CPCS PERSON CONCEPTS
by F. Richard Singer III conceptualstudy.org Edition
date: 7/2010
Paper prefixed by CPCS can be downloaded from the paper
section of conceptualstudy.org
Abstract: This
is a purely conceptual paper. One initial problem is that there are two widely
used person concepts, a behavioral history concept and an attribute concept,
such as having a soul. Altho I begin with the attribute concept because it
seems to be favored by more persons, hopefully I can make a case for a
behavioral concept as the more useful one for public purposes, while still
remaining sensitive to those who think in terms of the concept of a soul. A
paradigm case formulation of this behavioral concept is given that is close to
the one suggested in Descriptive Psychology. However since I want a prodder
person concept, I give a more complex list of transformation that adds cases to
the person concept that Descriptive Psychology might find questionable. The
paradigm formulation uses the concept of a dramaturgical pattern. That concept
is discussed in terms of the concept of subjective consciousness formulated by
Julian Jaynes. The second main purpose of this paper is to develops some distinctions
that can be used to compare and contrast individuals who most people clearly
consider as persons with those who engage in somewhat person-like behaviors. o
do this some of the other given transformations are expansive i.e. they specify
further types of individuals who engage person-like behavior but who neither
Descriptive Psychology nor I would classify as persons, as they have behavior
potential that is far too limited for them to be so classified. Some of these
clearly exist (such as domestic dogs), and perhaps thinking about the extent to
which their behavior is person-like could be of interest to some people. One of
reason in formulating these person-like concepts is to consider how and why
Homo sapiens became persons. In particular, this is related to Jaynes’ concept
of bicameral man, altho I make no claim that his account is correct
Terminology: Altho
some terms (such as ‘quasi-person’ and ‘personoid’) have been used, these are
only being proposed as a way of focusing on concepts while considering them in
this paper.
Nets: This
paper occasionally uses some epistemic concepts and terminology. The term ‘net’
denotes a network of conceptual distinctions and conceptual relationships that
can be used to think about some realm of interest; perhaps to obtain or
organize information about it, to propose conjectures about it, to suggest
questions about it, etc. Conceptual statements are about concepts and
relationships between concepts in some net. Paraceptual statements presuppose
some net. They are intended to suggest information about a aspects of some
realm that the net is intended to help access. A concept is essential for a net
if it permeates a person’s thinking about its realm of interest, giving
coherence to the way the person regards many aspects of the net. A person’s
routine net is the one whose realm of interest includes that person’s ordinary
routine activities. A concept is crucial for a person if that person’s routine
net and behavior in relation to that net would be incoherent without it. For
more details see my book entitled A
Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy on the Conceptual Philosophy
Section of my website.
That we have the net designated as Descriptive Psychology
is due to Peter Ossorio. Since this net is used in similar ways by a number of
people and is designed for use by the public, it will be referred to as PNDP
(Public Net for Descriptive Psychology). The realm of interest for PNDP is
potentially everything involving persons, as is much of our routine net. Thus,
for any person some version of a person concept is crucial. My paradigm case
formulation of a behavioral person concept was largely influenced by Ossorio
(1998a) and Ossorio (2006a). Closely related to the person concept are other
essential concepts, such as behavior description concepts. Since these concepts
are primarily a more systematic version of what the ordinary connotations of
these terms suggest, they are only briefly sketched in this paper.
An Eternal Person
Concept: Having a soul that can survive bio-death is something that many
people have associated with being a person. Many people have a strong
commitment to beliefs that humans are created in the image of God and that God
imbues a fertilized egg with such a soul. Many others believe in a soul that
passes thru many reincarnation. To be widely used, a person concept needs to
take account of such sensibilities. Yet the behavioral person concept makes no
use of the concept of a soul and at first glance it might seem to deny the
existence of souls. However being a concept, it neither affirms nor denies the
existence of anything. Instead it leaves questions about the souls as a
paraceptual matter, about which there is considerable disagreement. Unlike
having a history of some type of action, having a soul is a kind of attribute.
Ontological disagreements make the use of a person concept based on a soul
unsuitable as the primary person concept in a routine multicultural public net.
However, there is no necessary reason that people with different cosmic versions
cannot use a shared net. A behavioral person concept is intended for use in a
shared net that would also include the concept of a person whose existence is
not bound to terminate. In this paper, I will avoid the use of the concept of a
soul (as it is unclear to me) and use the term ‘eternal person’ for persons
whose existence is not necessarily limited. The adjective ‘eternal’ is used in
the potential sense, i.e. an eternal person need not be indestructible but is
also not limited in such a way that its existence must terminate. Using such a
concept makes no ontological commitments. Whether such persons exist is a
paraceptual issue, as its dependence on a concept traditionally called a soul.
The belief in the existence of eternal persons is
widespread. Many traditional theists believe that only humans and supernatural
persons are eternal persons. They might prefer restricting the term ‘person’
for eternal persons, altho they would probably also agree that such persons
have the kind of behavioral features given in the paradigm case formulation of
the behavioral person concept. They could then always deny that robots are
‘eternal persons’, because calling a robot with the behavior potential of a
human a person does not necessarily entail giving a robot the same status as an
eternal person. For an inclusive public net, it would seem better not to
restrict the person concept to eternal persons, since there is a lack of
consensus on how to determine which person are eternal. A believer in
reincarnation might claim that animals are eternal. A physicalist would claim
that there are no eternal persons. People with these different cosmic versions
might even all agree that a robot who satisfied the behavioral features for
being a person was not an eternal person, but there would not be a consensus on
how this was determined. Moreover, a person without a cosmic version might
remain undecided about a robot. Radically different beliefs about how we can
know are involved. An inclusive public net cannot depend on special epistemological
or ontological beliefs. A net having a person concept that allows for
classifying an individual as a person on fairly wide behavioral and potential
behavioral grounds should not have this problem. Of course using any concept to
communicate does depend on a consensus on some fairly ordinary basic reliable
knowledge. Conceptual considerations are only tools for bringing concerns into
focus. Moreover, how well these tools are used is a matter of competence.
Altho locutions do not necessarily determine status, they
often seem to. Thus people tend to prefer certain locutions, sometimes so
strongly that they are unwilling to compromise on them. They may feel that
giving up on the locution is to weaken status. Consider the locution ‘human
life’. I would prefer to use a concept in which this status was assigned by the
consensus of humankind. This involves a problem. Altho there may be enough of a
consensus (at least in our culture) to definitely assign human status after
birth, there is no consensus on an earlier assignment. I deal with this by
conceptualizing the status human broadly to include both unborn humans and born
human. Each status is assigned on the basis of criteria with few borderline
cases. This choice seems to correspond to a major division in ethical concerns.
To have human status makes P’s wellbeing eligible for ethical concerns. For
many people, this makes the concern for the unborn as important as the ethical
concern involved for any other human. However for others the status of born human
play a special role making the wellbeing of born humans more important than
that of unborn humans. However it is the status that is the issue, and any
issue as to locutions needs to be settled by compromise if miscommunication is
to be avoided. I hope the term ‘eternal person’ might be useful in regard to
more effective communication, and that the broader behavioral use of the term
‘person’ would not be offensive to those with beliefs in eternal persons.
Intentional Action:
To formulate a paradigm behavioral person concept it is useful to formulate the
concept of intentional action and to distinguish a special case of it which
will be designated as optional action.
Roughly speaking intentional action involves doing something that is
intended (at least implicitly) to satisfy some want. More precisely intentional
action is behavior that can be described using the parameters below. These
parameters are taken from things we might ordinarily say in talking about
something an individual did. Of course our ordinary descriptions are likely to
be less systematic and indicate only those feature of interest for the purposes
at hand. The paradigm case of a behavior description uses all of the parameters
below to describe a course of action X by a person called the actor. The person
giving the description is called the observer. The observer and actor can be
the same person.
¨
Identity (I) specifies the actor A for X.
¨
Wanting (W) indicates what A intends to achieve
by X.
¨
Knowledge (K) has to do with what A knows and uses
in relation to X.
¨
Know-how (KH) has to do with the competencies A
displays relation to X.
¨
Performance (P) encompasses the processes that A
is implementing.
¨
Achievement (A) is what X accomplishes, what
difference it makes.
¨
Characteristics (C) includes some of A’s
characteristic are being expressed by doing X.
¨
Significance (S) includes what else is being
done by doing X, what importance X has for A.
Allowable
Transformations: There are various types of behavior descriptions in which
some of the parameters may be omitted. A behavior description that uses at
least the first five of these parameters is an intentional action description.
