Personhood in
Philosophy and Law Spring 2009
Department of
Philosophy, City University Graduate Center
Professor Samir Chopra (schopra@sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu)
What is a person? What is necessary, and what
is sufficient, for something to count as a person, as opposed to a thing? What
qualities (and rights) do persons have that non-persons (or mere things) do not
have? Is there such a thing as an
“artificial” or a “collective” person? Can these kinds of persons be held to
the same standards that “natural” persons are? May they ever have rights? Can
non-humans have rights by virtue of their personhood? Is a philosophical
definition of person more “natural” than the legal one? Are legal definitions of
personhood mere conventional fictions? Do philosophical notions of the
metaphysical or moral person carry the uncomfortable implication that no one
could be a person?
We will examine the history and contemporary
developments of these questions (and their answers) and pay attention to three
particularly contentious debates: the legal status of fetuses and embryos, animal
rights, and the possibility of legal personhood for artificial intelligences.
Course
Requirements:
A weekly 500-word report on the assigned
readings (50% of final grade)
A final term paper (the remaining 50%)
Textbook:
(S&N): Cass
Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Animal Rights: New Directions, Oxford
University Press, New York, 2004
Obligatory Wikipedia Pointer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person
(For Brownie Points consider
updating this page as the semester goes along)
Reading Repository: http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~schopra/Persons
Most articles are available in
this little repository I’ve put together; the rest should be available online
or offline through CUNY’s collections
(Tentative)
Reading Schedule:
Week1: The
Metaphysical Person – History and Contemporary Answers:
Primary:
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27
Peter Strawson, “Persons”, from Individuals, Methuen, London, 1959
Supplemental:
Steve Bayne, “Strawson on Persons”, http://www.hist-analytic.org/STRAWSON1959.htm);
Norman Burstein, “Strawson on the concept of a person”, (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2252563)
James Moulder, “Flew, Strawson and Locke's
Parrot”, (http://www.jstor.org/pss/3749842)
Week
2 and 3:
The Metaphysical Person – History and Contemporary Answers
Primary:
AJ Ayer, The concept of a person, St.
Martin’s Press, 1973 (B1618.A93 C6 1963)
(R) Lynne Rudder
Baker, “The
Ontological Status of Persons”, Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LXV, No. 2, September 2002
(R) Patricia Kitcher, “Natural Kinds and Unnatural Persons”, Philosophy, Vol. 54, No. 210 (Oct., 1979), pp. 541-547
(R) Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, 68(1), 5-20
Supplemental:
(R) Gary S. Rosenkrantz, “Reflections on the Ontological Status of Persons”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXV, No. 2, September 2002,
Aldrich, “Ayer’s Concept of a Person”, http://www.jstor.org/pss/2023489
(R) Sydney Shoemaker, “Persons, animals, and
identity”, Synthese (2008) 162:313–324
(R) Beauchamp, “The failure of theories of
personhood”, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9.4 (1999) 309-324
Weeks
4 and 5: Conditions
for Personhood
Primary:
Immanuel Kant, Excerpt from “Third Paralogism of Personality”
Daniel Dennett, “Conditions of Personhood”,
from Brainstorms, MIT Press, 1981
A.O. Rorty, “Persons and Personae”, from Mind
in Action, A.O.Rorty (ed.), Beacon Press, 1988
(R) David C. Wilson, “Functionalism and Moral
Personhood: One View Considered”, Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jun., 1984), pp. 521-529
(R) S. F. Sapontzis, “A Critique of
Personhood”, Ethics, Vol. 91, No. 4
(Jul., 1981), pp. 607-618
(R) Jerry Goodenough, “The Achievement of Personhood”, Ratio, 2, September 1997
Supplemental:
(R) Lawrence A. Locke, “Personhood and Moral
Responsibility”, Law and Philosophy,
Vol. 9, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 39-66
GE Scott, “Material Persons”, from Moral Personhood,
SUNY Press, 1990 (BJ 1031 .S37)
Week
6:
The Legal Person
John Chipman Gray, “Legal Persons” from Nature
and Sources of the Law, Columbia University Press, 1921
(R) “What We Talk About When We Talk About
Persons: The Language of a Legal Fiction”, 114 Harvard Law Review
(2001)
(R) Ngaire
Naffine, “Who are Law’s Persons? From Cheshire Cats to Responsible Subjects”,
66 Modern Law Review, 346-367
Week
7 and 8:
The Legal Person as Artificial, Corporate or Collective
Thomas Hobbes, Excerpt from “Leviathan”
(R) Roger Scruton and John Finnis, “Corporate
Persons”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 63 (1989), pp. 239-274
(R) Peter A. French, “The Corporation as a
Moral Person”, American Philosophical Quarterly (July 1979)
Rita C. Manning,
Corporate Responsibility and Corporate Personhood, Journal of Business Ethics, 3, 77-84, 8 p. February 1984.
