Personhood and the Importance of Philosophical Clarity

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This article refers to:

The End of Personhood

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Blumenthal-Barby’s account of moral status appears largely aligned with David DeGrazia’s as delineated in his Chapter “An Interest-Based Model of Moral Status” in the 2021 anthology Rethinking Moral Status (eds. Clarke, Zohny, and Savulescu).

2 Presumably, Blumenthal-Barby would endorse that if there were certainty that an individual is in a state of permanent unresponsive wakefulness, then this would suffice for inferring that they lack moral status. Similarly, on Blumenthal-Barby’s view, any instrumental reasons we might have for treating an individual who lacks moral status as though she has moral status would be trumped by the interests of individuals with moral status. For example, we might have reasons to use resources on an individual who lacks moral status because we have duties to that individual’s loved ones, but not if that use deprives an individual with moral status of essential resources. This follows from the normative role the concept of moral status plays.

3 Such implicatures might include that any entity not identified as a person should be completely disregarded. This is not entailed by the semantic content of ‘person’.

4 My sense is that this is not a common occurrence, but empirical evidence on this question would be helpful.

5 If one cannot endorse or defend the implications of one’s moral theory, then one ought to rethink one’s theory.

6 Indeed, perhaps even as offensive as the claim that such an individual is no longer a person.

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