An observer can give a behavior description in which there is more than one
actor. Furthermore, an actor need not be a person. For instance, an actor could
be an animal or a robot. The observer can be a team working together to give a
behavior description.
Optional Action:
With most intentional action, there are options to what was done, altho the
actor may not consider any of them. Intentional action in which the actor does
consider options is called optional action. Thus the optional action concept
entails more than having just options. The direct way to check if an act was
optional (rather than merely intentional) is to ask the individual to give an
imagined behavior description of these options. We also judge by observing more
about the action, and this is how we judge that very young children engage in
optional action. This seems reasonable because their behavior seems to be a
prelude to them becoming mature persons. We also use this as a basis to judge
that some animals may engage in optional actions, even this is not a ubiquitous
feature of their lives.
For instance, when I answer my phone, this is an
intentional act. Whether or not it is an optional act depends on whether I
consider some other option. If so, then what I do will be an instance of
optional action, regardless of whether or not I answer the phone. Likewise when
a horsefly land on my arm and I immediately swat at it this is normally an
intention act. However it may occur to me that this is unlikely to kill it. So
I may consider the option of waiting to swat it until it is just about to bite.
Optional action is a ubiquitous feature of our experience
as persons. By this I only mean that when we reflect on what we are doing, we
usually imagine alternatives, even if the only one imagined is not to do what
we are doing. It is easy to realize that a large amount of what we do doesn’t
directly involve optional action. I put on my walking shoes, walk east on my
road until I come to a side trail, turn on this trail and avoid stepping in a
large puddle a short distance down this trail, etc. I do most of my walk
without imaging doing otherwise. What I find hard to believe is that I might do
all of this and not even be able to imagine alternatives and to consider what
it might be like to select from them. Furthermore, all of these actions occur
as components in the larger behavior episode of taking a walk for exercise.
This larger episode is a case of optional action, and it is one initiated by
considering options and which may often be punctuated with choices between
options.
A Paradigm Case
Formulation for the Person Concept: This formulation specifies features of
a paradigm case of an individual P who is a person. Allowable transformations
are added to cover additional cases. This is augmented by adding expansive
transformations for individuals who are not persons but who at least sometimes
engage in person-like behavior. Clause (A) is called the main feature for the
person concept. The others clauses are called socialization features of the
person concept.
(A) P has a history in which optional action is
ubiquitous, in the sense that it occurs frequently when P is in a normal state
and guides a great deal of P’s intentional action. Moreover this history occurs
as part of a dramaturgical pattern in P’s life. P has also sufficiently
mastered the concept of a person to distinguish between persons and
non-persons.
(B) P acquired the person concept by learning to act as a
person in interaction with other persons.
(C) P knows how to act as a person in interaction with
other persons.
(D) P uses the person concept primarily to guide P’s behavior
with respect to other persons and to consider the behavior of persons with
respect to other persons.
(E) P frequently engages in optional action by
participating in a social practice of some community.
Allowable Transformations:
(1) Change (A) to ‘is likely to
develop such a history and is likely to learn to make such a distinction, given
most courses of events that P could reasonably be expected to encounter during
P’s existence. The term nascent person would seem to correspond to ordinary
usage when we want to differentiate such a person from the paradigm case, which
applies to persons after they have developed such a history.
(2) Change any or all of the other features in a manner
similar to transformation (1). For instance, ‘knows how’ in (C) can be changed
to ‘is likely to learn how’.
(3) Weaken or eliminate any or all of the socialization
features. There need not even be any expectations about the likelihood of these
features being realized, altho such a person would necessarily have the capacities
for the abilities that they entail. For instance, a robot created and
programmed with feature (A) and sent on a permanent solitary mission might be
such a person. However, altho there is no expectation that this robot would
have feature (C), it would be likely to acquire this feature if it was
retrieved and placed in a setting involving other persons. In this paper,
‘personoid’ is used to distinguish those persons who do not satisfy the
socialization features from those who do.
(4) Modify these conditions in any manner that allows a
creator of the universe to be a person who exists or existed outside of the
universe and who knowingly engages in optional action. This allows the person
concept to be applied to the God concept in the way that it is ordinarily used
by theists, altho the account of one God in three persons complicates this. An
atheist could use this concept in a shared net when disputing the claim that
God exists.
Note: The term person may also be
applied to fictional characters who would be classified as persons if they were
real. Thus in calling of Hercules a person, we are not committed to his
existential status.
Expansive Transformations: An
expansive transformation indicates cases that are not included in the person
concept, but that are included in some related person-like concept.
(5) Retain having a history in which at least optional
action is ubiquitous, but weaken (A) by omitting the dramaturgical pattern and
the second sentence. In this paper, ‘semi‑person’ is used for such an
individual.
(6) Weaken (A) by changing ‘a noteworthy history’ to
‘occasional instances’. Omit the dramaturgical pattern. Omit the second
sentence. In this paper, ‘quasi-person’ is used for such an individual.
Socialization
features: As conceptualized, the paradigm case of a person is an individual
who became a person as part of one or more communities. If we drop C, or at a
minimum by interacting with other persons. This suggests the paraceptual
question of whether this is necessary in becoming a person. What we know about
feral and isolated children (feralchildren.com)
suggests that this is the case with humans. I find it highly plausible that in
becoming a mature person, a human starts as a nascent person only because it is
born into other persons of persons. To acquire language, which is indispensable
for seeing ones life in a dramaturgical manner, a human child needs to interact
with persons. Whether a human child would even engage in optional action
without some community process is a question about which I can only speculate.
The ability to engage in optional action on some occasions might be due to
biological rather than cultural evolution. Of course, there are claimed
exceptions, as in the story of Adam and Eve. Even taken as a myth, it suggests
that our ordinary concept referred to by the word ‘person’ makes no community
demands, and so the allowable transformations are compatible with this ordinary
concept.
Dramaturgical
Patterns and Subjective Consciousness: The dramaturgical pattern feature is
central to the PNDP person concept. Altho Chapter 10 of Ossorio (2006a) gave me
a perspective on what this means, I have not seen a helpful concise explanation
of the dramaturgical pattern concept. Instead of formulating one, I will relate
the concept of acting in a dramaturgical pattern to Julian Jaynes’ concept of
consciousness. Hopefully this is faithful to the concept of a dramaturgical
pattern, altho the accounts I have read of the PNDP concept are not focused
enough for me to be sure.
Jaynes formulates a concept of consciousness that is
intertwined with what he says is wrong with prior accounts of consciousness. He
indicates how concepts associated with the word consciousness are either vague
or are unsuitable for thinking about significant features of our experience.
This may obscure the fact that his concept is entirely independent of any
theory about how the brain works or his theory about the origins of
consciousness. The term ‘subjective consciousness’ will be used for the Jaynes
concept of consciousness. Subjective consciousness is a concept and is thus
neither true nor false. Instead, it is more or less useful for some purposes. I
find it of great personal utility. In fact, I could use it to formulate the
concept of a person. Instead of the formulation given above; I could have given
the central feature of the paradigm case more concisely by saying that a person
is an individual whose behavioral history is shaped to a noteworthy extent by
subjective consciousness. All of the persons I know are subjectively conscious,
and I think the paradigm case of a PNDP person could be taken as a subjectively
conscious individual. Transformation (4) gave an example of a person who might
not be, since being omniscient might make all the features to be described
below irrelevant.
Jaynes gives six features for the concept of subjective
consciousness: {spatialization, excerption, analog-I, metaphor-me,
narratization, conciliation}. These are ubiquitous in the experience of a
subjectively conscious individual. In fact, I find it hard to imagine what it
would be like not to depend on them. This is the main reason I initially found
Jaynes’ theory interesting but barely plausible. I will only briefly sketch these
features. For more detail, see Origins of
Consciousness (pp. 59-65) by Julian Jaynes.
Spatialization refers to the use of a metaphorical
mind-space in which an individual separates the things it considers as if they
were individual objects. Spatialization applies not only to things that have
spatial qualities in the physical world. It applies to whatever an individual
thinks about. It uses the metaphor of seeing for abstract entities, which it
separates so that it can see how they are related. It spatializes time, viewing
years as laid out in succession, usually from left to right.
Since a finite individual can only pay attention to part
of an aspect of its world at any moment, it never sees anything in its
entirety. Nor for dramatic purposes would it want to. Instead, it excerpts what
it considers important and worth bringing into focus. Excerption involves
thinking of an aspect in terms of some of its very limited features. Thinking
of my garden, I see leaves covering part of it, weeds among the onions and
garlic, some pepper plants. At another time, I might see other features. Of
course, this seeing is in my mind-space, for I am not currently looking at my
garden.
