Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, but after centuries of philosophical debate there is still no consensus about what counts as a person. One consequence of this is that debates in bioethics get hung up on definitions of personhood, a concept closely linked to the similarly troublesome notion of ‘human dignity’.
Since conceptions of personhoood tend to rely on human mental capacities (rationality, intelligence, language, self consciousness), it is reasonable to ask the question: Can neuroscience give us criteria for personhood?
For an answer, lets turn to January’s inaugural issue of AJOB-Neuroscience (Volume 7, Issue 1, 2007). Every year, three issues of the American Journal of Bioethics are now devoted to neuroethics, and the first one has a target article making a dramatic claim: There is no such thing as personhood, and neuroscience proves it.
… instead of naturalizing the concept of personhood by identifying its essential characteristics in the natural world, neuroscience may show us that personhood is illusory, constructed by our brains and projected onto the world.
This is stunning stuff, and attracted a lot of criticism in the journal’s commentary. I’m still digesting their claims, but here’s how I break down their argument. Let me know if I stray…
- We are hard wired to distinguish persons from non-persons. One set of brain regions represents properties of persons, while another set represents properties of non-persons. This innate behaviour does not rely on us observing a real distinction between persons and non-persons.
- In sorting out persons from non-persons, our brains often get it wrong. More generally, our brains sometimes identify natural kinds where there are none.
- This means the person/non-person distinction is just in our heads, not in the world. Persons and non-persons are not natural kinds. Instead, “personhood is a kind of illusion.”
- Moral theories relying on objective criteria for personhood should be abandoned.
Isn’t that a coincidence. I posted about natural kinds just a few days ago: in Are emotions natural kinds? I referenced work suggesting emotions such as love, hate, and anger were not natural kinds. As this might indicate a trend, I offer the following by way of a public service announcement:
Warning to philosophers: Neuroscience doesn’t like natural kinds.
(And now, back to our regularly scheduled philosophical analysis…)
While I’m sympathetic to the author’s premises, I have a hard time getting to their conclusion. It seems a bit of a stretch to go from “brains do a poor job of distinguishing persons from non-persons” to “there is no such distinction in the real world”.
In an incidental way, Faran and Heberlein address this point in their reply to commentators when they say their analysis is mostly about demonstrating we should not assume we have intuitions about personhood because it exists as a natural kind in the world. Fine. Absence of a causal connection between reality and intuitions noted. But if this is all, why make strong statements about personhood being an illusion?
It also seems a bit odd to ground this argument in evidence that our brains are not good at sorting persons from non-persons. If these are not natural kinds, how are we to know when the brain gets it wrong? Are we just talking about using an uncontroversial baseline relying on everyone’s opinion about what is and is not a person? Perhaps my view isn’t nuanced enough, so mention your thoughts in the comments if my confusion on this point is grounded in an error that should be obvious.
For a journalist’s take on this, pop over to Reason Magazine’s Are Persons Just an Illusion?, wherein Ronald Bailey makes the mistake of confusing persons with personhood when he concludes:
In the end, Farah and Heberlein are wrong, persons are as real as mountains, diseases, weeds, pets and daylight.
(Hat tip to Pure Pedantry for mention of the Reason article).
It would be a good idea to remember this is not about denying persons exist and are not plants. This is about denying the existence of a unique set of characteristics which together make up personhood.
For more discussion of this article, here’s the list of open peer commentaries:
- Banja, J. (2007) Personhood: Elusive but not illusory. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 60-62.
- Blackford, R. (2007) Differing vulnerabilities: The moral significance of Lockean personhood. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 70-71.
- Bufford, C. and Allhoff, F. (2007) Neuroscience and metaphysics (redux). American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 58-60.
- Churchland, P. S. (2007) The necessary-and-sufficient boondoggle. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 54-55.
- Fins, J. J. (2007) Border zones of consciousness: Another immigration debate? American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 51-54.
- Glannon, W. (2007) Persons, metaphysics and ethics. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 68-69.
- Grey, W., Hall, W. and Carter, A. (2007) Persons and personification. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 57-58.
- Meghani, Z. (2007) Is personhood an illusion? American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 62-63.
- Meyers, C. (2007) Personhood: Empirical thing or rational concept? American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 63-65.
- Nelson, J. L. (2007) Illusions about persons. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 65-66.
Perring, C. (2007) Against scientism, for personhood. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 67-68.
- Phelps, E. A. (2007) The neuroscience of a person network. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 49-50.
- Racine, E. (2007) Identifying challenges and conditions for the use of neuroscience in bioethics. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 74-76.
- Roskies, A. L. (2007) The illusion of personhood. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 55-57.
- Saghoff, M. (2007) A transcendental argument for the concept of personhood in neuroscience. American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp. 72-73.
- Farah, M.J. & Heberlein, A.S. (2007) Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Personhood and Neuroscience: Naturalizing or Nihilating?”: Getting Personal The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB-Neuroscience) 7:1 , pp W1–71. [correspondence]
Read Full Post »