Talk:Person/Archive 3

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Simplify lede

The current lede is

"The direct[citation needed] plural of "person" is "persons." The term people is the general[citation needed] plural of "person", and is used to refer to several persons plurally in a range from "a few people" up to "all people". "People" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group, and in this context "people" can be used as a singular to refer to specific ethnic or national groups (i.e. "a people"). While in common parlance "person" and "human" are effectively[citation needed] synonyms, specific fields such as philosophy, law, and others, use the term with specialised context-specific meanings."

"Direct plural" and "General" plural are not in the linked plural" article. What "people" is, is best left to the people article. It is WP:OR to declare what is "common parlance".

I propose this be simplified to

"The plural of "person" is "persons" or "people". The term "person" can have a technical useage in specialized fields such as law, philosophy, and psychology."

--

Fine with me as far as plurals go.

However what you claim is "original research" (person and human being effective synonyms) is anything but. It is in fact what any English speaker could not fail to know, the kind of information that is often included in Encyclopedias, e.g. for non-English speakers, and therefore the most verifiable fact of facts. If you want to improve on an article, and the quality of referencing, my advice is to not to go through the work of throwing up a citation flag and proposing a new phrasing, when it would take the same work or less to search a thesaurus and see if, in fact, they are synonyms (they are) and then add the citation yourself.

The principle here is sourced, verifiable information, and here what is cited is common speech that can be verified in any of the most obvious places.

Walkinxyz (talk) 08:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

And actually, I don't think you have sufficient grounds to object to the plural stuff either. What is linked is simply the word "plural", which happens to have a Wikipedia entry. Unsurprisingly, neither of the common adjectives "direct" or "general" have Wikipedia entries, and if you weren't sure what either word meant, you could use a dictionary. They don't have a special linguistic-technical meaning in this context, so they needn't appear in the "plural" article, either.

The relevant distinction here is not just that between "direct" and "general" plural uses, but between the plural and singular of "people" – which is absolutely relevant to a discussion of what a "person" is – i.e. that it isn't the same as a "people".

However, as discussed in the murk above, this information may not be necessary in the lede itself, but could be put into an etiology section.

Walkinxyz (talk) 09:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

"A person is a human being" is already the defining first words of the lede, so is redundant. The OR is "common parlance", which is likely true, but unsourced, and unimportant since it is already stated at the outset. I have never heard the expression "direct plural" before, nor "general plural". "People" has its own article. I was just trying to shorten the lede by omiting trivialities. PPdd (talk) 09:23, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Go ahead with it. Walkinxyz (talk) 09:35, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. PPdd (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

The recognition debate re-opened

For those just joining us from 3O, please see Talk:Person#Compromise_on_Lead, Talk:Person#Proposed_new_compromise_on_lead, and Talk:Person#Proposed_compromise_II for (very lengthy) previous discussion, and Walkinxyz's initial edits and my partial reversion/compromise which started it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the definition of a person as a being with attributes that are "recognized" as consisting in personhood in a given context, would strip the current lead of its essentialist character, and nothing would be lost. A person would still be whatever a person currently "is" in all of those various contexts, but we would acknowledge that the attributes themselves that count towards personhood would have to be recognized as such in context for the definition to mean anything (I don't mean formally recognized, and I don't mean anything like what we mean when we deliberately "confer recognition", I just mean that they have to be visible and seen to be visible by a group of people).

If you look at all the information on "persons" in our article, it's obvious that there was never something called a "person" that was just discovered in the world. From the very beginning, it has been self-consciously defined by human beings to mean one thing or another. This would agree with the position that "personhood" is something like Searle's "institutional facts".

This argument has been brought up before, but I think it should be considered again, due to the variations in the meaning and usage of the term through history (even though there were always "people" of some kind or another), its institutional character in many contexts, and the struggle to re-define it along various lines.

To compare it to another "institutional fact", consider the wording currently used in this article (emphasis added):

"Money is any object or record, that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context."

I would argue that according to the information in this article, the same kind of definition is true of persons (notwithstanding that persons are, of course, unquestionably and immeasurably more valuable than money).