The central feature of subjective consciousness is the
metaphor of an analog-I as an actor. This what an individual uses in order to
imagine something it might do. The analog-I moves about in its mind-space,
doing things it is not actually doing. It also forms excerptions of things it
has done. Without this analog-I, it might have live options, but it could not
select among them by considering what it might imagine as alternative outcomes.
Deliberating about what to do in terms of future consequences would not be
possible. Shall I weed the garlic early this afternoon? It will be in the sun
at that time, but if I only do one patch, I can go cool off in the creek before
I get too uncomfortable. On the other hand, I can go to the creek first and get
gravel to repair the road.
The analog-I looks out at some state of affairs and
imagines acting within or upon it. An individual can also step back, observe
itself as acting and think about what would be happening to itself. The
metaphor-me is this affected version of itself that it observes in its
mind-space. My analog-I is imagined as weeding the garlic and going to the
creek. It is my metaphor-me that gets too hot and that becomes cool in the
creek.
Our analog-I sees itself as the main figure in a story
that takes place in our spatialized time. Narratization is the process of
telling itself this story about what it is doing or might be going to do, and
about how the facts it notices or imagines fit in with this. Narratization
explains why it did what it did or why it might select alternatives. It
provides a rationale for how it might act in novel situations as they arise.
Conciliation is the process of bringing perceptions
together as conscious recognizable objects. It does so in a way that makes
excerpts from these stimuli compatible with each other and its ongoing
narratization. Conciliation does in the mind-space what narratization does in
mind-time.
Subjective
Consciousness and Optional Action: I will make a conjecture relating
subjective consciousness to optional action.
Perhaps an individual must be subjectively conscious
in order to have a dramaturgical pattern of optional action as a ubiquitous
feature of its experience and to utilize this dramaturgical pattern to support
the options selected.
I look at the log and where to aim my ax swing. I place a
wedge where my ax struck. I pick up the sledgehammer. Etc. I consider all of
these options in the broader context of preparing my supply of firewood and how
this fits into my life.
Private Languages
and Dramaturgical Patterns: Altho humans initially acquire language by
interacting with other humans, they can use language to think about the world
and about what they are doing in it. To see ones life in a dramaturgical
pattern, it is only this use of language that is needed, at least for thinking
about any episodes that do not involve communicating with others. By a private
language, I mean a tool that is used for thinking about the world but that has
not been acquired by interaction with others and has never been used to
communicate. In fact, this is exactly what would be needed for the existence of
a personoid. Whether a private language or a personoid could exist is a
paraceptual matter, and hence cannot be settled by conceptual analysis.
Traditional monotheists talk as if they are committed to the existence of at
least one private language (In the beginning was the word). If the word
‘language’ is restricted to a concept that involves communication in an
essential manner, then the term ‘private language’ refers to a conceptual tool
that is not a type of language but a type of partial language.
Syntactic Language
and Narrative Usage: In this paper the term syntactic language is reserved
for languages whose syntactic structure is flexible enough to be used for a
variety of purposes, that include proposing and requesting elaborate
information, giving detailed commands, expressing subtle feelings. Even more
significant its semantics involves an extensive reliance on metaphor (see
Jaynes Chapter 2). A syntactic language will also have the capacity to be used
for telling stories, and when used for telling simple stories about what
happened we will say it is used for rudimentary narrative purposes. Mature
narrative usage is conceptualized as telling stories about oneself and others
that are recognized as fictional and that may involve both the past and the future.
Narratization involves being able to tell stories with oneself as actor in
mind-space and mind-time. Altho not explicitly mentioned by Jaynes, I think
that doing so involves mature narrative usage of language and that he believes
that rudimentary narrative usage is necessary but not sufficient for
narratization.
Comment: An
individual might be able to recognize options but not implicitly understand
this as a central aspect of itself. Moreover, it might not see itself as
involved in a dramaturgical pattern. Such an individual could engage in
optional action without being able to make a distinction between individuals
who could and those who could not do so. This latter ability would seem to be
more sophisticated than the mere ability to know options or even to have a
history in which optional action is ubiquitous. Using feature (A), the ability
to make a distinction between individuals who could recognize options and those
who cannot is central to what it means to be a person. It is for this reason I classify
a personoid as a type of person but do not classify semi‑persons or any
other types of quasi-persons as persons. This does not mean that a person must
be able to articulate this distinction between actions that involve options and
actions that do not. A person must merely be able to react to it appropriately,
altho not always correctly. For instance, altho I may seem to chastise my
computer, this is merely a way of venting, and I know that my computer is not
reflecting on whether to respond to my concerns. Likewise, a child’s belief
that the Easter Bunny is a person probably indicates a mistaken paraceptual
belief rather than a misunderstanding about this distinction or any other
conceptual misunderstanding.
Terminology: A
phrase like ‘the person concept’ might suggest that there is a unique concept
indicated by the term ‘person’, whereas it only indicates a concept that is
currently being designated by that term. In general such language is used with
the caveat that it should be interpreted in a way that makes concepts more
basic than locutions for them. An earlier version of this paper limited the
term ‘person’ to the paradigm case, using ‘personoid’ for the broader case,
rather than limiting this term to those who became persons without the assistance
of other persons. I did this because PNDP terminology seemed to demand
socialization features that might be incompatible with the allowable
transformations that I formulated. Whatever PNDP may allow as special cases of
persons, it is clear there that PNDP usage of the term applies mostly to
persons who became persons by interacting with other persons. Because there are
some different person concepts, I decided not to restrict the term person to
the PNDP person concept. Instead, I tried to formulate a version of a person
concept that would also include as persons those individuals that would be
included by any other widely used person concept.
Nascent Persons: I
included as persons those who might be expected to acquire a dramaturgical history
of optional action. An earlier version referred to them as ‘potential persons’.
However this term has the connotation of not being a person, and given the
attitudes of many people, I decided to use the term ‘nascent person’ instead.
The term ‘maturing person’ indicates those who are in the process of acquiring
a noteworthy history of optional action in a dramaturgical pattern. A
fertilized egg that is to be discarded is not likely to acquire a history of
optional action in this life, but many believe that it will in another life.
Whether this is so, is a paraceptual matter about which there is considerable
disagreement. However, in a public net, concepts should not depend on
paraceptual consensus. Terminology in a public net should bring paraceptual concerns
into focus rather than obscuring them. In general, a number of paraceptual
concerns could be more easily understood if concepts are clearly formulated.
Appendix 2 indicates some of the paraceptual concerns about persons that I find
of interest and how I would bring them into focus.
In saying that there are different person concepts, this
only means that the term ‘person’ is used for more than one concept, somewhat
like the term ‘bat’ is used for more than one concept. However, in using ‘bat’
for both an inanimate object and a flying animal, context indicates which is
being used. On the other hand, when people use the term person, it may not be
apparent when they are using different concepts. In fact, this may often be the
case in disputes about abortion. Moreover, someone may even unknowingly use the
term person for different concepts, an unlikely event when using the term bat.
There may even be a dispute about what a person really is; as if a paraceptual
matter was at issue. In fact, a heated dispute over the use of the locution
‘person’ is likely to be a paraceptual dispute about cosmic versions. I want
terminology that does not confound conceptual and paraceptual concerns.
Moreover as indicated earlier, I also want terminology that takes account of
the sensibilities of any community who might use it.
Humans: The
person concept in this paper only has a behavioral component. The concept of
human also has the biological component of being a member of the Homo sapiens
species. A variety of behavioral persons who are not human can at least be
imagined. Some biological ones include androids, some extra-terrestrials,
Mickey Mouse, leprechauns, etc. Non-biological one would include some very
sophisticated robots. Supernatural beings, such as angels or pagan gods, would
be classified as non-human persons. Altho cosmic beliefs and related attitudes
might make some people hesitate in referring to some of these as persons,
referring to an individual as a behavioral person does not mean that it must
have the same status as a human. Nor does having a concept for a type of
non-human persons entail any paraceptual existential claims. Thinking of some
of these as fictitious persons seems to be acceptable to most people. For those
who would deny the possibility of some type of non-human persons, the concept
of a certain type of non-human person could be useful for understanding those
would assert the possibility. The utility of extending a behavioral person
concept to non-humans is further developed in Appendix 2.
Altho I did not limit the term ‘person’ to the social
practice PNDP person concept, I did take this concept as the paradigm case in
my formulation. This seemed appropriate because it is this concept that we
mostly act on and which permeates our interactions with humans. However, I did
not want to limit the term ‘person’ to those that meet the community parts of
the formulation. The reason is the same as not limiting the concept to humans.
