Personhood

If you agree with this analysis, then you agree that a painting (canvas and pigments) is not morally considerable but that human beings are morally considerable. This issue of what makes a thing worthy of moral considerability is central to ethics and can serve as a jumping off point to investigate many important contemporary ethical issues.

1. Is it morally wrong to abort a first trimester fetus? A second trimester fetus? A third trimester fetus?

2. Is it wrong to create 8-cell human embryos, clone them, and use them to produce stem cells?

3. Can animals be morally harmed?

4. Can a wilderness or ecosystem be morally harmed?

5. How much genetic manipulation would it take for a "human being" to cease to be a "person?"

It is these sorts of questions that demand an investigation of the foundations of moral considerability.

Personhood

Ethicists often use the term "Person" to describe an entity that has moral considerability. This can be confusing since, in normal language, the word "person" is synonymous with the term "human being." In ethics, these two terms are not identical. For the sake of care and clarity, we'll adopt the more strict Ethics terminology.

Human Being = The genetic definition of our species (Homo Sapiens).

Person = An entity that has moral considerability.

So, according, it is theoretically possible to have Human Beings that are not Persons and Persons that are not human beings.

Personhood Defined: Mill

So, what is it that makes a normal adult human being a person and a painting a non-person? What morally relevant qualities, abilities, or characteristics does a person have that a painting doesn't have. Clearly there are many differences between normal adult human beings and paintings, but we will be interested in sifting through all of them to find only those that are morally relevant.

What answer, do you think, would Jeremy Bentham or J.S. Mill give? Their answer is implicit in the theory of Utilitarianism. The Principle of Utility states that the moral thing is that which promotes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. So, clearly, the ability that defines Personhood for utilitarianism is the ability to experience happiness (pleasure) and, conversely, the ability to experience pain.

Personhood Defined: Kant

How about Deontology? What criteria would Kant suggest be used to distinguish Persons from non-persons? Again, the answer is implicit in the theory itself. You’ll recall that Kant thought that it was the human ability to reason that gave humans their dignity and value. So, consequently, Kant would argue that the ability to reason defines Personhood.

As you can see, the criteria for personhood implied by Utilitarianism and Deontology are very different. You will note that even given these differences, both would hold that a normal adult human being is a person since a normal adult human being can feel pleasure and pain and also reason. Both would also exclude a painting from the moral arena since it can neither reason nor feel pleasure or pain.

Taking Personhood Seriously

Deciding on the definition of Personhood is crucial because once this definition is established; we will have to live with the consequences, including and excluding whichever entities our definition call for. Even using the fairly cut-and-dry criteria of Utilitarianism and Deontology, we can see how difficult this task can be.

What do we do with an adult human being who is in a permanent vegetative state? Is this a Person? Can this human being feel pain and experience pleasure? No! Can this human being reason? No!

The point here is just that you need to be very careful when proposing a criteria or set of criteria for personhood since you will have to live with the logical consequences.

Let’s take a bit more time here to think about what it means to say that a thing is morally considerable. Ethical theories (Utilitarianism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics, etc.) attempt to provide people with guidance on how to be moral. So, an ethical theory needs to help a person differentiate between right actions and wrong actions, those that are morally good and morally bad. An ethical theory should be able to advise a person on how to behave, what decisions to make, and to use Aristotle’s words, how to live the Good Life. In order to do this, an ethical theory must make distinctions between things (entities) that are morally considerable and those that are not morally considerable. We have to filter out those things that matter, that have value in themselves, from those things that don’t matter.

Drawing the Moral Arena

Suppose that Joe wants to clear an area of land with a bulldozer. As Joe begins his job he notices that there are an assortment of objects covering the plot of land he needs to clear. Is it morally acceptable for Joe to destroy these objects in order to complete his task? Joe must assess the moral considerability of each object.

· A battered section of chain-link fence

· The burned out shell of an 64 mustang

· A newly restored 64 mustang

· A huge pile of dirt

· A stray dog

· Two homeless men sleeping on a dirty mattress

Surely a battered section of fence isn’t morally considerable. There are no moral implications with running it over with a bulldozer; such an act is not morally good or morally bad, there isn’t a moral aspect here at all. Similarly a pile of dirt is not morally harmed when a bulldozer flattens it.

What did you think about the restored 64 Mustang in the above example? How about the stray dog? The real work done by the Moral Arena analogy is to help us think about what to do with all the middle ground between normal adult human beings and mere objects.

Potential Persons and Other Considerations

No matter what specific criteria for Personhood you decide upon, you will have to deal with the problematic notion of Potential Persons. Take our human being in a permanent vegetative state as a case study. Suppose that this human being has a chance of recovering from the coma. Thus, since upon recovery this human being will regain the ability to reason and to feel pain and pleasure, both Deontology and Utilitarianism would consider her to be a Potential Person. Are Potential Persons morally considerable?

I hope everyone can see how important these questions are to the issue of abortion. Even if you agree that an early term fetus does not meet the requirements to be considered a Person, it is certainly a Potential Person. Does this potentiality give the fetus moral considerability?

You should also realize that, following the logic of potentiality to a further extreme; every egg and sperm cell is a Potential Person. Should all human egg and sperm cells be deemed morally considerable? To go even further, ask yourself if every human cell should be considered a Potential Person since, theoretically anyway, each cell could be cloned into a full-fledged normal adult human being?

All or Nothing?

The boundary of the Moral Arena, the way we've been thinking about it is an absolute one. An entity is either inside the arena or outside. In considering Potential Persons, we've already seen how this all or nothing sort of thinking can be a problem. Consider an early term fetus again. According to the absolute nature of our Moral Arena, the fetus either has full moral rights or none at all.

What if, however, we were to argue that Moral Considerability was a continuum? If this were the case then we could place both the fetus and the normal adult human being inside the Moral Arena and investigate how the Moral Considerability of the fetus (Potential Person) compares with that of a normal adult human being (Actual Person)? Are Potential Persons and Actual Persons morally equal or do the interests of Actual Persons outweigh those of Potential Persons?

Another way this all or nothing sort of thinking is problematic is that it demands a level of clarity in the definitions of our criteria for Personhood that is difficult if not impossible to reach. Kant would argue that the ability to reason is what defines a person. How then do we know if some entity can reason or not? How is "reason" defined? Let’s grant that a normal adult human being has this ability. Reasoning, we would think, has something to do with intelligence and we know that by definition a normal adult human being has an IQ of 100. What about a human being with an IQ of 90? 70? 35? What about a chimp? Researchers argue that an adult chimp as the reasoning capacity of a 4-5 year old human. Is this enough to be considered a Person?? Can a dog reason? How about an octopus?

Using the Utilitarian criteria of being able to experience pleasure and pain are similarly problematic. Certainly nobody would argue that a normal adult human being can't feel pain. What about a child? An infant? A fetus? Similar questions would force us to consider chimps, dogs, cows, birds, lizards, and insects. Does an entity's ability to experience pleasure and pain depend on how developed its brain is? If so, how developed is developed enough?

Drawing Lines

In one sense it is clear that we have to draw lines somewhere. Even if we think of our morally relevant criteria and the boundary of the Moral Arena as continuums instead of absolutes, we need the ability to make hard decisions about which things are and which are not morally considerable. As you begin to formulate your own ideas about these matters be especially careful to think about how you will make these decisions.