Walkinxyz (talk) 18:57, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I still disagree vehemently that this should be a part of the definition of a person given in this article. Personhood being an institutional fact may be a valid point of view, but I do not believe that all notable sources, including some of those already cited in the article, would agree with it, and so we cannot imply that that position is correct in the opening definition. The definition as it stands allows for the possibility that that position is correct, without taking a stance either way.
Regarding the analogy with money, the differences between money and person could be illustrative to my point. I agree that money being money depends on its being accepted as payment for goods and services, and that whether a particular object counts as money varies by context. I could take this sticky pad next to me and write my cursive initials on every note and it would (as a contingent matter of fact) not be money, because nobody would accept it as payment for goods or services. However, if for some reason people in some context started accepting my sticky notes as payment for goods and services, then in that context my sticky notes would actually become money, as money being money depends entirely upon its social recognition and has negligible if any value otherwise, and there is no controversy over that fact.
In contrast, there are positions which hold that persons are persons regardless of what other persons think, feel, recognize, acknowledge, etc. Let's stipulate, for the sake of the following example, that all persons necessarily have certain rights (which is to say, they deserve certain treatment, whether or not they actually get it), which non-persons do not have; and that typical modern humans are persons, while the monocellular organisms from which we descend were non-persons. (Pick any other necessary fact about persons and any other group of persons and some non-person ancestors of them, if you prefer; this is just for example). When those monocellular ancestors lived, they did not have the rights we have; and neither did their immediate descendants, or their immediate descendants, and so on and so forth, but then at some point some descendent of those had whatever features it is that made them deserve certain treatment, made them have rights, while their ancestors did not. Suddenly there was a person in the world; and no other people to recognize him. Maybe even after there were other people to recognize him, they did not do so; but he was still a person. Maybe it took tens or hundreds of millennia for people to start recognizing each other as people, but they were still already people already. Maybe there are some people today who are not recognized as people, but should be, because they are. To say that personhood is defined in the same way as money is to say that there is no such thing as unrecognized personhood; that personhood depends upon recognition of such, and consequently if everyone suddenly stopped recognizing someone as a person, he would actually cease to be a person, the way that money which is not accepted as money actually ceases to be money.
I suspect that you are going to deny that this is what you mean to imply, as that seems to be the pattern we get into here, so I want to try to structure the rest of this conversation so we can be more clear about what we're talking about, because you seem to keep squirming around claiming you mean what appear to be different things to me. As I see it, there are three issues which may be getting mixed up here:
  • Does the meaning of the word "person" depend on how people use it?
(I say yes it does, but so does every word, such as our examples of "crow" or "money"; and that this fact does not warrant mention in any article as it is a simple feature of all language).
  • Do different people in different times, places, contexts, etc, use the word "person" differently?
(I say yes they do, unlike "crow" or "money"; and that this fact warrants mention, and is already mentioned, in the article).
  • Given some meaning of the word "person", does its applicability to some individual depend on anyone recognizing that applicability?
(I and some notable sources say no, like "crow", but unlike "money"; and that the article cannot take a stance on this in its own voice, which your version would but mine does not).
To examine these three issues with regards to persons and our two examples of money and crows:
  • The word "crow" means whatever we use it to mean; all experts use it to mean the same thing; and that thing they use it to mean is some description of physical features with no reference to anything about the state of mind of any observers of those features.
  • The word "money" means whatever we use it to mean; all experts use it to mean the same thing; and that thing they use it to mean is something like "whatever is commonly accepted for payment in a given context", making reference to the state of mind of users of money.
  • The word "person" means whatever we use it to mean; experts disagree about how to use the word "person"; some of them use it to mean some description of physical (or metaphysical) features with no reference to anything about state of mind of any observer of those features; others apparently use it to mean something like "whoever is recognized as a person in a given context", making a reference to the state of mind of other people.
I hope this will help guide our conversation more clearly, and I would appreciate hearing your answers to those three questions and what you think the article should say about them; and of course, if you think there are any additional issues those three questions don't cover. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Let me be clear. I am not claiming that there is nothing to be right or wrong about in this case, or that whatever we recognize as "persons" today might not be judged gravely mistaken in the future. What I am claiming, is simply that the essentialist definition of something objectively does not apply to persons:

In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described. In this view, it follows that terms or words should have a single definition and meaning.

This is what is implied, in fact what is entailed, incorrectly, by the introduction. You say:
The word "person" means whatever we use it to mean; experts disagree about how to use the word "person"; some of them use it to mean some description of physical (or metaphysical) features with no reference to anything about state of mind of any observer of those features; others apparently use it to mean something like "whoever is recognized as a person in a given context", making a reference to the state of mind of other people.
You misunderstand me. I certainly don't mean that it has anything to do with a "state of mind" of other people. Recognition of something that doesn't exist isn't recognition, it is misrecognition. And misrecognition depends on their being something to recognize or not. This could be influenced by your state of mind, but then you would have to say there was something happening to influence your judgment, etc. You would have to come up with a theory as to why someone didn't recognize what they should have.