First a monotheistic creator of the universe would not satisfy these conditions.
Moreover suppose we someday encounter an extra-terrestrials or create a robot
that satisfied the central feature but not the community feature of the person
concept. In interacting with such an individual it might be useful to regard it
more as a type of person than as a non-person.
A Biological Person
Concept: Any purely biological person concept is likely to exclude
supernatural beings, making it unsuitable for an inclusive public net.
Moreover, the Homo sapiens concept would seem already to provide all that a
non-behavioral biological concept would include.
Recognizing
Persons: There is one major advantage in taking a version of a behavioral
person concept as the one to be use in our routine public net. We interact with
persons. In doing so, we usually implicitly regard others as persons by what
they do. So a behavioral person concept can be easily understood by any person.
It is also indicative of how we would think about what to expect in interacting
with non-humans who engaged in optional action in a dramaturgical pattern.
Note: As a
prelude to a discussion of person-like behavior I need to indicate some
concepts that involve having concepts and of knowing.
Having Concepts: Altho
concepts may seem dependent on language, this may be primarily due to the way
we discuss-analyze-formulate them. This is not how we usually acquire concepts.
They are mainly acquired thru usage other than discussion and analysis, and we
recognize that P has a concept when P can act on it. If P routinely stops on
red then saying that P has a traffic light concept seems reasonable. P may
understand the concept of a traffic light without knowing what it is called,
altho because language plays such a major role in our lives, some term for it
is likely to be known by P. Moreover, if
P calls it a traffic light but never stops on red we may reasonable doubt that
P has the concept of traffic light. Having locutions for concepts is useful for
many reasons. This allows us to bring concepts into focus, make implicit
concepts more explicit, refine concepts, relate them to other concepts,
recognize nuances, see new distinctions, appreciate further applications, and
of course especially to communicate using them.
In many cases, it is an oversimplification to think of an
individual as either mastering or not mastering a specific concept. If a normal
person P also routinely stops on green to check for cross traffic then P
probably has a limited mastery of the concept of a traffic light or an unusual
history involving them. There are various parameters that can be used to think
about mastering a concept. These are developed in CPCS Concept Parameters.
The integration parameter indicates the understanding an individual has of the
relationship that a concept has to other concepts. This is extremely important
for developing a deeper mastery of our crucial concepts, since they permeate
our thinking. To say that they are crucial only means that some version of them
is essential for the net that includes all of that person’s nets. It does not
mean that all of their relationships must be understood. For a deeper mastery
of the person concept and the related concepts of optional action, I consider
the concepts of knowing.
Knowing: The
optional action concept depends on what it means to know. I often say that our
dog
Just as I conceptualized having a concept in terms of acting
on it, I conceptualize knowing in terms of behavior potential. An individual
knows X if it can successfully integrate X into its actions. For someone giving
a behavior description, this means that this is a value of the know-parameter
that could be appropriately given by a describer. Behavior potential includes,
but goes beyond, the potential to act linguistically. Language plays an
important role by bringing knowledge into focus, especially by allowing us to
reflect on and communicate about what we know. With a broader concept of
knowing, knowledge may or may not involve the ability to use language.
Altho
Charmayne once said that Caleb heard the vacuum cleaner in
the other room and knew that it was Jennifer. Caleb was nine months old and
clearly could not articulate this. It was by his reaction that Charmayne knew
that Caleb knew, and she did not hesitate to say that he knew. We also tend to
use ‘know’ for nonverbal information of adults. When P claims to know the way
home, we do not normally expect P to formulate what P knows linguistically. In
fact, most information about the way home is likely to be more pictorial than
verbal. Not only does such pictorial knowledge go beyond propositional
knowledge, much of our other informational knowledge also does. What a person
knows about some realm of interest can be termed realm knowledge. Even for a
minor realm, a person’s realm knowledge may go far beyond propositional
knowledge. Ask a basketball player to tell you everything he knows about the
limited realm of last night’s game. Much of what he knows will be left unsaid.
Example: Walking
home and thinking about language and informational knowledge, I asked myself
what knowledge I had about what I had just encountered but was now behind me. I
imagined various things and turned around to check. One very specific state of
affairs that I recalled was there being more than 5 rental trucks on my left.
Altho I formulated this linguistically, the essence of what I knew was not
verbal. I examined an image in order to verbalize it. Even the numerical
content was recalled before I verbalized it. I turned to count and saw 9
trucks, something I did not already know. Furthermore, altho my current account
sounds like propositional knowledge, this is merely a way to bring it into
focus.
My recall often involves sensory memory, especially for
much of my informational knowledge with visual components. This includes
knowledge about aspects of the world that are not necessarily spatial. When I
think about knowing the proof of LaGrange’s Theorem the main thing I recall is
a picture, and I also recall a picture when I think about knowing a proof of
the Quadratic Reciprocity Theorem. We also imagine temporal relationships
visually. We lay our life out as if it was a line, and thinking that I did X
before Y often involves (metaphorically) seeing myself at an earlier point on
that line. I know that I lived in Marissa before I lived in Glenville. I may
formulate this as a proposition, but it is a part of my basic reliable
knowledge that I recall by seeing a variety of events in my life history. The
event of falling from the pecan tree in Glenville is something I recall as an
image and a sensation.
Person-Like
Behavior: Altho our dog knows that he can get out and that he can stay in
when the gate is open, I cannot tell if he knows of this as an option. Even if
he does, I would not classify him as a person or even as a semi-person. At
most, optional action seems to be a small part of what he does. It may be that
what seems to be optional action in animals is merely intentional with conflicting
intent, i.e. perhaps they are drawn towards alternatives without being aware of
having options. Where this seems least plausible to me is in certain problem
solving situations. One such is the account of the chimpanzee Sultan solving
the problem of getting the banana by combining two sticks. Another is the
account of problem solutions in the study of the raven behavior in the April
2007 Scientific American. It is how the solution seemed to occur, rather than
the form it took, that gives the appearance of optional action.
The term quasi-person may suggest that occasionally
engaging in optional action makes an individual more like a person than might
be warranted. On the other hand, it does suggest a way in which some animals
may be more like persons than are other non-persons and that some person-like
characteristics are fairly widespread. This term is used, not so much as an
attribute for classification, but as a way of indicating a current operational
perspective. Thus referring to a raven as a quasi-person would be done only
when this might be a useful way of thinking about it for the purposes at hand.
However even if optional action is more than an occasional occurrence for some
animals, we do not have any currently existing clear-cut examples of semi-persons.
Nor do we do we have clear evidence that they existed in the past, altho
perhaps they were precursors to the emergence of persons.
There are two main reasons that I am interested in having
concepts for person-like behavior in individuals who are not behavioral
persons. Both relate to the fact that humans are the only widely acknowledged
examples of behavioral persons. My interest in the semi-person concept relates
the question of the origin of behavioral persons. Did semi-persons exist only
in the past as precursors to persons or did the emergence of persons occur
without any such precursors? My interest in the quasi-person concept relates to
the question of the possible existence of persons who are unlike humans in the
sense that they are personoids. If some asocio-animals are quasi-persons, could
evolution have given rise to personoids?
Quasi-Persons: If
domestic dogs have learned to be quasi-persons then perhaps it is because of
their association with humans. If wild dogs are quasi-persons, perhaps this is
because optional action is necessary for the social way they hunt. Candidates
for semi-persons in the animal world include dolphins and some of the great
apes, altho they are not clear-cut examples. However in each of these cases any
abilities to engage in optional actions may only emerge via interaction with
other persons. After all, the ability to engage in optional action could be an
advantage to dealing with the complexities of being in a social group.
The concept of an asocio-quasi-person might be useful for
someone interested in whether personoids could exist. If there are asocial
species that engage in optional action, perhaps such a species could at least
evolve into a species of asocio-semi-persons. Beyond that they would need to
develop syntactic language to become personoids. That this could happen seems
at least barely plausible to me. To consider this, it might be useful to think
about how community relates to their acquisition of the ability to engage in
optional action. Drawing paraceptual conclusions would demand research I do not
have the ability or inclination to conduct. The utility of such research may be
somewhat remote, but it might provide some additional perspectives on optional
action and intentional action in the realm of biology. What I said about
quasi-persons is merely suggestive of how to use concepts to think about some
ordinary matters that might be of interest to people who are fascinated by
animals. However we need not restrict ourselves to thinking about animals. Is being
biological even necessary for being either alive or being an
asocio-quasi-person? Perhaps a robot could be made that was one.
