Person

:For other senses of this word, see person (disambiguation).

Possible criteria for personhood

The above points seem to indicate that there may be persons that are not human, and there may be humans that are not persons. For these reasons, many philosophers have tried to give a more precise definition, focusing on some trait or traits that all persons, real and hypothetical, must possess.

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The most obvious such trait that individuals considered persons usually possess is a conscious mind, typically (but not necessarily) with plans, goals, desires, hopes, fears, and so on. These traits therefore form a natural set of criteria for personhood.

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Despite this, these criteria are controversial. In particular, some have argued that these criteria fail to recognize babies as persons. Although they meet some of the criteria, such as some degree of consciousness, and the ability to feel pain, the mental abilities of a newborn baby often seem to some to be no more impressive than many animals not commonly considered persons. Another problematic example is the status of a person in deep sleep, with no consciousness at the moment, but who upon waking would return to being an entity with full subjective awareness in the future. However, this latter case becomes less problematic with the assistance of theories of embodied subjectivity (mind-brain identity or unity), which allow for the persistence of an intelligent physical system that both has been self-aware in the past and has the capacity to continue being self-aware in the future. A variation of this example is a "reversibly comatose patient," though criteria for reversibility complicate such an analysis.

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Because of these problems, some philosophers suggest that the potential to become fully thinking beings is sufficient to convey personhood, regardless of present mental status. Others take this view for essentially religious reasons. A consequence of this view is that an embryo would be considered a person from conception; but others see the idea of a single cell - with absolutely no mind of any sort - being a person as counterintuitive. It is a matter of debate when in development any conscious awareness is possible, as seemingly cognitive behavior that may or may not be attributable to stimuli can be seen at multiple stages in a pregnancy.

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Nevertheless, consistent correlative evidence enables us to rule out awareness in the early and middle stages of fetal development with a high degree of confidence. As is reported in the August 24, 2005 Clinical Review article, Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, at 29 weeks of development fetuses have mature somatosensory evoked potentials that indicate that pain signals travel above the spine, through the thalamus and to the somatosensory cortex; and at around 30 weeks of development the brain's EEG signals suggest the first signs of wakefulness. Wakefulness is a necessary condition for any awareness, including pain recognition, but is insufficient for awareness without a functional somatosensory cortex to recognize pain signals as such - which is lacking for people in permanently vegetative states. Because these two necessary conditions for consciousness do not occur before the 29th week of development, fetuses cannot be consciously aware (and therefore subjects of experience) before the 29th week.

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Another view amongst scholars is that personhood is not all-or-nothing: there can be degrees of personhood, based on how close to a fully working mind the individual in question has. Thus, a typical adult is entirely a person, while a human permanently in a persistent vegetative state would not be considered a person at all. Partial personhood is tacitly recognized by law in most cultures as reflected by parental rights and obligations, and in legal treatment of minors, the mentally handicapped, and the comatose. However, other philosophers argue that the concept of an incomplete or partial person is dangerous, possibly leading to weakened protection for those not considered complete persons. Others would argue that we are all incomplete or "developing" persons regardless of our developmental state.

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