ON NON-HUMAN PERSONS
Autor: Renato | Publicado: 2014-01-10T11:43:00-08:00


To me, there's a clear difference between a person and a human being. Sometimes, we can see persons belonging in our culture that are not human. Jesus is treated as a person, though he's not human. In fiction and fantasy, aliens and sometimes robots are treated as persons, though they're also not human. Legally, corporations are can be treated like persons, though they're strikingly inhuman. Therefore, an urge can be felt to define the object "person" more broadly.

Dictionary.com promptly offers a very suitable alternative (as of Jan/2014):
"4. Philosophy . a self-conscious or rational being." So, in addition to mean human beings, such philosophical definition extends to entities that *exert rationality and own a well-defined, self-aware individuality*. Corporations, for example, have a very particular way to approach situations in a rational way, take responsibilities as an established entity and distinguish themselves from other companies and the rest of other persons (clients, inverstors, politicians etc). They are very self aware and, moved by market or social pressures, exercise empathy or egotism, as the very literally big and complex persons that they are. 

The importance of this search for a renewed definition of the idea of a "person" stems from the cultural transition animal species as a whole are going through in these very times. Lead by humans, Earthling life forms are starting to be recognized as empathetic, rational, self-conscious entities that have enough in common with "human persons" in a sense that they inspire respect, lest we want to be inconsistent with our empathy for beings of the same species as ours. Simultaneously, we prepare for the possibilities of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence (and most prominently the want for such contact), and also prepare for the rise of artificial intelligence. 

These last two cases, aliens and robots, inspire very intense and interesting reactions in us. These entities are predominantly portrayed in conflict with humanity, mainly oppressing humankind, but sometimes being oppressed by us. Works of fiction explore the notions of basic rights, privileges and emotions inherent to complex animals on planet Earth, which may be in discordance with the sociality of such inhuman entities. Often, humans are portrayed as fighting for their privilege to exist, amidst an universe of conscious entities, leaving behind "antiquated" notions of self and intelligence when needed for survival. These thought experiments demonstrate an urge for the preservation of intelligent, emotional life in its diverse forms, if not all life. 



The consequence of not including these emerging intelligences within the "person" set&nbsp; is tyranny. Not that tyranny is unacceptable by human social standards as of today, but it seems to be deemed as a "dated", inefficient posture towards sociology. Looking back in history, we note that the "dehumanization" of afro-descendants facilitated their slavery. Even an entire pseudo-scientific field, phrenology, was devised to purport the idea that the afro-descendant constituted a puny strain of the human species.&nbsp; It may be argued that a similar form of discrimination is directed toward the poor and the criminals, so that arguments such as "[he/she] is not human for having killed another human, therefore is deserving of death" can be devised. 



Whatever forces drive us to maintain the "personal status" within humankind, they are certainly hindering our cultural and scientific progress. As is with any biological force, its aim is protective and geared towards preservation of the family (the familiar pool of genes). We have broken many of these instinctive urges throughout or development as a society (we aren't hunters-gatherers anymore, for instance), and can only evolve towards complexity by surmounting these barriers that dominate simplistic societies. Before we gain hold of too much power for our theoretical understandings, we better make sure that no one is tyrannized as people were during periods such as slavery and the holocaust.