Nonetheless, when we recognize personhood differently (as we have, throughout the idea's history), what it "is" does change.
Swans at one point may have been thought to be white, and then someone discovered black swans. Then we "recognized" that swans could also be black. And our definition changed.
But here is the difference between swans and persons. When we redefine personhood, it affects all persons. If we "redefine" swan-ness (not really a redefinition, because the parameters were already clear enough, say clear enough that we could be genuinely surprised by their existence) to include the black swans, it doesn't affect the white swans. And consequently "swanhood" (if there could be such a thing) does not change.
But because it is persons who are capable in principle of recognizing persons, when we include black people, it imposes obligations on the rest of the "persons" in society, that they didn't have before, and strips away certain privileges (the privilege to exclude people based on their skin colour) – changing what a person, and personhood, is, "institutionally."
In other words, now that we know (recognize) that personhood doesn't have anything to do with whether someone is black or white (and it doesn't – that isn't a contingent fact about persons) we know how to treat other persons – how to treat others like ourselves. And as a result, how a person behaves (a part of what one "is") changed as well.
Maybe it took tens or hundreds of millennia for people to start recognizing each other as people, but they were still already people already.
Just as were the black swans. But the fact that "persons" at some point were accorded rights, changed the definition of person. And therefore, people (all people) were included in the franchise of personhood, which didn't even exist prior to the institutionalization of rights. It didn't signify or change (or depend on) any natural fact about humans, it changed a social fact. And that is because it is a social category.
What I am claiming has to be recognized (correctly) are the attributes, and those vary with personhood, depending on the context – unlike crows, only a little like swans, and very much like money. The attributes are there no matter what, but they don't "constitute" personhood unless they are the relevant attributes.
It is the attributes of person, relevant to "some description of physical (or metaphysical) features…" etc. that have to be recognized, for there to be a meaningful definition of personhood in the first place. These can be contested. People can be wrong or right, make better or worse estimations of it. Experts can claim (or propose) whatever they want, but if the attributes in their definition of personhood isn't what is recognized by their peers, or by society at large, or by someone who has a stake in the institution of personhood… then it is not (at least not yet) what a person "is". (*)
The definition of personhood is manifestly not decided simply by "experts" it is decided by "us" – other persons. And on Wikipedia, which isn't an expert-ruled forum, but a consensus-ruled forum, we should acknowledge that.
(*) Depending on the definition of money, the "attributes" of money are variable – that is, depending on the context. They could be a certain kind of paper, coin, a mark on a stick or a string of 1s and 0s. The difference is, that money can't recognize other money. In other words, what money "is" doesn't depend on the practices or the judgment of money. Even so, if we change our definition of money, it needn't necessarily change us. Conversely, if we all decide that persons include certain kinds of animals, that persons should be accorded those rights, it changes something about how we persons see ourselves, in a way that will necessarily change how we behave towards other persons. And if humans see themselves as something closer to animals, and vice versa, that will be different than if we see ourselves as something closer to computers. That doesn't change what, physically, we persons are, or what animals or computers are materially, but it does change what "personhood" is, and therefore what "we" are – what we persons are as persons.
Walkinxyz (talk) 06:44, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Given some meaning of the word "person", does its applicability to some individual depend on anyone recognizing that applicability?
It depends on the attributes in the meaning being the correct ones. Otherwise, the definition is not actually "given", it is dictated.
Walkinxyz (talk) 07:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
The word "money" means whatever we use it to mean; all experts use it to mean the same thing; and that thing they use it to mean is something like "whatever is commonly accepted for payment in a given context", making reference to the state of mind of users of money.
This does not make reference to anyone's "state of mind". It makes reference to reality – what we do when something is being paid for. That is what matters about money. That it is accepted in fact, not just in theory.
Walkinxyz (talk) 07:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
The lead says:
or any entity with attributes that constitute personhood
…and this is just wrong. One wants to respond, but you can't mean any attributes that constitute personhood, that is, those of any definition, or those in any context. You must mean the right attributes, the appropriate definition for a particular context. And how are we to know which ones are the right ones? Which context we are in? In other words, how are we to recognize persons when we see them?
This knowledge is what is "given", and therefore what is often contested, in the first place.
You seem to be reading my desired wording as "any entity that is recognized as having attributes"… but again, what I am trying to say is, a person is "an entity with the (generally, fallibly) recognized attributes". I suppose you will say they amount to the same thing. But if I said that money was "anything with the attributes"… you would simply want to know what they are. The problem is, what they are varies according to context, and so we must say that it is "anything accepted as" having the attributes, i.e. the symbolic exchange-value that can purchase other things. In that sense, what money is doesn't change. It is whatever has that exchange value. Same with personhood. Not whether you, concretely, through time, are or are not what a person is, physically, materially – that isn't what varies, but what is or isn't valued - that is what changes, and that is what "personhood" is. I defy you to find some other "hood" that isn't in some way a socially established fact. Indeed, you are what you are, and you were what you were… but what personhood consists in changed, was recognized differently. Personhood didn't exist until a certain point, and once it existed, it included social facts that weren't a part of our existence in earlier periods – even though evolutionarily, "attribute" wise, we were the people we were. But not the "persons." At least, not yet, not in that context, not in that time and place.
As it happens, my dictionary gives the etymology of the suffix "hood" as:

Old English -hād, originally an independent noun meaning [person, condition, quality.]

And at the risk of engaging in blatant OR (or downright speculation), for the sake of a heuristic device on the talk page, I would suggest that this implies strongly a connection between a "condition" or "quality" of something, and the condition or quality of persons themselves. And what is that quality or condition? I think it is that of being able to adopt or receive a "stance" on things, on oneself, on what one's own condition involves, of "how it is" with one. Whatever a person is, they will have to, in principle, be able to communicate in such terms, or else they will not be a person. And they will also therefore need to be capable of recognizing another in the same condition, with the same quality, someone in principle capable of being able to make sense of or acknowledge such a stance, such a claim. That is what defines us, as persons, and nothing else.
I am supported in this thought by the Online Etymology Dictionary:

"state or condition of being," from O.E. -had "condition, position," cognate with Ger. -heit, Du. -heid, all from P.Gmc. *khaidus. Originally a free-standing word, cf. O.E. hed "position, dignity," O.N. heiðr "honor, dignity," Goth. haidus "manner;" in English it survives only in this suffix.

// End of home-baked historical ontology.
Walkinxyz (talk) 08:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
I am still extremely unclear on what exactly you mean to communicate in the article by your changes. I asked some clarifying questions in my last message which you have declined to answer. I even left open for you to add to those clarifying questions if I overlooked some issue that you are really talking about instead of any of those three, but it still sounds like you are talking about some conflation of several of those. What important difference you mean by "an" vs "any", or the emphasis on "entity" vs "attributes", escapes me. If you're willing, I would like to try to agree on a sentence written in unambiguous predicate logic and then translate that back to natural English; I think it would be more productive than spinning around like we have been again.
A definition takes a logical form like "for all x, is-whatever(x) iff is-some-other-things(x)". For money, the definition you gave above is roughly "for all x, is-money(x) iff is-accepted-for-payment(x)". That says basically "pick anything; that thing is money if and only if it is accepted for payment; that's what money is, something accepted for payment". Although, since what is accepted for payment varies by context, we might want binary predicate functions keyed to some context, i.e. "for all x, for all [contexts] y, is money-in-context(x,y) iff is-accepted-for-payment-in-context(x,y)". That says basically "pick any thing, and any context; that thing is money in that context if and only if it is accepted for payment in that context."
For persons, a definition would be something of the form "for all x, is-a-person(x) iff is-some-other-things(x)". There is disagreement among experts about what should be recognized as the correct value of the is-some-other-things() predicate. Some experts say it should be is-human(). Other say it should be is-conscious(), or has-free-will(), or has-an-immaterial-mind-controlling-a-material-body(). Or, like the Akan concept of personhood I linked to a while ago, is-recognized-as-a-valued-member-of-social-group(x,y), requiring us to quantify for [social groups] y. I'm still unclear if you are trying to define personhood as something like that last one, but I'm concerned that the words you want to use sound like that last one, which would be a biased (non-consensus) statement, ruling out all the others, and thus cannot be permitted in the article, at least not in the wiki's own voice.*
*(An aside, regarding this and an earlier comment of yours: Wikipedia is supposed to report only the consensus of experts in the field in its own voice, which is why I mention experts. The consensus of we editors doesn't matter except in agreeing on what the consensus of the experts is, i.e. Wikipedia states as fact whatever its editors agree that the experts agree is a fact; not simply whatever the editors agree is a fact. Our job here is to look at what the experts say, and if they all say the same thing then we say that thing, and if not then we say that such-and-such expert says this thing and so-and-so expert says that thing. This is the primary point I am coming from: your wording sounds like it's saying something some experts would not agree with, so the article can't simply state that as fact.)
I am trying to have it not conclusively say what the right-hand predicate truly is (which would be biased), while neither simply stating the left-hand predicate again (which would be trivial); I want it to give either some prominent example definitions (my original version, modelled after dictionaries), or some characterization common to most definitions (my second version, modelled after the bit from Frankfurt). Using "recognition" as a characterization of most definitions is either trivial or false, as every proposed definition of anything is recognized by someone (at least whoever put it forth), but no definition of person is recognized by everyone (or sufficiently close to call it consensus).
Also, I am becoming a little concerned from a few of your comments that you may perhaps tacitly be equating persons with humans. This relates to the difference between a non-social definition of personhood and the uncontroversial social definition of money. Let us stipulate for the sake of argument that at least all healthy adult anatomically modern humans are currently persons (as perhaps are other beings, but lets not worry about them for now); and that for a great majority of the time that anatomically modern humans (just like the ones that are persons today) have existed, they were not all recognized as persons. Everybody agrees that all those prehistoric anatomically modern healthy adult humans were in all relevant ways physically and mentally just like the modern ones which we stipulate are persons (that's what makes them "anatomically modern"); there is no controversy at all that they were just as human as humans today.
Non-social definitions of personhood like I am trying to preserve room (say for example Locke) for would say that those prehistoric humans, being in every relevant way just like modern ones, were also all persons, just like all such humans today are persons, regardless of whether they were recognized as persons; and that no change in recognition of personhood affects a change in actual personhood, because such definitions do not define personhood in terms of recognition but in terms of some physical (or mental, or metaphysical, etc) characteristics. In contrast, social definitions of personhood (like that of the Akan) would say that only those who were appropriately recognized as valued members of their social group were persons; and that a change in such recognition can change whether or not some individual really is a person, without changing anything about them physically (or mentally or metaphysically), because such definitions of personhood define personhood in terms of recognition.
Compare now money; for a good example, take the olivella shells used for a time as money by the native Chumash people where I live. These olivella shells have been just as they are today since before humans lived anywhere near them. When humans moved near them, they eventually started being accepted as payment for goods and services, and in such became money without anything about the shells themselves changing. As that culture dissolved, they stopped being accepted as payment for goods and services, and still exists today exactly as they always have, but are no longer money. Everybody (at least everybody notable, i.e. experts) agrees that this is how money is defined: nobody tries to define money as something like "anything small and shiny", and consequently implying that olivella shells always were money and still are today (since they've always been small and shiny), even though nobody treats them as money anymore.
In contrast, many notable experts define persons like that! Others apparently don't. So Wikipedia can't imply that either type of position is correct, since the experts don't agree. The wording you want to use sounds to be implying that the latter (Akan-like, social) definitions are correct, which is biased and so against Wikipedia policies. The wording I want to use, which you call "essentialist", is not biased toward the first (Locke-like, non-social) type, because it doesn't say what the criteria for personhood are; it says what some proposed criteria for personhood are, or what many such criteria have in common, and leaves open that those criteria might be social in nature.
If you're trying to say that the criteria for personhood have to involve recognition, like money, then you are being biased toward social definitions of personhood like that of the Akan. If you are saying that no criteria for personhood can be given at all, then you are saying that personhood cannot be defined at all; which is again biased, because notable experts do propose definitions. (For comparison, the criterion for money is "accepted as payment", a social criterion). If you're just saying that every definition of personhood is made by some group of language-users, or that such language-users have not all agreed on the definition of personhood, then I agree completely, but the first point is true of every definition of anything and so not worthy of mention, and the second point is already mentioned in the article, immediately after the sentence you want to change. If you're trying to say something else entirely, I still have no idea what it is.
Lastly, I think your etymological point about "-hood" definitely is original research and does not belong in the article; and that we definitely need some kind of outside comment on this, more so than we got last time (which only addressed things highly tangential to this debate). --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:16, 4 March 2011 (UTC)


I can't spend the time to read through your entire response, I'm sorry. You still haven't understood that I want to say is that being a person consists in having attributes that are recognized as consisting in personhood (whether by one "expert", by several, by all people or by aliens). Not in being recognized, each of us, one and all, as a person.
This is an absurdly paradoxical debate. You are saying "the experts, the experts" and yet you won't acknowledge that the criteria have to be recognized.
Forget it, it must be over your head. Walkinxyz (talk) 07:31, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
Your comment about attribute recognition sounds like you are talking about my first issue: the connotations of any term (i.e. the attributes it implies) must be agreed upon by the users of that term for it to really connote that, and the article already says that what that is varies by context/history/etc (my second issue). But your comparison to money makes it sound like you really are talking about my third issue. Consider: when white people generally considered a necessary condition for personhood to be white skin, did that make blacks actually non-persons, or just unrecognized as persons? Nobody excluded each and every individual black person one by one: they excluded blackness categorically from the possible attributes of persons. I don't see a way of interpreting what you're trying to say that isn't either purely linguistic and thus trivial, or more substantial yet controversial.
And I keep mentioning "the experts" to avoid this becoming a debate between you and me about the truth of the issues discussed in this article. That's not what Wikipedia talk pages are about: we're not here to debate the subject matter, we're here to debate how to describe what notable sources ("experts") have to say about the subject matter.
Please don't be so condescending and dismissive. I understand that you are frustrated with this debate. I am too, and by the same fact I think: that what you are trying to say does not seem clear to me. I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that you might have a legitimate point somewhere, and so I am asking for clarification on some interpretation of what you're saying that's not either trivial or controversial. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:36, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
I am trying to find a way to convey the complexity involved in this term's "definition", without allowing it to (1) slip into total relativity; (2) allow it to be defined or settled by "experts". And I want to suggest that the nature of this complexity is such that implicating personhood in the definition of a person poses certain problems.
I don't think "personhood" and "personal identity" are the same thing, for example. "Personal identity" is a compound concept that marries the concept of a person and the concept of identity. It implicitly invokes a subject that is in principle able to identify something. Locke acknowledges as much in his precursory definition of identity as such. However, that something that is identified is either totally objective, partly objective and partly subjective, or radically inter-subjective, depending on who you ask.
On the other hand, "personhood" implies qualitative, social, and situational dimensions that the word "identity" need not necessarily carry. However, unlike identity, it does necessarily suggest a subjective dimension.
Since this isn't the personal identity article, I think we can say that a person is a human being or an entity with the particular qualities, capacities or attributes associated with personhood. That at least does not efface the subjective dimension of personhood, while avoiding the relativity (or needless triviality) you feel is tied to the word "recognized".
Walkinxyz (talk) 01:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request