The ability to know options would also seem to have some
utility for any animal capable of learning, and there is no conceptual reason
to consider optional action as impossible for asocial animals. In fact, the
behavior of some solitary predators might at least appear to involve some
optional actions. Perhaps all solitary animals with the capacity to learn also
have the capacity to develop the ability to know options and thus to be
asocio-quasi-persons. If so, could a private language emerge in an asocial
animal species thru biological evolution via a process of natural selection?
Could a genetic code be such that a private language would emerge with
maturation, or even immediately after birth? This is clearly not the case with
humans who must learn language via interaction with other persons.
Semi-Persons: I
must admit that I have a liking for the term ‘semi-person’ and using it for
classification purposes. This is largely due to my fascination with the work of
Julian Jaynes. I also wonder about whether Adam and Eve might not be classified
as semi-person before eating the forbidden fruit. This is obviously would not
be endorsed by people who takes the story literally and believe that God
created them as persons. For someone who treats this story as either a myth or
a parable a different perspective might be taken, since without the knowledge
of good and evil it would seem difficult to be subjectively conscious. They did
not even know that they were naked. Jaynes might consider the story of the
Garden of Eden to be about a longed for bicameral past when choice was not so
problematic.
Altho a semi-person has a noteworthy history of optional
action, what disqualifies a semi-person from being a person is its inability to
see this history as a dramaturgical pattern. The concept of acting in a
dramaturgical pattern does not merely involve someone else seeing an
individual’s history that way. It is conceptualized as something understood by
the actor and whose aspect the actor could articulate. The dramaturgical
pattern is a major aspect of the person concept. Without a language that could
be used for mature narratization, having a history of action that is seen to be
in a dramaturgical pattern would not be conceptually possible. Thus the
emergence of behavioral persons was either preceded by or concurrent with the
emergence of syntactic language. Nor is the mere existence of syntactic language
sufficient. The ability to conceptualize oneself as an actor in an ongoing
drama is also needed. This entails being able to take both the observer and
critic roles as conceptualized in PNDP. All of this is what is involved in
mature narrative usage of language and in being subjectively conscious.
In addition to the dramaturgical
pattern feature, being a person involves knowing the distinction between
persons and non-persons. As indicated earlier, this involves more than having a
noteworthy history of optional action. It might even seem to involve more than
seeing ones life in a dramaturgical pattern. However I interpret being
subjectively conscious as being able to act effectively on this distinction
within an individual’s mind-space, for otherwise the ability to narrate as a
critic and observer would be too severely limited. Thus I am taking the ability
to make the distinction between persons and non-persons as part of a way to
indicate what it means to act in a dramaturgical pattern, rather than as something
beyond this feature.
Since I find reincarnation at most
barely plausible, I find it highly plausible that new persons emerge. Of
course, becoming a person in a world of persons does not seem problematic, or
at least not as much as the emergence of a person in a world devoid of persons.
This was what primarily motivated me to formulate the concept of a semi-person.
To consider the origins of persons, we might conjecture that the emergence of
persons was preceded by the emergence of individuals who had some of the
features of persons, altho special creation seems to be the explanation that
many people find satisfactory. Of course, having concepts does not provide the
paraceptual information that would be needed to settle any questions about the
origins of persons. However, it might suggest some conjectures to investigate
and ways to formulate them. It can also be useful in bringing paraceptual
differences into focus, such as those between creationists and evolutionists.
Appendix 1 expands upon the question
of the emergence of behavioral persons. It is intended to be neutral with
respect to any paraceptual claims, altho it was influenced by the work of
Julian Jaynes. Altho his theory is unlikely to seem plausible to a creationist,
he does raise some of the problems that origin of persons might raise for
someone who wants give an evolutionary account of how this happened. Appendix 1
may be too brief to bring this into focus. My paper CPCS Comprehensive Paradigm Shifts also may be relevant, altho it
does not use the semi-person concept.
Main Points:
The focus on this paper is on paradigm case formulation of a behavioral person
concept, along with some expansive transformations to give some concepts for
thinking about some types of person-like individuals. The main points of the
paper are given below.
¨
The feature shared by all behavioral persons is
to be an individual having or likely to have a history in which optional action
in a dramaturgical pattern is ubiquitous. A behavioral person has also
sufficiently mastered the concept of a person to distinguish between persons
and non-persons. This is so even if this person has never encountered another
person.
¨
The concept of a dramaturgical pattern can be briefly
characterized in terms of the concept of subjective consciousness formulated by
Julian Jaynes.
¨
The concept of optional action provides a way of
thinking about actions having the features of deliberate action regardless of
whether or not they involve engaging in social practices.
¨
Some socialization features are give given for
the paradigm case along with transformations to allow for a more inclusive
behavioral person concept that includes personoids.
¨
A behavioral person concept is suitable for an
inclusive routine public net for thinking about what persons do. Neither a
primarily religious nor a purely biological person concept is suitable for such
a net, if the term ‘person’ is to be used in a way that takes account of
different sensibilities.
¨
The concept of a quasi-person is a tool for
thinking about occasional deliberate or optional action in the realm of animal
behavior.
¨
The concept of a semi-person is a tool for
thinking about the origins of individuals who would satisfy the central feature
of the behavioral person concept. In particular, this concept can be used to
think about the work of Julian Jaynes.
APPENDIX 1 THE ORIGIN OF BEHAVIORAL PERSONS
Anyone believing in special
creation might merely say that all that is involved in the emergence of persons
occurred in the act of the creator. Anyone believing that we might some day
design artificial persons should find special creation at least barely
plausible. For a creationist, the concept of a semi-person might have minimal
utility, perhaps only for saying that God did not create any semi-persons and
to challenge anyone to show that there ever were any semi-persons. Anyone who
finds a gradual emergence of persons plausible should be able to see that the
semi-person concept could be used for thinking about how person-like
individuals may have preceded persons. My knowledge of established empirical
results relating to all of this is perfunctory. In spite of this, I will
formulate a number of offhand remarks to indicate the type of paraceptual information
I would like to have. Some of these were motivated by Jaynes’ theory about the
origins of consciousness.
Perhaps any individuals that could
engage in optional action could also be able to live a life with a noteworthy
history of optional action that it sees as part of a dramaturgical pattern.
However I find it more plausible that that at some point individuals having the
ability to engage in optional action would have emerged merely as semi-persons.
If the emergence of persons was
gradual and was preceded by the emergence of semi‑persons then the first
of these on our planet may have been members of some hominid species. This
raises the question of how much optional action is likely to occur without
syntactic language. For instance, can one have a noteworthy history of optional
action without being able to articulate the options involved as intentional act
rather than merely as performances? Clearly, we proceed thru episodes without
much thought about the multitude of choices we might have selected, but it is
hard for us to imagine that we could not describe an alternative to anything we
did. Altho you may have taken many steps without considering pausing in order
to rest, you can look back and imagine resting after any one of these steps.
Without syntactic language such a recollection hardly seems possible. However,
it is the ability to reflect on options that demands mature narrative language,
rather than the actions themselves. It seems at least somewhat plausible that
if some optional actions occur without using language, then perhaps a history
of optional action could also occur without using language. Of course using
language would seem to be a major help in developing such a history, as well as
conceptually necessary for it being in a dramaturgical pattern. This is why it
might be correct to classify most hominids as semi-persons rather than as
persons.
Jaynes explicitly claims that
subjective consciousness comes after mature narrative language. This is not a
paraceptual claim. Using the concept of subjective consciousness, it is merely
an important conceptual observation. It raises the question of whether there
even may have been cultures of Homo sapiens whose members would not be
classified as persons. For whether or not having a history of optional action
in a dramaturgical pattern is equivalent to being subjectively conscious, they
are closely related and both depend on a mature narrative usage of language. Of
course, this conceptual observation cannot settle any paraceptual claims. I
find it useful because it helps bring paraceptual claims and questions into
focus. Specifically, did the emergence of a syntactic language occur over
millenniums or did it evolve quickly or was it given by a special act of
creation? Furthermore, the mere existence of syntactic language is not
conceptually sufficient for subjective consciousness. Mature narrative usage is
also necessary if an individual is to have the ability to conceptualize itself
as an actor in an ongoing drama. This entails being able to take both the roles
of observer and critic. Did the development of syntactic language depend on its
being used for basic narrative purposes? Did it develop without being used for
mature narrative purposes? It is clear how Jaynes would answer this last
question, and that he would claim that early Homo sapiens were not persons in
the PNDP or in my sense of this term.
Not only would Jaynes claim that
early Homo sapiens were semi-persons rather than persons, he makes what I found
on my first reading an extravagant claim that mature bicameral civilizations
existed for centuries prior to the emergence of subjective consciousness.
