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It’s Personhood Week here on Only Human. To recap the week: Monday’s post was about conception, and Tuesday’s about the age of majority. Wednesday’s tackled DNA and dead bodies, and yesterday I took yet another opportunity to opine about the glories of pet-keeping. Today’s installment asks why we’re so fixated on pinning down the squishy notion of personhood.
I’d love to hear about how you guys define personhood, and why. Feel free to leave comments on these posts, or jump in to the #whatisaperson conversation on Twitter.
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People have been trying to define personhood for a long time, maybe since the beginning of people. The first recorded attempt came from Boethius, a philosopher from 6th-Century Rome, who said a person was “an individual substance of rational nature.” Fast-forward a thousand years and Locke says it’s about rationality, self-awareness, and memory. Kant adds that humans have “dignity,” an intrinsic ability to freely choose. In 1978, Daniel Dennett says it’s intelligence, self-awareness, language, and being “conscious in some special way” that other animals aren’t. The next year Joseph Fletcher lays out...
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