Rita
C. Manning, Dismemberment, Divorce and Hostile Takeovers: A Comment on
Corporate Moral Personhood, Journal of Business Ethics,
7, 639-643, 5 p. August 1988.
Chapters 3, 6, 7 from Peter A. French, Collective
and Corporate Responsibility (HD60 .F74 1984)
Supplemental:
(R) Sanford
A. Schane, “The Corporation Is a Person: The Language
of a Legal Fiction”, 61 Tulsa Law Review 563, 563–65 (1987)
(R) David Copp, Hobbes on Artificial Persons
and Collective Actions, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 89, No. 4
(Oct., 1980), pp. 579-606
Week9
and 10: When
do persons come into existence and when do they pass away? Fetuses, Embryos,
and Death
(R) Phillip Cole, “Problems with
"persons”", Res Publica,
3(2) 1997
(R) John Harris Four legs good, personhood
better, Res Publica, 4(1), 1998
Joel Feinberg, “Abortion”, http://www.ditext.com/feinberg/abortion.html
(R) Roslyn Weiss, “The Perils of Personhood”,
Ethics, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Oct., 1978),
pp. 66-75
(R) Jessica
Berg, “Of Elephants and Embryos: A Proposed Framework for Legal Personhood”, 59
Hastings Law Journal 369 (2007)
(R) Paul A. Roth, “Personhood, Property
Rights, and the Permissibility of Abortion”, Law and Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Aug., 1983), pp. 163-191
(R) Ben A. Rich,
“Postmodern Personhood: A Matter of Consciousness”, Bioethics, Volume 11 Number 3&4, 1997
(R) Christopher Tollefsen, “Embryos, Individuals, and Persons: An
Argument Against Embryo Creation and Research”, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2001
Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”, The Monist, 57(1), 43-61, 1973
Weeks
11 and 12: Rights (via Personhood?) for Animals
Primary:
(R) “Slaves as
Property”, New York Times, April 9, 1860
(R) Simon Cushing, Against
“Humanism”: Speciesism, Personhood, and Preference, Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 34 No. 4, Winter
2003, 556–571.
Wise, Posner,
Singer, Diamond, Francione, Epstein, Rachels from (S & N)
Supplemental:
Mary Midgley, “Persons and Non-Persons”, from In Defense of
Animals, Peter Singer (ed.), Blackwell 1985
Week14: Naturalizing
Personhood?
(R) Annette Baier, “A Naturalist View of
Persons”, Proceedings and Addresses of
the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Nov., 1991), pp.
5-17 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3130139)
All articles
below from American Journal of Bioethics,
Jan 2007, Volume 7, Issue 1; total length 30 pages
Farah,
Martha J.; Heberlein, Andrea S., “Personhood
and Neuroscience: Naturalizing or Nihilating?”
Pat
Churchland, “The Necessary-and-Sufficient Boondoggle”
Mark
Sagoff, “A Transcendental Argument for the Concept of Personhood in
Neuroscience”
Adina
Roskies, “The Illusion of Personhood”
Grey,
William; Hall, Wayne; Carter, Adrian, “Persons and
Personification”
John
Banja, “Personhood: Elusive But Not Illusory”
Zahra Meghani, “Is
Personhood an Illusion?”
Christopher
Meyers, Personhood: Empirical Thing or Rational Concept?”
James Lindemann
Nelson, “Illusions about Persons”
Christian
Perring, “Against Scientism, For Personhood”
Walter Glannon,
“Persons, Metaphysics and Ethics”
Week14: Personhood for Artificial Intelligence
(R) Samir Chopra and Laurence White,
“Personhood for Artificial Agents”, draft chapter
(R)
Lawrence Solum, “Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences?”, North Carolina Law Review, April 1992