Whatever plausibility attitude you take towards Jaynes’ theory about the origin
of consciousness, if you are interested in the origin of persons, I recommend
reading his book with the attitude that his theory is at least barely
plausible. Anyone who finds this of interest might also be interested in the
website (www.julianjaynes.org)
of the Julian Jaynes Society. As far as I know, his theory of the origin of
subjective consciousness is the only one that has been worked out in a high
level of detail. Understanding his position could be useful in formulating a
detailed alternative, and especially in formulating one in which evolution
produced Homo sapiens as a subjectively conscious species. I am not going to
discuss what Jaynes has said. My attempts to explain his work have always left
me dissatisfied. His theory does not lend itself to a brief presentation, and
even after reading his book several times my perspective seems inadequate.
Instead, I will indicate some of the questions his book has raised for me.
According to Jaynes, the immediate
predecessors to subjectively conscious individuals were bicameral ones. What
they were like is introduced in the chapter entitled Mind of the Iliad. I take this (and further descriptions) as a
conceptualization. Altho Jaynes claims that the men in the Iliad were
bicameral, his conceptualization does not depend on his paraceptual claims.
Whether or not there were complex bicameral civilizations, as Jaynes tries to
demonstrate, the concept of a bicameral man qualifies at least as a
semi-person. Perhaps bicameral men might even qualify as the most sophisticated
semi-persons that have been seriously conceptualized. On the other hand, they
might be nascent persons who are likely to acquire a history of optional action
in a dramaturgical pattern in some afterlife. Altho a bicameral man is not
subjectively conscious, he can engage in complex social practices that may
involve optional action. He fails to be subjectively conscious because he does
not do so in a dramaturgical manner. His recognition of options and the extent
to which optional action is a ubiquitous part of his history has a different
basis. Since he uses a wide variety of established choice principles that allow
for optional action in most ordinary manners, optional action is seldom a
problem that calls for a mature narrative use of language. This is also the
case with much of what persons do, since we also usually select options without
narrating a fictional account of an analog-I making choices and imagining
consequences in our mind-space. Narratization is mostly used in situations that
are more problematic. This is not available to bicameral man. Instead, his
choice is made by following the dictate of a voice that, with the stored-up
admonitory wisdom of his life, tells him non-consciously what to do (Jaynes
p85).
Even when I found Jaynes’ theory only slightly plausible,
it suggested interesting possibilities and questions. Was the emergence of
subjective consciousness as recent as about 3000 years ago? Did it not emerge
in the
APPENDIX 2 BRINGING
SOME PARACEPTUAL CONCERNS INTO FOCUS
Terminology: In
this appendix, the term ‘person’ is used for the concept of a behavioral
person, including nascent behavioral persons. The term ‘eternal individual’ is
used for concept of an individual (person or otherwise) whose existence is not
bound to terminate. The adjective ‘eternal’ is used in the potential rather
than the actual sense, i.e. an eternal person need not be indestructible but is
also not limited in such a way that its existence must terminate. Most
traditional monotheists believe that God is an eternal person who is
indestructible.
Ontological Claims
about Eternal Persons: Differences in existential commitment and related
ontological disagreement are pronounced and strongly held. The propositions or
conjectures that could be imagined and the attitudes towards their verification
vary extensively. Altho this can be understood without the concept of an
eternal person, I find it useful to use the eternal person concept to bring
these matters concisely into focus. Moreover using a concept involves no
ontological commitments. Since strong paraceptual beliefs are involved, using
the concept of an eternal person may be of minimal use in resolving the
disagreement. In general, most people consider beliefs on such matters that
differ from their own as false. Moreover these beliefs (altho paraceptual) are
non-empirical in the sense that there is no agreed upon systematic methods for
investigating them.
The first seven propositions below have been held by a
noteworthy number of people, with the parenthetical addendum indicating one of
the communities that I think had or has a belief like the one indicated. Some
others are also given, including some that most people have not considered and
would find even more fantastic than the commonly held beliefs. However, they at
least suggest that much more can be imagined than the beliefs commonly held.
Even more could have been imagined.
Prop 1: There are no eternal persons. (Physicalist)
Prop 2: All humans are eternal persons. (Christian)
Prop 3: God is the only eternal person. (Sadducees)
Prop 4: In addition to eternal persons, there are eternal
quasi-persons and other eternal individuals who are not yet persons. (Hindu)
Prop 5: Humans are eternal persons, but a person’s soul is
destroyed if his body is not preserved. (Ancient Egyptian)
Prop 6: Only those who accept Jesus as their personal
redeemer are eternal persons. Those who do not accept him merely perish at
death, i.e. go out of existence. (Merciful Christian)
Prop 7: The only humans that are eternal persons are male.
(Extreme Male Chauvinist)
Prop 8 Humans do not become eternal persons until they are
accepted into the community.(Ancient Eskimo)
Prop 9: A cloned human cannot be an eternal person.
Prop 10: It may be possible to create a robot that is an
eternal person.
Prop 11 A human is an eternal person if and only if its
parents are married in the sight of God.
Prop 12 Humans do not become eternal persons until they
are born.
Prop 13 Humans do not become eternal persons until they
become subjectively conscious.
Prop 14 Becoming an eternal person is a matter of
competence, which some humans obtain but others do not.
Social Practices
and Choice Principles: In addition to ontological beliefs, there are
consensus considerations that need to be examined about desirable social
practices and choice principles. Resolution of such matters may or may not
depend on any propositions about eternal persons.
Humans and Status
Issues: The PNDP concept of status is conceptualized broadly. Status
involves having a place that carries with it some eligibility considerations.
The status of being a child’s parent normally makes the parent eligible to
determine that child’s bedtime. To have a status is to be assigned that status
and to thus have associated eligibilities. To understand any status concept, we
must identify how it is assigned. A status such as best friend can be assigned
informally by a single person without any explicit criteria. It can be revoked
in a similar manner. A status such as registered voter is assigned with a
specific action by a political community and is based on explicit criteria. The
status of baseball player is assigned informally on the basis of consensus
about what the status entails among those for whom that status has sufficient
relevance. The status movie star is assigned by informal consensus without any
specific criteria being articulated or even implicitly agreed upon. This can be
clear enough for most purposes, but there will be borderline cases.
A person’s characteristics and actions relate to having a
various statuses, but more is often involved. In particular, status is often
assigned either explicitly or implicitly. For instance, being your friend may
be influenced by a person’s characteristics and actions, but being your friend
is status that only you can assign. Moreover you can continue calling a person
your friends if his actions and characteristics change, altho there are some
changes that might make you reassess this status assignment.
Many statuses are community statuses in the sense that
they indicate a place in relation to other persons and eligibility in regard to
the institutions and social practices of other persons. Eligibility may include
more than having options for engaging in various forms of action. For instance,
having the status of a person’s spouse may protect you from being forced to
testify against your spouse. Other persons may be small, such as a nuclear
family. Having some of its most noteworthy statuses, such as parent and child,
are largely determined by biological factors, but as in the social practice of
adoption, these statuses can be assigned. Moreover the eligibilities that
accompany them vary considerably and are influenced both by the family and the
broader communities to which the family belongs. In addition there may be a
number of other statuses that have various eligibilities. For instance, a child
who is considered as highly responsible may have a number of options that
another child might not have.
Some people regard themselves and all other humans as
members of a broad community, which they call the human community. This not
universal, altho there is a growing trend to think this way. Clearly, even in
the contemporary world, some people have not thought of themselves in this
manner. For the purposes of this discussion I will use a concept that allows
humanity to be classified as a community. For the PNDP community concept, see
Putnam (1981). The most basic status in a community is that of being a member.
The concern over when human life begins and ends indicates that there is some
lack of consensus on membership in the human community. Altho this may seem to
involve paraceptual considerations it can be regarded as a status issue. In
fact it is hard to see what information is relevant to a question about when
human life actually begins or ends.
The most fundamental eligibility that membership in the
human involves is being treated as a human. Altho there is not universal
agreement on what this entails, it clearly makes a difference. The fact that
there is anything like a cohesive human community is fairly recent state of
affairs. Moreover, even now many humans do not think in terms of such other
persons. Otherwise it seems unlikely that slavery and genocide would still be a
major problem. Nor would there be a great need for organizations like Human
Rights Watch. Being a member of the human community would entitle an individual
to many of those rights in the eyes of anyone who considered themselves as
members of that community.