This debate calls to mind for me a koan from the 13th-century Zen text The Gateless Gate.
Our context right now is that we are discussing how to word the lead section of this article so that it best meets Wikipedia's main purpose and general standards. Specifically, from WP:LEAD:

"It is even more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible. [...] This allows editors to avoid lengthy paragraphs and over-specific descriptions, because the reader will know that greater detail is saved for the body of the article.
"In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided in an introduction. [...] Where uncommon terms are essential to describing the subject, they should be placed in context, briefly defined, and linked. The subject should be placed in a context with which many readers could be expected to be familiar. For example, rather than giving the latitude and longitude of a town, it is better to state that it is the suburb of some city, or perhaps that it provides services for the farm country of xyz county. Readers should not be dropped into the middle of the subject from the first word; they should be eased into it."

For the lead, what we need is a general, accessible definition of person. We should avoid getting too bogged down in subtleties of usage and finer points of philosophy. The debate above, which you two editors in dispute seem to have been having for some time now, should be summarized and presented in the Philosophy section. The question you should be addressing here is how best to say what a person is so that the average reader of Wikipedia will get a general sense of what the rest of this article is about.
Right now the lead begins with:

A person is a human being, or an entity with the particular qualities, capacities or attributes associated with personhood. The concept of a person is difficult to define in a way that is universally accepted, due to its historical and cultural variability and the controversies surrounding its use in specific contexts.

And then there is also some brief mention of the specific senses in which the term is to be understood as will be discussed further in the article. I think that's fine, except for that first sentence. It's like saying "a person is an entity that is person-like" which is not all that informative. I would say instead:

A person is an individual human being or similar entity. The concept of a person is difficult to define in a way that is universally accepted, due to its historical and cultural variability and the controversies surrounding its use in specific contexts.

As the first step in trying to resolve this dispute, may I ask each of you now to as briefly and directly as possible, in just a couple of sentences, state whether you agree with that wording for our purposes here or not, or else propose below alternate wording for that sentence that you feel better meets our purposes here? WikiDao ☯ 22:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I am generally happy with the direction your suggestion is going. (I'm actually not too opposed to the current version anymore either; I hadn't been following Walkinxyz's recent edits, was just waiting for a 3O response). I like the "similar entity" wording because it comes close to capturing what I think the lede needs to capture: that a person is anything which has whatever it is that (at least typical) humans have that makes them special in such a way that they deserve the label "person". I don't think it's quite perfect though, mostly because it offers no suggestion on what sort of similarity to humans might be important, e.g. being ~100-200lbs mass and composed mostly of carbon is not the right kind of similarity. An earlier version of mine had a passage derived from the following Frankfurt quote, which Walkinxyz supplied, and so might be a good source of mutually acceptable inspiration:

"the criteria for being a person [...] are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives."

Thinking on it now, I'm almost tempted to just quote Frankfurt for the first sentence, which would avoid argument over interpretation and give us a source to cite too. E.g.:
A person is a human being or a being similarly possessing "those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves"[1]
I would still most prefer to also give a couple examples of what such attributes might be, such as consciousness, free will, or being the subject of rights and duties; which sentence could segue into the "but the concept is difficult to define..." sentence we've got now.
As a very minor aside, I'm not sure what the word "individual" adds, i.e. why insert it when it's not there now and nobody is taking issue with that.
Thank you for your assistance here, I look forward to hearing Walkinxyz's reply. --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
"Individual" doesn't need to be there.
My "third opinion" right now is in essence that we keep the lead, and especially the lead sentence, as simple as possible per WP:MOSINTRO. I don't have a problem with your Frankfurt quote though, that seems acceptable per MOS.
The thing is to try to step out of the interminable debate above over epistemology/ontology/etc. and to try to find a simple, straightforward, commonly-understandable introduction to this topic.
What can you agree with to that end, Walkinxyz? WikiDao ☯ 15:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

"our"

I find the quote profound and eloquent, but the group "our" refers to is not blatantly clear and also deviates a bit from WP's normal encyclopedic tone. Even if we changed "our" to "[humans']" or "[humanity's]", the "ourselves" remains problematic. Thoughts on how to remedy this? --Cybercobra (talk) 08:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, it is questionable whether social constructs meet those criteria (eg., do they have a sense of "themselves" the way we experience our sense of "ourselves"?).
The lead should not rule out any of the meanings that are subsequently discussed in the body of the article, for example under Law: "A person is recognized by law as such, not because he is human, but because rights and duties are ascribed to him. The person is the legal subject or substance of which the rights and duties are attributes. An individual human being considered as having such attributes is what lawyers call a 'natural person.'" WikiDao ☯ 17:59, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I see now this edit to the sentence following the lead sentence, giving some examples of some attributes proposed to meet the criteria given in the first sentence.
Right now I again think having the first sentence say only "A person is a human being or similar entity" and then giving examples of what attributes a "similar entity" might have to qualify it as a "person" would be best. WikiDao ☯ 18:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't object to that, however that would be pretty much what an earlier version of mine that Walkinxyz objected to said, so I suspect he would object. (Where is he anyway?) For the text to segue properly after removing the Frankfurt quote, it would need to say something like "A person is a human being or similar entity, for example one possessing attributes such as self-awareness, rationality, or rights and duties. However, defining the concept is difficult because..." I'm ok with that, but I suspect Walkinxyz would not be. --Pfhorrest (talk)

Sorry for the radio silence. I am OK with the current wording in the lead.

In my opinion, the quotation marks around the Frankfurt quote obviate the need for re-voicing in the third person. They indicate clearly that the definition is coming from a particular perspective, one that is presumably authoritative. Nonetheless, it doesn't imply that such a definition exhausts the possible definitions of personhood. While a first person (singular or plural) perspective might normally depart from Wikipedia's tone as an encyclopedia, I think in this case it is simply an apt description of what personhood, very broadly construed, is to persons.

