Who Am I · ages 8–12
What counts as a person?
A baby, a very old person, a dolphin, a robot that talks about its feelings. Which of these is a person?
“Person” sounds like a fact about biology. It is not. It is a decision we make, and the decision has been redrawn many times.
Look at how it has moved. Enslaved people were once argued to be property rather than persons, using reasons that sounded scientific. Women were for centuries treated as persons in some contexts and not others, which is the argument Mary Wollstonecraft spent a book attacking. What all those arguments had in common was a test: a capacity, a feature, something measurable that the excluded group supposedly lacked. The test looked neutral and was doing the work of the conclusion.
So the interesting question is not whether dolphins or robots count — it is which test you are using, and whether you would still accept it if it excluded somebody you love. “Can they reason?” excludes babies. “Can they talk?” excludes the very old and the very ill. “Are they one of us?” is a circle, not a test.
Kant drew the line at rational agency, and it produced a powerful idea: a person is not a tool. Bentham drew it somewhere else, at suffering. Both are serious, and neither has been proved. Notice which one you reach for when you hear about a dog being hurt — then ask why you reached for that one.
Try it
Write down the three things you think a person must be able to do. Now test each one: can you find a human who cannot do it, or a non-human who can?
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- If a creature can suffer, does that make it a person?
- Could a person be made of something other than cells?
- Who decides?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Only humans are persons. That's what the word means.
Then the word is doing the arguing for you. Every time the line has been drawn that way before — by skin, by sex, by money — it has later moved.
A robot can't be a person because it has no feelings.
How would you check? You cannot get inside anyone's feelings, including the person next to you. You go on behaviour and similarity, which is exactly the evidence a good robot would also give.
If we let animals and robots in, human rights become meaningless.
That does not follow. Saying a ruler is still a ruler does not take anything from a metre. Widening a category is not the same as emptying it.
What other philosophers think
- Immanuel KantPersons are ends in themselves, never merely a means to somebody else's purpose. That is what makes treating a person as a tool different from using a hammer.
- AristotleDefined humans as the rational animal — a definition that quietly made every other animal not count.
- Jeremy BenthamMoved the test from reasoning and talking to suffering: if it can suffer, it has a claim on us.
- Mary WollstonecraftShowed that the line drawn around who counts as a full person is usually drawn to keep somebody out, and has been redrawn many times.
If you want to go further
- Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals — Immanuel Kant1785. The source of the 'ends in themselves' formula.
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Jeremy BenthamChapter 17, where the boundary of moral concern is moved to suffering.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.