Before turning to specific status issues about membership
in the human community, we might consider the relevance of biological
information. Prior to cloning possibilities, the relevant biological facts seem
straightforward. We have clear-cut criteria for when an egg is fertilized, when
it first divides, when a child is born, and multitude of other biological
conditions. Likewise relevant criteria for facts about cloning could be
formulated. Which of these we call the beginning of human life is a matter of
concepts and locutions, altho these could influence status considerations. I
think that the most useful criteria for the beginning of a new biological
individual (except in the case of cloning) would be when the egg is fertilized
or when a fertilized egg is implanted in a womb. Which I would favor depends on
human consensus, and I would recommend using this locution in a way that would
be sensitive to as many humans as is practical. Biological criteria relevant in
the case of cloning should not be that difficult to specify. Criteria for when
a biological individual ceases may be less clear-cut.
Altho more could be said about the relevance of biological
information, for most people the important paraceptual considerations are about
the beginning or end of a biological individual. Their use of ‘human life’ is not primarily biological. It
involves beliefs about eternal persons and related value concerns. Some people
are likely to think about when God infuses a soul and when the soul departs
from the body for the afterlife. To put this into focus, consider a discussion
between Pamela and Cathy. They are both students in Jo’s conceptual studies seminar,
where Jo introduced them to the concepts in this present paper
Jo: Pamela is a
physicalist holds Prop 1. Cathy is a Christian who holds Prop 2. Both take
closely related versions of the golden rule as their basic ethical principle.
Both also agree with the principles in the universal declaration of human
rights and many other issues regarding social practices that relate to the
status of humans. It is unclear to me to what extent you disagree about
paraceptual matters or about values. For the sake of clarity, I want to avoid
using the concept of a soul, which seems to involve some immaterial entity.
Cathy feels that this concept is perfectly clear, but Pamela thinks the concept
is basically incoherent. On the other hand, altho you disagree about the existence
of eternal persons, will you at least try to use the same concept. Perhaps you
can each state the crux of your disagreement.
Cathy: Altho I
think of an eternal person as having an immortal soul, this is not relevant to
when human life begins. Human life begins at a conception because that is when
God creates an eternal person, regardless of what the underlying support might
be.
Pamela: If
human life begins with the creation of an eternal person then it could never
begin, because there are no eternal persons. I think human life begins at birth
because that is when the baby begins to engage in intentional action. Before
then its activity is unintentional.
Cathy: This is
why we are at an impasse. I agree that a baby engages is intentional action
after birth, but how do we know that it does not do so before birth. Moreover
this is irrelevant. If Pamela does not believe in eternal persons then she does
not have any way to determine when human life begins.
Pamela: I might
be wrong about activity in the womb not being intentional, but a fertilized egg
cannot engage in intentional action. Perhaps human life begins earlier than
birth, but it certainly does not begin at conception.
Jo: Your
disagreement about eternal persons is a paraceptual matter, but I think your
impasse over when human life begins is about a locution. It is apparent that
you are using ‘human life’ for different concepts. However I am unclear about
the concepts you are using. I think we can find a way to use this locution for
the same concept, but first I want to consider some paraceptual matters. How
would we know at what point God creates an eternal person or even what legal
status he wants it to have? A scripture passage that I have heard quoted refers
to God knowing someone in his mother’s womb. Perhaps an eternal person is
created, not when an egg is fertilized, but when it is implanted in a womb.
Pamela: There
are some people who believe in eternal person who have taken this position.
According to them discarding an in vitro fertilized egg would not involve
destroying a human life. So would use of the morning after pill.
Cathy: Altho I
would prefer to say that most Christians believe that human life begins when an
egg is fertilized, I will just say that they believe an eternal person begins
when an egg is fertilized. This is the position of my church. I am sure that
this is the correct scriptural position.
Jo: It is
apparent that there are some paraceptual differences over when an eternal
person comes into existence. Believers in reincarnation might even claim that
it is prior to conception. Moreover, there is no widely agreed upon method for
investigating such claims. Yet all are willing to say that human life exists.
Since you are both still talking about human life, perhaps we could see if we
could find a way to use this locution for the same concept. Conceptualizing
human life in terms of eternal persons is not suitable for a shared net. Nor do
I think that conceptualizing human life in terms of the ability to engage in
intentional action would be suitable. I suspect that Cathy would agree that a
fertilized egg couldn’t engage in intentional action. However, even if she is
open to a concept of human life that does not involve the concept of an eternal
person, I doubt that an intentional action concept would satisfy her.
Pamela: I
hadn’t thought about the what I meant by human life, but I implicitly regarded
it as entailing intentional action by a genetically human organism. Perhaps my
intentional action criterion is too narrow. This not the way we commonly use
the term ‘life’. Biologically, a single cell is alive, altho nobody calls a
single human skin cell a human life. It is not a viable organism. Using the
term ‘nascent person’ for someone who had not yet acquired a history of optional
action did not bother me. Nor did using the term ‘human’ for a person who is a
member of the Homo sapiens species bother me. So I guess I would be comfortable
with using the term ‘human life’ to include any genetically viable human
organism.
Cathy: That
come close to what I could call a human life, depending on what you mean by a
viable organism. I hope this means that you would consider a fertilized egg as
a viable organism.
Pamela: A
fertilized is certainly a viable organism in the sense that it can grow into a
human within a womb. So we have a concept of a human life that we can both use
to consider a fertilized egg as a human life, at least when it is implanted in
a womb.
Jo: Altho you
may not have a shared concept of a human life that applies to some borderline
cases, such as a human clone, with some effort we could probably formulate one.
Instead let us turn to what may be more significant, namely values and status
issues. Conceptualizing a human life as including fertilized human eggs
(including in vitro ones) settles some but not all status issues. It makes it
eligible for considerations that the fertilized egg of a mouse does not have.
It does not currently make it eligible to the same legal protections as an
infant. Nor does the status human life automatically endow one with membership
in the human community.
Cathy: If the
human community includes all humans why would it not automatically include all
human life?
Pamela: We may be
using the word ‘human’ in different ways. In many contexts the word is used as
an adjective; such as human heart, human cell, human rights, etc. None of these
are members of the human community. When I use ‘human’ as a noun I am thinking
of a human being. I was willing to call a fertilized egg a human life, but I do
not think of it as a human being.
Cathy: I know
that you think of a newborn infant as a human being. Was it not a human being
just before it was born?
Pamela: I admit
that saying a human life becomes a human being when it is born may seem
arbitrary, but calling a fertilized egg a human being just sounds strange to
me. I find birth the natural place to include a person as a member of the human
community.
Jo: Again I want
us to avoid problems with locutions and focus the more significant value and
status issues. For the sake of our discussion let us include fertilized human
eggs as members of the human community. Members within this (or any other)
community can have a variety of statuses other than membership. Suppose we
restrict the term ‘a human being’ to members after birth. This is an additional
status, with some different eligibilities. Adult human is another status. Etc.
Cathy: I like
this way of thinking about the human community. I do not like the way you want
us to use ‘human being’, but for the purposes of this discussion I will use it
as you have suggested. Clearly a human being and a fertilized egg are different
statuses. You use the term ‘eligibility’ broadly to include eligibilities that
are undesirable. Currently a fertilized is legally eligible for being
discarded, but a human being is not. This is one the main things I object to.
Even if we do not call a fertilized egg a human being, it is a human life, and
it should not be eligible for being discarded.
Pamela: Even if
we extended the concept of a human being to include a fertilized egg, I would
not give a fertilized egg the same legal status as a born human being. Moreover
not all human lives has the same statuses. Being born of non-citizens in the
Jo: I think you
are getting close to core of these value differences. I think that you can see
these values they are linked to paraceptual claims about eternal persons or
other matters. Can you also see that it is possible for two people to agree on
all such claims and still have different values?
Pamela: I give
a fertilized egg that is implanted in a womb a different status than an in
vitro fertilized egg. In particular, since it is more likely to become a human
being, I would make it illegal for its mother to smoke during pregnancy. I have
a friend who would not restrict a pregnant woman’s eligibility in this manner.
We seem to agree on the potential harm of smoking and other relevant
paraceptual matters, but we still disagree about eligibilities for the statuses
involved.
Cathy: I
recognize that a fertilized egg that is implanted in a womb has a different
status than an in vitro fertilized egg. Since I believe each is an eternal
person, I do not think either should be eligible for being discarded. I believe
that in vitro fertilization goes against God’s Will. My friend Bill disagrees,
but primarily for paraceptual reasons. He does not think an in vitro egg is an
eternal person.
Jo: Altho most
theists believe that eternal persons are created by God, there is some
disagreement among them as to when this happens. The propositions above
indicate other possibilities for when and how an eternal person might emerge. I
want both Cathy and Pamela to assume a fertilized egg became an eternal person
upon being implanted in a womb. Would you then agree on it eligibilities?