What is the point about social constructs? I don't understand.

Walkinxyz (talk) 00:26, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

"A person is a human being or a being similarly possessing "those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves"
How does a non-human "social construct" (but eg. recognized as a "person" under Law) possess "those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves"? Such an entity need only possesses our attribute of having certain rights and duties, which I for one do not always consider among my "most humane concerns" with myself. And it is not likely to have the capacity for self-reflection which is required by the wording of that definition itself to be among the attributes subject to any such concerns we may have with ourselves.
There are no inconsistencies or contradictions necessarily entailed (or prematurely introduced) by just saying "a human being or similar entity". WikiDao ☯ 01:17, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm gonna have to disagree. In my experience, quotes normally either happen to be phrased (or have been thus modified) so as to be acceptable in the third person, or they include in-text attribution of the speaker. I find the use of "our" without context to be jarring. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:26, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Like Pfhorrest, I don't consider a "similar entity" to necessarily be what you might consider a person. Nor is a corporation really similar to a human person, except insofar as it has rights and duties. However, I am surprised that you don't think of rights and duties as among your most humane concerns – the right to vote, or to not be coerced into signing contracts or practicing a particular religion, the duty to care for family & friends, etc. – those aren't among your most humane concerns?
In any case, we seemingly have two camps, one that sees the Frankfurt quote in the first sentence being problematic, and another that sees the "similar entity" language as too vague and possibly misleading.
So how about "A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain relevant attributes associated with personhood, e.g. in a particular moral or legal context."
The bit about moral and legal contexts can be found in Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person", already cited in the article, p.97:

Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse.

User:Walkinxyz (not logged in) 76.64.31.165 (talk) 22:48, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
That lead sentence is fine by me. :) WikiDao ☯ 00:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't object to it like I did the "recognition" wording, but I feel like it doesn't say anything now, other than that some humans are among the set of people. It's even more vague than the "similar" wording without the Frankfurt quote. I liked the Frankfurt quote because it indicates something broad about the other things in the set of people (i.e. the things encompassed within the term being defined). The new version comes off kind of like "a mammal is a dog, or something else with mammalian features, e.g. biologically"; ok, so I know that mammalian features are at least some times biological in some way, and that dogs have them, but that's not really helpful in telling me what a mammal is and whether tyrannosaurus or e.coli are even near the ballpark of mammals. Of course with "person" we can't be as specific as we could with "mammal" due to the contentiousness of any definition, but I still think we need to give some sort of broad gestures toward what kinds of things might maybe be persons. The version with the Frankfurt quote may not be perfect but I think it accomplished that at least. --Pfhorrest (talk)
Many thanks to User:Wolfdog for his recent edit to the lede which I think solves my lingering concerns above without (I hope) reigniting this debate. In retrospect it looks like an obvious solution I'm surprised we didn't settle on before: a person is a human, or something sufficiently like a human in whatever relevant ways, which exactly are subject to debate. In my analogy in the previous sentence, this is akin to saying "mammals are creatures like dogs and such"; it doesn't say exactly in what way you have to be dog-like to be a mammal, but that dogs are a prominent example of mammals, and other mammals are, as such, similar in some important ways to dogs; without saying exactly what those ways are. I hope Walkinxyz et al are happy with this as well. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Image/illustration

I think that it would be nice to have an illustration on this page, not just because illustrations are nice and improve the reading experience on Wikipedia, but because this article is about a subject of widespread significance, that deserves something artistic and evocative of its character as a concept.

So far, I have encountered opposition to the inclusion of artwork that illustrates a concept in one other article as well (Appeal to nature), and I am surprised at the grumpy, terse and occasionally puritanical responses to these efforts.

In this case, I have tried to add a Paul Klee painting, WI (In Memoriam), a prominent painting by a prominent modern painter, that obviously depicts an anonymous person (with the initials "W.I."), but that is abstract (like aspects of our concept) and non-gender / culture-specific.

I am guided in my confidence in the suitability and appropriateness of this choice by this guideline:

Intangible concepts can be illustrated; for example, a cat with its claws out portrays aggression, while a roadside beggar juxtaposed with a Mercedes-Benz shows social inequality.[1]

Since this is not the human being article (which is illustrated with a photograph), and their are clearly cases in which a person does not equal a human being, but nonetheless shares certain (abstract) attributes… how is this image not relevant?

Please, someone enlighten me.

User:Walkinxyz (not logged in)

The rationale for choosing the image gives sense when you explain it like that. I would support inclusion provided that the caption of the image explains why and how the image illustrates the concept.·Maunus·ƛ· 00:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
This is the primary reason for my reverts. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I think it works better without any caption. WikiDao ☯ 02:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
That image seems fine for this article, and improves its appearance. I support its inclusion. WikiDao ☯ 00:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I personally think that the image speaks for itself. I wouldn't know what sort of caption to provide… "An abstract painting of a person?"

User:Walkinxyz (not logged in) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.31.165 (talk) 06:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't work with a caption. Without a caption, it is an abstract image that appropriately improves the quality of this article. Captioning it "de-abstracts" it to the point that it is no longer appropriate for that use. WikiDao ☯ 17:20, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, I don't want to waste everyone's time here, but can we try one more time to find a compromise? I agree with WikiDao that it doesn't need a caption. Nonetheless, it is still a "person", even if it is abstracted. The title implies as much, and I thought the caption I had was pretty innocuous.

Creative suggestions? A quick poll?

Thanks.

