On the Concept of Person: The Social Nature of Persons (original) (raw)

Human Development: remarks about the concept of person

1996

Science fiction often shows us the possibility of animals and machines presenting human behaviour. Beings that have been classified as not human that develop human feelings and experience conflicts typically human. The weaker becomes the limit between man and these beings the bigger is the amazement that fiction provokes. Until which point can we distinguish man from humanized animals and machines? From fiction to real life, our questioning becomes more plausible when we remember that in different times humanity was denied to a part of the human beings. The assignment of human aspects to beings that generally we do not consider as humans, as well as the refusal of humanity to beings that we consider, following our patterns, humans seems to face us with the same question: Which criterion do we have to distinguish a human being from other live beings and from replicants? Which characters do we find essential to human beings? To avoid any ambiguity with the biological determination of this concept, I propose that we speak here of person. What does it mean to be a person?

The Person: Readings in Human Nature - Preface with overview

The Person: Readings in Human Nature, 2006

What is a person? The history of this concept (πρόσωπον = prosōpon in Greek, persona in Latin, Person in German, personne in French) is intertwined with the histories of such concepts as human being, individual, soul, subject, self, ego, and mind. But while these comprise a constellation of interconnected and sometimes overlapping ideas, each has its own conceptual history, its own distinct evolution. Consequently, person does not admit of a clumsy, ham-handed semantic reduction to more basic concepts. This selection of readings is an attempt to trace in outline one trajectory in the philosophical history of the idea of the person. It is of course not intended even to approach a comprehensive study. While not disguising preferences, I tried to avoid indulging in idiosyncrasy. My goal is to offer a group of stimulating readings that revolve around a single rich, widely debated, and seemingly indefeasible concept. My hope is that this book will prove useful to students and teachers of philosophy in a variety of courses in which the concept of the person figures, including courses on the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophical Anthropology, and Personal Identity. The reader will judge the extent to which I have succeeded in weaving together these diverse selections with continuous thematic threads. If the net result is closer to a coherent whole than a hodgepodge, I will be satisfied. To allow flexibility in course design, two tables of contents are provided-one chronological, one topical. Topics are grouped under seven headings: A) conceptual history, B) personology (account of the person), C) identity of persons, D) divine persons in the Christian tradition, E) nonhuman persons and human non-persons, and F) persons viewed from outside Christian, Euro-American culture. Some readings appear under more than one heading. Instructors are encouraged to experiment with grouping the readings to serve their particular needs. For ease of reference, the readings are arranged chronologically. They begin with the prehistory of the concept in Plato and Aristotle. The inception of the concept in ancient Stoicism (Cicero and Epictetus) is followed by the development of the concept through medieval discussions of the divine persons of the Trinity. Key texts on the concept in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and 19 th century European philosophy show an increasing emphasis on theories of personal identity. Selections from 20 th century Anglo-American males are balanced with contributions by women philosophers (Weil, Warren, Rorty, Midgley). Some religious pluralism is gained with the perspectives of Taoism (Smullyan), Buddhism (R. Taylor, Parfit), and Islam (Legenhausen) alongside the texts in Christian theology.

The Troublesome Concept of the Person

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 1999

In today'sbioethical debates, the concept of the person plays a major role. However, it does not hold this role justly. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the concept of the person is unsuited to be a central concept in bioethical debates, because its use is connected with serious problems. First, the concept is superfluous. Secondly, it is a confusing concept and it lacks pragmatic use. Thirdly, its use leads to simplifications. Finally, the concept can easily be used as a cover-up concept. Therefore, it is argued that relinquishing the concept of the person could enhance the clarity and quality of bioethical debate. Moreover, the historic origin of much of the present confusion surrounding the concept of the person is clarified. It is demonstrated that three influences resulting from Locke'sideas on the person and personal identity can be determined as contributing factors to the confusion and controversy within the present bioethical debates centering around the person.