Pamela: Believing
this assumption would not change the
eligibilities I would assign to the status of an implanted fertilized egg. I
would definitely not give it the same legal protection as a human being. A
nascent eternal person is still a nascent person. It does not yet have a
noteworthy history of optional action in a dramaturgical pattern. It does not
yet have much of a vested interest in this world. Its mother does have such an
interest and her behavior potential takes a priority of a nascent person’s.
Cathy: I would
still want to discourage in vitro fertilization, but I would find it less
objectionable. I would give an implanted egg the same legal status as a human
being. Its vested interest in this world does not lessen its value. The behavior
potential of a nascent person is at least as important as that of a mature
person. In fact, being unable to assert its eligibilities it may need more
protection.
Jo: Altho I
think your status disagreement are at least as much about values as about
paraceptual matters, we have only made a start at bring either into focus.
Moreover bringing them into focus is unlikely to move the two of you close to
consensus. Nor have we considered a variety of other perspectives on these
matters. Still I hope that you both have found what we have done useful.
Perhaps later we can further explore this in more depth. In particular, I
recommend the paper CPCS Plausibility
Concept as a way of coming closer togete4ron paraceptual matters. I am not
sure what might help in regard to values, other than an understanding of why
you have difference and some thoughts about negotiating on policies an actions.
Activity:
Gilbert and Dilbert agree that all humans who are not cloned are eternal
persons but those who are cloned are not eternal persons. Gilbert advocates the policy of denying
citizenship and a multitude of other rights to cloned humans. Dilbert advocates
making their legal status the same as the status of any other human. Write a
conversation in which Jo helps them bring their differences into better focus.
APPENDIX 3 THE PNDP
PERSON CONCEPT
Deliberate Action:
The PNDP person concept is essentially what I have taken as the paradigm case,
and is thus is a special case of the one I am using. Unlike the behavioral person
concept that I use, the PNDP person concept involves the concept of deliberate
action. Ossorio (2006a) briefly characterizes deliberate action as intentional
action in which the actor knows what he is doing and is doing it on purpose.
This means that deliberate action is usually behavior in which the actor at
least implicitly knows two or more options for acting. Furthermore the
individual usually has varying degrees of wants in relation to these options.
This concept also includes having the competence to attempt these actions and
to distinguish between them. To use the deliberate action description, the
K-parameter would specify at least one option to what was done, even if only to
say that the actor considered not doing it. Furthermore the W-parameter would
indicate varying degrees of wants in relation to what was and was not done.
The PNDP Person
Concept:
A person has a history in which deliberate action in a
dramaturgical pattern is ubiquitous; where acting in a dramaturgical pattern
means that a person assigns objects and events into positions in a drama of
that person’s ongoing life. A person has sufficiently mastered a person concept
to distinguish between persons and non-persons, at least most of the time. A
person acquired the concept of a person by learning to act as a person in
interaction with other persons. Moreover, a person knows how to act as a person
in interaction with other persons.
As stated above Deliberate action would seem to be nothing
more than what I have called optional action. However (Ossorio 1998a, p14) add
a social condition on deliberate action which is not included in my concept of
optional action.
Maxim E5: To engage in a deliberate
action is to participate in a social practice of the community.
Ossorio say that social practices are teachable learnable,
do-able public forms of behavior usually involving more than one participant.
Social practices are what there is to “do”. If one wants to do anything one
selects from the things that are done, or else one invents a new form of
behavior and gets it accepted as one of the things there is to do. (Ossorio
1998a, Maxim E5 and comments)
Optional Action:
In order to specify some transformations in a paradigm case formulation of the
person concept, I used a concept of optional action that is less restrictive
than the PNDP deliberate action concept. Optional action merely involves having
knowledge and wants regarding at least two options when acting in a situation.
It does not require any relation to social practices and is thus applicable to
asocial individuals. Thus all deliberate action is optional action, but an
optional act would not necessarily be a deliberate act. Conceptually, an
individual might engage in optional action whether or not that that individual
had ever encountered another who could engage in optional action. It might
consider pausing to drink from the stream or to continue pressing on. It might
consider scratching an itch with a stick or by looking for a tree to rub
against. According to Maxim E5, the concept of deliberate action would seem to
involve more than this, altho the connection between deliberate action and
social practice depends on features of the social practice concept that I find
somewhat vague.
There are obvious cases of optional actions that do not
seem to involve participation in the social practices of any community. Some
asocial aliens in science fiction engage in optional actions that do not depend
on the social practices of any community. A creator of the universe, as
conceptualized in monotheistic religions, would be an example of an individual
who was thought of as having engaged in optional actions that were not forms of
the social practices of any community. The existence of such individuals is a
paraceptual matter, but regardless of existential concerns, there are reasons
to have concepts for thinking about them. In fact, some people may be more
interested in a broader concept that includes them than in one that does not.
The PNDP Person
Concept: For the most part Ossorio seems to be working from a pre-empirical
perspective that primarily involves developing concepts whose main applications
would be towards persons that are human, altho he definitely does not limit the
person concept to humans. It also includes any other individuals who interact
in ways that involve deliberate action. While I take the socialization features
as optional, PNDP seems to take them as essential, since he elsewhere adds the
feature below to the person concepts.
(1) What makes an individual a
person is, paradigmatically, to have mastered the person concept. This involves
learning to act as a person in interaction with other persons, which results in
knowing how to act as a person in interaction with other persons and results in
coming simply to be a person.
(Ossorio 1998a, p3)
(2) The primary function of the
concept of a person is to guide the behavior of one person with respect to
other persons. (Ossorio 1995, p 96 and various other places)
In (1) above, it would seem that being a person involves
both knowing the person concept and having acquired it in a special manner. The
acquisition part would not apply to the person concept as used with traditional
concepts of God. Since (1) is qualified by ‘paradigmatically’, perhaps this
allows a broad enough person concept to include God. I do not know to what
extent parts of (1) are indispensable components of the PNDP person concept.
The first sentence appears to be conceptual and indispensable. The second has a
paraceptual flavor, but perhaps it is also part of the conceptualization. This
is further complicated since the initial presentation of the concept of
deliberate action was independent of the concept of a social practice. All of
this could have been clarified had I been able to find a paradigm case
formulation of the PNDP person concept with allowable transformations. Ossorio
(2006b) seems to promise one, and what he says there makes it fairly clear what
would be involved in what he would use as a paradigm. However he does not
explicitly give a paradigm case formulation. In particular it is not clear what
the allowable transformations would be. One major purpose of this present paper
is to give such a formulation. This formulation used what I think is the
paradigm case that Ossorio had in mind. However it also includes allowable
transformations that will include individuals who would be classified as
persons by another widely used person concept. It is unclear to me whether this
would be acceptable to Ossorio, since it conceptually allows for persons who
did not become person by being socialized.
References: A
reader who wants more details PNDP concepts can consult the file entitled Concept Encyclopedia on the Descriptive
Psychology section of conceptualstudy.org.
For a comprehensive introduction to PNDP, see Shideler. For a deeper
perspective, see various books from the collected work of Peter Ossorio. The Behavior of Person covers all the
material in Shideler, but with nuances, she does not consider. More about PNDP
and its applications, are developed in the series Advances in Descriptive Psychology. These books can be ordered from
the Society for Descriptive Psychology website sdp.org.
Jaynes, Julian (1990) The
Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Ossorio, Peter (1981) Notes on Behavior Descriptions. In
K. Davis (Eds), Advances in Descriptive Psychology (Vol 1).
Ossorio, Peter (1995)
Persons. Volume I. The Collected Works of Peter G. Ossorio.
Ossorio, Peter (1998a) Place.
Volume III. The Collected Works of Peter G. Ossorio.
Ossorio, Peter (1998b) What there is, the way things are.
In J, Jeffrey & R. Bergner (Eds.), Advances
in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 7, PP
7-32).
Ossorio, Peter (2006a) The
Behavior of Persons. Volume V. The Collected Works of Peter G. Ossorio.
Ossorio, Peter (2006b) In A World of Persons and Their
Ways. In K. Davis & R. Bergner (Eds), Advances
in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 8).
Putnam, Anthony (1981) Communities. In K. Davis (Eds), Advances
in Descriptive Psychology (Vol. 1).
Shideler, Mary (1988) Persons,
Behavior, and the World.
Papers: This
present paper and my other papers prefixed with CPCS are on the conceptual papers section of my website. My email
address is richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net
all feedback is welcomed.