User:Walkinxyz (not logged in) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.119.72.51 (talk) 19:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Without a caption it may decorate the article (depending on one's taste in art), but it doesn't illustrate the topic. It will only serve to confuse readers. If it is not appropriate with a caption then it is not appropriate at all. ·Maunus·ƛ· 20:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
But it is a good abstract representation of the concept of "person". One can see a stylized human face in it, but there are also less recognizable forms. I think it captures well the "fuzziness" of what we mean by "person". Captioning it reduces the abstraction that allows it to encompass that "fuzziness", imo.
Next best thing is to state that simply: "An abstract painting of a person" – and those interested in artist, title, date, and other information that isn't relevant to its use here can click on the image for all that. WikiDao ☯ 21:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I can buy that next best solution.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I didn't have any strong thoughts on the image myself, but I find Cybercobra's reasoning (in his latest edit summary) strong. The image depicts a human, not necessarily a person. Granted, I'm at a bit of a loss for what better to illustrate "Person" with than an archetypical example of a person (a human) in the abstract. But I don't know that the article necessarily needs illustration anyway. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:11, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
I think that, at best, any illustration would have to be slightly tangential, e.g. "Slaves[, like those pictured here,] were commonly regarded as not being full persons." --Cybercobra (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
That's pretty dark, and might be distracting from other aspects of the article … I think an image of a slave would be appropriate for the section on the history of personhood (which currently doesn't talk about slavery, probably a major omission) – but not the lead.
What's the difference between something "decorative" and something "illustrative"? I think there's a great value in these kinds of images in conveying the substance of an idea, in this case, the complex idea of personhood. The Klee painting tells you, for one thing, what personhood isn't by abstracting the picture of the face. It suggests that personhood isn't about the particular physical features that human beings possess, but about something more intangible, and very difficult to "resolve" or define. Nonetheless, it suggests implicitly that personhood is an important and deeply meaningful concept, in the the same way that a picture of a person who was meaningful to you is important in remembering them. Furthermore, it tells you that there is something about personhood that is intangible, and that art has had a history of reflecting these questions.
I think it is a really simple and effective image that tells you a number of things at once about the idea. That's why I can't understand why it keeps getting deleted.
Also, what's the big deal with a caption that says it's an abstract painting? Is this really a good reason not to include it?
"more relevantly, it was an abstract depiction of a /specific human/" (Cybercora)
Yeah, just like a picture of a table would be a picture of a /specific table/, and just like the humans at the human being article are /specific humans/. How could any illustration not be of a specific thing? However, the person depicted is anonymous (through their initials, and through the abstraction of the face), and therefore not necessarily any specific known individual.
The point about AI, corporations etc. neglects that these are dependent on the definition of a person as a human being. Not to mention they are highly controversial. They may also be considered persons in certain contexts, provided certain specialized definitions, but what we normally understand as a person is human.
Finally, why wouldn't you include the artist, date and name of the painting? If it wasn't an image by a major figure of modern painting, who reflected a lot on the human condition, I might agree that those things aren't important. But it wasn't painted by an anonymous individual, it was a major contribution to what it means to be a human being, by an important artist. And just like we quote significant philosophers on their "picture" of what it means to be a person, we need to attribute this "quote" from a well-known artist.
I'm not really insisting on this image, but I think it's relevant to the substance of the article, and an excellent way to convey certain intangible aspects of personhood.
Walkinxyz (talk) 03:07, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect Information

This article begins with a glaringly incorrect statement: "In his work, De Trinitate, Tertullian became the first person recorded by history to use the word in a quite different way: to signify a being that is, at least in principle, complete, autonomous and fully responsible for his own acts." Tertullian never wrote anything called De Trinitate, it was Novatian who wrote that treatise, centuries after Tertullian. Wikipedia's own page on Tertullian does not list it as one of his works, nor does the Catholic Enclyclopedia and the Tertullian website lists it as "spurious". http://www.tertullian.org/works_spurious.htm

It also seems to me that the definition "complete, autonomous and fully responsible for his own acts" is clearly in use long before Tertullian in Roman Law. You can see how Gaius uses the word constantly his Institutes of Roman Law. http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1154&layout=html