Personhood as human nature & the personality of God

www.emilange.de, 2018

In his essay >On Human Nature< Roger Scruton (S.) defends as a philosopher the double thesis that the concept of a person is central to our understanding in general and that personhood is the nature of humans. At the same time he evidently sympathizes with Roman Catholic faith and, at least in a hesitating way, admits of the personality of angels and of God (46). Such a position is bound to incorparate conceptual tensions and my critical discussion will concentrate on the conceptual and leave out the more specific moral and cultural-critical elaborations of S.'s account. I. This is one way in which the double thesis is rendered: When we refer to rights, deserts, and duties; what we owe to each other; and such fundamental ideas as freedom, justice, and the impartial spectator, we are making use (directly or indirectly) of the concept of the person, which provides the shared perspective from which we address virtual all such issues. Human communities are communities of persons … ...getting clear about the concept of the person is, for us, an intellectual priority. Those who build a universal political doctrine on the foundation of human rights are in need of a theory that tells them which rights belong to our nature-our nature as persons-and which are the product of convention. That theory will be a theory of persons. … (108) Its first part is the stressing of the centrality of the concept of a person. Its second part-talk of "our nature as persons"-in S. seems to be an implication of morality because of the reference to human rights. But in fact S. from the start invests the concept of a person as bearer of rights, deserts, and duties and does not seem to see any requirement to distinguish between levels in the concept of a person. He therefore-like most anglophone philosophers having written about it-does not reach bedrock in the clarification of the concept, which is where, when having reached it, conceptual clarification must start. The concept of a person is one of the (two) basic anchors in our understanding. 1 At the foundational level it is a formal one corresponding to the concept of an object. 'Object' is a nominalization of the indefinite pronoun 'something'; correspondingly 'person' is a nominalization of 'somebody, someone'. The conceptual system we operate in our ordinary language is built on the contrast of these formal concepts.

Personhood between classical and modern values

Romanian Journal of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

The human personality is an anthropological structure which is always defined by conscience and moral values. Moral conscience or the laws of morality are the main attributes of maturity. The dynamics of individual moral values are geographically, historically and also culturally and spiritually conditioned. They shape the personality from early ontogenesis of personality. In the Orient, the mature moral ego integrates the spiritual and religious dimensions of the personality. In the Western world, the mature moral ego is two-dimensional. On one side, it is conditioned by individualism, while on the other, the common sense and interpersonal solidarity prevail. These are caused by everyday life dynamics which is often superficial and inauthentic. In this framework, the supreme moral imperative should be attaining happiness and sharing it with others.

On the very idea of criteria for personhood

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2011

I examine the familiar criterial view of personhood, according to which the possession of personal properties such as self-consciousness, emotionality, sentience, and so forth is necessary and sufficient for the status of a person.

Persons : their identity and individuation

1998

This study is about the nature of persons and personal identity. It belongs to a tradition that maintains that in order to understand what it is to be a person we must clarify what personal identity consists in. In this pursuit, I differentiate between the problems (i) How do persons persist? and (ii) What facts, if any, does personal identity consist in? In chapters 2-3,1 discuss matters related to the first question. In chapter 2,1 discuss 'identity' and 'criterion of identity'. I argue that we ought to understand 'identity' as numerical identity. A 'criterion of identity', I argue, should be understood as a specification of the essential conditions for being an object of some sort S. In chapter 3,1 distinguish between two different accounts of how persons persist; the endurance view (persons persist three-dimensionally through time), and the perdurance view (persons persist four-dimensionally in virtue of having numerically distinct temporal parts). I argue that the endurance view of persons is ontologically prior to the perdurance view; on the ground that objects must always be individuated under some substance sortal concept S (the sortal dependency of individuation), and that the concept person entails that objects falling under it are three-dimensional. In chapter 4-8, I discuss the second problem. I differentiate between Criterianists, who maintain that it is possible to specify a non-circular and informative criterion for personal identity, and Non-Criterianists, who deny that such a specification is possible. In chapter 5-7,1 consider in turn Psychological Criterianism, Physical Criterianism and Animalism. I argue that none of these accounts is adequate on the ground that they are either (i) circular, (ii) violate the intrinsicality of identity, or (iii) do not adequately represent what we are essentially. In chapter 8, I discuss Non-Criterianism. I consider in turn Cartesianism, The Subjective view and Psychological Substantialism. Against these accounts I argue that they wrongly assume that 'person' refers to mental entities. In chapter 9,1 formulate a biological Non-Criterianistic approach to personal identity; the Revised Animal Attribute View. Person is a basic sortal concept which picks out a biological sort of enduring persons. A person, then, is an animal whose identity as person is primitive in relation to his identity as an animal. I claim that the real essence of a person is determined by the real essence of the kind of animal he is, without thereby denying that persons have a real essence as persons.