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/lit/ - Literature

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7005801 No.7005801 [Reply] [Original]

What is personhood?
What makes a person a person rather than a non-person?

>> No.7005821

Some set of arbitrary criteria or another..

>> No.7005827

>>7005821
What criteria are those and why are they necessarily arbitrary?

>> No.7005840

>>7005827
Because personhood is an anthropogenic idea created and defined by human beings.

Not a naturally occurring phenomenon in and of itself.

It's an attempt to describe a phenomenon, and as with all attempts of the sort, the concept is only tangentially related to the actual phenomenon it's attempting to describe.

>> No.7005843

>>7005840
So you don't think there are people, or that anything qualifying as a person exists? It doesn't follow from our attempting to describe a phenomenon that the phenomenon doesn't exist. You'll have to demonstrate that the concept is purely anthropogenic and that persons don't arise out of nature.

>> No.7005850
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7005850

People = Hairless bipeds

Prove me wrong. Don't bother, you can't

>> No.7005853

>>7005827

We stopped trying to 'define' humans a few decades ago. Nobody can come up with a conclusive set of criteria, for example.

> humans are self-conscious
Some animals also have a certain degree of self-conscience, and people do not stop lose being human when they lose their ability to contemplate their own self-consciousness (e.g. coma, etc).

>humans have (insert physical trait>
Again, not every single human being has the same physical features, and not having them doesn't make them not a person

And don't even get started about when humans start being humans, or you'll get sucked into the abortion debate.

>> No.7005854

>>7005850
Birds you stupid cunt.

>> No.7005855

>>7005843
I'm saying that the idea "person" will never encompass the totality of being the thing that is described as a person.

>> No.7005865

>>7005854
Birds Are Not That Important.

>> No.7005868

>>7005853
Who is 'we?' This claim seems quite dubious. The debate is ongoing. Just because no definition has been reached, everyone gave up?
>>7005855
Why not?

>> No.7005869

>>7005865
Birds Are Very Important.

>> No.7005875

>>7005868

Every intelligent person moved on because the debate itself is fucking obtuse.

>> No.7005879
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7005879

>>7005850
>mfw Diogenes shows up

Also, we have hair dipshit so unless you're trolling, kill yourself.

If you are trolling, be better at it

>> No.7005881

>>7005875
So is every debate in philosophy. That's actually the point of the discipline: having a long, protracted debate about topics non-autists stopped caring about a long time ago. Why do you think they killed Socrates?

>> No.7005885

the ability to love

>> No.7005905
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7005905

>>7005885

So this dog doesn't love her pups? The ability to love is insufficient. A person in a coma has (temporarily) lost his ability to love, but he still is human.

>> No.7005932

>>7005868

He already explained the "why not." It's because all of our concepts fall short of what they describe. If they didn't, they wouldn't be concepts, they would be the very thing we're trying to describe. Get it?

Thinking that words/concepts somehow correspond exactly to certain bits of physical reality is just silly.

Words and concepts are useful, to varying degrees along a spectrum of usefulness and specificity.

But no word will ever fit cleanly and exactly to a concept--this is just some kind of weird, confused Platonic thinking.

>> No.7005940

>>7005932
This seems awfully reductionist. A description of the process that causes a nuclear reaction isn't the same as the process that causes a nuclear reaction, but that doesn't mean there's no reason to describe the process.

>> No.7005949

>>7005905

No, that dog does not love her pups.

And I don't love anyone and I'm still human.

OP is 14. I'm out.

>> No.7005971

>>7005940

Hold on there, Slim.

I never said concepts are useless. In fact, they're nothing if not useful. That's exactly what I said.

So what are you getting at?

>> No.7005993

>>7005971
What's your objection to trying to define personhood, then? It raises interesting ethical questions, at the very least. Just saying 'u can't describe nuffin' is reductionism. And, again, you're assuming that personhood is just a concept and not an actual quality that people have. We clearly recognize something in 'people' that identifies then as such to us. My question is about that 'something.' What is it that we recognize in people that makes us recognize them as people?

>> No.7007148

>>7005932
Thanks nigga, you say it better than I coulda.

>> No.7007907

>>7005801
It takes character to make a person, OP.