Assess Whether All Humans Are Persons Essay

1442 Words6 Pages
Assess Whether All Humans Are Persons. (30 mrks) Personhood is the status of being a person. It is a controversial topic and it is often debated as to what does and doesn’t define a person. Typically, a person is described as having eight characteristics; embodiment, having a network of beliefs, rationality, being a social being, a continuing subject of experience, a language user, reflective over ones experiences, and the idea of being creative and autonomous. A question often debated on the subject of personhood is whether or not every human is a person. Some would say that all humans are persons; however, many have argued against this and have come up with the ideas of diminished persons, ex-persons, and potential persons. The definition of an ex-person is simply someone who used to be a person, but no longer are, they may have lost some or all of the characteristics of personhood. Ex-persons may include corpses, or people who have entered a permanent vegetative state. Some would argue that if a human being slips into a permanent coma, then they have now become an ex-person. This is often based on the thought that we need consciousness to be a person. Descartes believed that personhood resides in our consciousness. He says that a person is not identical with its body, and that persons exist by virtue of their minds. In this manner of thinking, anybody not conscious, is also not a person, because they do not have the capability to possess characteristics attributed to personhood. Therefore, not all human beings may be persons, because some lose consciousness permanently, and lose their characteristics and become an ex-person. In an even simpler example, if one dies, their body would still be human, however, they would not possess a functioning mind, and therefore they would be an ex-person. One argument for denying such a human being personhood would be to
Open Document