**The maze that is personhood discourse**

By Panda Truc-Anh Vuong (12) CATALYST Alumni TLAP October 2025

Having taken part in the recent Think Like A Philosopher (TLAP) half term course, I was fascinated to learn more about what philosophers refer to as conceptions of personhood and personhood theories. Thinking about who or what is a person and why, both on the course and through my own extended research, I was keen to think further about how adequate these theories were and why we will need a much broader understanding. Personhood theories have a long history, but from the 1960’s onwards philosophers and bioethicists are thinking about personhood as they are looking for a way to think about the value of human (and other) lives and to think about which entities do not have this value.

**‘You are a person if you have human DNA and you are not if you don’t.’ Is this right?**

One way of looking at the idea of personhood is through the lens of biology or genetics. In short, being a person is synonymous with being a human. John Noonan states that, ‘if you are conceived of human parents, you are a human person.’ He says, ‘You are a person if you have human DNA and you are not if you don’t”. The upshot of this theory lies in its simplicity of straightforward scientific fact, but its implications can be far-reaching. If we accept this concept, then we must accept that once an egg was fertilised, a person starts and never stops being one, even after death, as the human DNA remains. Whether a person is alive or not, the treatment towards them must be consistent. This equates abortion with murder. Euthanasia in a controlled environment would label doctors assisting as murderers, even when the patient is in an irreversible vegetative state.

**Memory has played a key role in discussions on personhood**

Another way to think about personhood is in terms of capacities, usually psychological and cognitive capacities that indicate the being has personhood status. Mary Ann Warren, put forward some key capacities needed to say we have a person, which included consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity to communicate and self-awareness. This theory, opens up the possibility of including non-human animals with the listed cognitive abilities to be counted as ‘persons’. In the past, we considered animals lacking in these abilities, but now research has shown that many animals, including apes, dolphins, whales can clearly reason, organise, communicate, and are aware of themselves and themselves amongst a family and habitat. Peter Singer is a philosopher whose work is linked to this approach to personhood and focusses on the ability to feel pleasure and pain and the importance of evolved rationality. The complication associated with this theory is that the definition of personhood excludes human infants who may not have developed full cognitive capacity, or indeed humans with neurological diseases who will not develop such capacities, or who had them and then lost them. This approach therefore feels too arbitrary, inferring that simply being human does grant the status of personhood on it’s own, and that contextual information can deny a human personhood.

The importance of context is taken into account within what might be called ‘the social account’ which says, you need to consider social and cultural context when thinking about personhood. Care ethicists have been keen to stress the importance of relationships, not just capacities, when thinking about who or what is included in our ways of thinking about personhood and agency. This a very complicated and far from neat definition to work with, but this approach puts minorities and others who may not be included within traditional definitions (because they may lack ‘key’ cognitive abilities) into consideration as having personhood. It acknowledges that our relationships form part of what it means to be a person and a person in moral community.

Many have challenged the idea that you have to meet certain criteria to be counted as a person. Pope John Paul II, for example, stressed that no human being has to meet criteria to be counted as a person: a human, by definition, is a person. But it is a human being we are speaking of, and that human being is defined by the presence of a human (‘spiritual’) soul, which is what enables us to develop into the kind of being that typically can reason, be self-aware. This reacts against the criteria approach, but does see the human being as a spiritual entity and returns to ideas of ensoulment or spirituality aspects of personhood.

Perhaps personhood comes in degrees, and you can have more or less of it? Often referred to as the gradualist position, this approach suggests that personhood status as something which evolves and develops, and therefore also something that can be lost. This definition does not entirely deny personhood, but infers that some beings can have more personhood than others. Problems arise when we no only could this approach be used through the biological or medical lens, but allow the gradualist definition of personhood to infiltrate other realms, such as our political and judicial systems. Criminals can be punished in such ways that seek to remove the benefits of personhood status, and there are many historical examples of governments and their policy seeking to remove the status of personhood (and associated benefits) on grounds of race or gender. Gradualist positions can often lead to exclusions, leading us to ask who or what is a person, and as importantly, who gets to decide?

None of the above positions on their own are adequate, and we need a definition that can grasp aspects of all of the ideas outlined that do not dismiss or discount fundamental aspects of our nature and lives. A person can be a human being, living in relation to a community, that possesses (more or less) consciousness, emotions and perception of the surrounding world, the big question relates to non-human animals and even non-organic beings.

Looking to the future, there modern world of technology is already raising the possibility that robots could possess human-level intelligence and consciousness (as some researchers are already claiming). What if, as already depicted in science fiction, robots could possess human DNA, or entire organs? In this case, the robot would have transformed to obtain all the listed characteristics of some definitions of personhood. Is this a ‘person’? We might assume that society would find it difficult to accept robots as persons, pointing out their man-made origins. How about a person who has a synthetic (man-made) object implanted into them? Many humans already have titanium hips, but what if one day other parts of the body could be replaced or augmented with man-made objects? Is a microchip in the brain a realistic possibility? At what point would we cross the line between human and non-human? Such ideas are no longer confined to sci-fi scripts - they are being actively pursued in fields such as warfare and weaponry. What will be needed to meet the definitions of personhood? What will the benefits of personhood be, and what will will be denied to those beings that are excluded? And who should it be left to to decide?

Who or what is a person and who gets to decide if they are to be included in our moral community.

What is a person?

CATALYST in Shanghai