't trust them to understand what I consider the true value of other people." !@#$% nitpicking philosophers.

I think you are both engaging in the topic of truth without realizing that there is not a single uniform truth definition within philosophy. Pragmatism defines truth very differently than the rest of philosophy.

NKBJ You are talking and describing or at least framing it thusly, as Pure Truth. T Clark you are framing your interpretation as pragmatic truth.

Discussing pure truth is fun, invigorating and stimulating... but little of what is talked about has much practical utility or scientific basis. The reason for this is simple, one might happen to conclude a pure truth, but you'll never be able to verify that you really know it is the truth. If you cannot verify you know it, then others have no reason to believe it. Now, the search for pure truth can certainly guide scientific inquiry but so far, every time science comes up with answers, new questions come up. So, pragmatism works to find the best truth we have from the available collaborative knowledge acquired by us over time. The pursuit of pure knowledge can sometimes make people fall prey to self serving tendencies based upon attaining merit within the field of philosophy. The pursuit of practical knowledge is purely meant to help humanity by giving ethics a function. Modality of ethics is its very core. Without a functional ethical ecosystem our species descends into dark ages of anarchistic chaos.

So in ethics, this can take many forms. If I argue that allowing parents to bestow personhood on the unborn gives us room to alleviate parents of the potential suffering of self-blame in the case of abortion, and solace to grieving parents in the instance of miscarriage in knowing their grief is just as grief compared to a living person.

Outside of a human universe of discourse non of us have intrinsic value to the universe because we have created value and meaning. To the universe, none of us is a person. None of us is being morally considered by the universe, except by each other. So ethics lies solely in the realm of a human universe of discourse and so it must have a function for humans.

NKBJ, the pure truth is that none of us are persons. The human truth is that humans define personhood. This isn’t a case of what should be, it’s a case of how it is. Humans define personhood in beings and entities around them. Some have even argued for rivers to be classed as persons to afford them the rights of persons to be free of pollution. Self-awareness isn’t what grants personhood, self aware beings define personhood. That isn’t the same as saying personhood requires self awareness in the person being considered by a self aware entity.

Yet if we are saying Self-Awareness is vital for personhood within our universe of discourse then don’t we have to grant personhood to Deadpool and Rick? — Mark Dennis

Fictional characters self-awareness is likewise fictional whereas that of sentient beings is fundamental.