I'm not a regular editor and I don't want to change "De Trinitate" into "Against Praxeas", which the author may have had in mand, since I don't have any idea if the author even meant Tertullian rather than Novatian. But I hope SOMEONE corrects this because it's wrong.

```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenjacobsen (talk • contribs) 17:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Welcome! You sound pretty knowledgeable about this area. Please be bold and correct the erroneous information, backing your new text with appropriate citations (these old text are all public domain now, so a link to an online copy at a reputable site like WikiSource or Project Gutenberg would be good too). If other knowledgeable editors disagree, they will revert it and then discuss it here, as is the way the encyclopedia evolves. Commenting here on the talk page first was good too, so it's clear your edits are in good faith. (Some people are prone to bite the newcomers, unfortunately).
Also just FYI, comments on talk pages go below previous comments; I've moved yours down here. If you use the "+" tab at the top to add new sections, it will insert them there for you automatically. Also, I think you meant to sign with four tildes as is correct, but it looks like you missed your shift key and got four accents instead.
Thanks and happy editing! --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)


OK, I was really bold and removed what was a long theological reference to Tertullian and Trinitarianism, which should have been under the heading of Religion anyway rather than History.

The basic contention of what was removed was that “Tertullian thereby launched the modern understanding of the word "person." But the modern definition of “person”, as Webster’s puts it, is “individual human being”, and that is not at all what Tertullian has in mind when he describes the “persons of the Trinity”. It’s safe to say that no Christian theologian has ever proposed that the “persons of the Trinity” are three “individual human beings”.

One of the things that prompted my concern originally is the Anglican interpretation of the work by Tertullian AGAINST PRAXEAS where the word PERSONA was apparently introduced into Christian theology. It states “Personas in theology seems to be derived from personas in law, where persona has the meaning "civil personality." http://books.google.com/books?id=mOJLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, p 32.

As I mentioned it’s very clear that Gaius uses the word PERSONA in that sense, decades before Tertullian wrote AGAINST PRAXEAS, and it may well have been used as such much earlier. It's my understanding that British Common Law took up the legal meaning of the word "person" from Roman Law and its current meaning evolved from that. But that should be expanded on under the heading of Law. The meaning of "person" in Trinitarian religion evolved in an entirely different direction.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenjacobsen (talk • contribs) 00:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Person vs Personhood

It has been suggested that Person and personhood should be merged. Discussion: Person and human are similar concepts. Personhood is a legal definition that deals with liberty and other roles in society. The Person article talks about Legal person, Natural person, Personal identity and the Individual. Personhood talks about who can legally be considered a person, see Personhood (disambiguation). I worked on separating the content, see what you think. Thanks. USchick (talk) 02:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

"Person" and "human", as covered by their respective wiki articles, are not similar subjects. "Human" is about homo sapiens and their biology, psychology, culture, etc... about humans. "Person" is primarily about personhood, which is not coextensive with humanity; not all humans have always been (or are today) considered persons, and non-humans are sometimes or might someday be considered persons, so "person = human" is a very controversial claim. The lede of this article (consensus on which was painstakingly established through very long and extensive discussion here, so you making such sweeping changes to it is not appreciated) very clearly established that scope. Until the edits you just made, the bulk of this article discussed matters of personhood, which you evidently agree with because you just moved that content to "Personhood". There is a very good reason why "personhood" used to redirect here until you changed that as "uncontroversial". What is now at "Personhood" (formerly at "Personhood movement") is a very new article less than two months old, while this article is much older and better-established, with inbound links from all over the wiki. You are editing the articles to "prove" your point, which is a little underhanded. I have reverted your edits until discussion here is settled.
That said, however, there was some talk here before, in the aforementioned long, painstaking discussions you can see above on this talk page, about whether this page should be entirely about personhood or also about personal identity, etc. There is already a very large article at Personal identity (philosophy), so if this article was to discuss personal identity, it would need to do so in summary style. I suggested in the aforementioned discussions that if we were to do so, we should probably also make Personhood its own article and cover it here in summary style as well. If you like that idea, that could be a good compromise. In the mean time, I don't object to you building up Personhood with content from here, and I'll even come and help, but for now lets leave this article alone as its current state is a very delicate issue. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I assure you, I was not doing anything underhanded when I created Personhood (disambiguation) and then asked an administrator to move Personhood off the Person page. According to the dictionary, a person is a human being. I'm not sure why that's controversial. Personhood, on the other hand is very controversial and is being discussed in the Supreme Court. USchick (talk) 05:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
"A human being" is one of many different definitions offered for "Person" in most dictionaries, along with varying legal, philosophical, sociological, etc definitions. "Personhood" is entirely about who is or is not a person, so that being controversial entails the subject of this article being controversial. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:30, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

On the Person article it says that "A person is an entity" – in my opinion, this is why Person and Personhood needs to be separated into two different articles. A person can only be an entity in legal terms. USchick (talk) 04:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

(Apologies for merging this into your previous comment earlier). I think you are attaching a special meaning to the term "entity"; it has usage much more general than "legal entity". I'm not even sure why it's hyperlinked here to begin with as it doesn't have a special meaning in this content. Entity just means the same as "being" or "thing" - it's saying a "a person is something which...", but some people get huffy about calling people "things", like it's denigrating them, so we can't say that. I would be happy saying "being"; for that matter, I would rearrange that sentence to say "a person [...] is a being, such as a human, which...", and I would be very happy (though I imagine User:Walkinxyz would object) to end that sentence with just "...certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood", and then let the Personhood page sort it out. Although conversely, on the Personhood page, I would want to say that "Personhood is the status of being a person", and then go into details about how and why the requirements for having that status are controversial.
To be clear on this merge-or-split issue overall: I would be very happy to have the discussion of personhood at the article with that title, merge the Philosophy and Law sections from here to there, and have just a summary here; but it's been discussed here and disputed before so we should get input from other editors first; and what remains here should not disrupt the delicate consensus very painstakingly achieved already, by just saying "a person is a human". --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I think we're in agreement on a lot of points. However, please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policy for naming articles and disambiguation. Words have meaning and it's not always what we think. For example, for Entity there is also no presumption that an entity is animate. Sometimes an entity is not a person. But a person is a human being, and in addition, a person can be more inclusive. USchick (talk) 06:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I think you misunderstood me with regards to naming and disambiguation, see my response below.
"Entity" also has no presumption of being inanimate either, so why is that relevant either way? Yes, sometimes an entity is not a person; that doesn't mean that a person is not a kind of entity. Sometimes a mammal is not a dog, that doesn't mean a sentence starting "A dog is a mammal..." incorrect. However, "a mammal is a dog..." would be incorrect; and likewise, humans are (at least usually, according to most sources) people, but a person is not necessarily a human, so we can's say "a person is a human". We need to keep our subsets and supersets straight. Humans are a subset (or at least intersect with) persons, and persons are a subset of entities, so we can say "a person is an entity..." and "(some) humans are persons...", but not "an entity is a person.." or "a person is a human...". --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Person-related articles

On the above subject of how different articles relate, I have some thoughts on on a broader reorganization of person-related articles:

Personhood (disambiguation)

Personhood (disambiguation) seems like a useless article to me. It currently points here, and to Personhood, and to three articles which should be covered in summary style within this article or (if we split it off) Personhood: Corporate personhood, Beginning of human personhood, and Great Ape personhood.

Person (disambiguation)

Person (disambiguation) serves a good purpose in differentiating between the very unrelated senses of Grammatical person and the sense discussed in these other articles, and all the people and places incidentally named "Person". Other content there does not need to be there, in my opinion: the last two semi-definitional entries about "human" and "body" do not serve the legitimate purpose of a disambiguation page of sorting people to the right article, and Legal person and Natural person should be covered in summary style in the "Law" section of this article or (if we split it off) Personhood, as they are sub-topics within the topic of legal conceptions of personhood.

Personal identity (philosophy)

While we're at it, I think Personal identity (philosophy), should be just at Personal identity simpliciter as it is clearly the primary subject and there are no other articles named "Personal identity" anywhere on Wikipedia. The other two items listed on the disambiguation page currently there, Identity (social science) and Personally identifying information, can be easily disambiguated from a hat note on the main article.

People and People (disambiguation)

I think we also need to sort out what to do in relation to the articles People and People (disambiguation). The latter clearly needs to exist as there are many unrelated things just incidentally named "People", as listed there. But the former has a big redundancy with this article and with Personhood, and the rest of it is just summaries of topics vaguely related to the subject of people-en-masse. So I don't think that article really needs to exist except as a disambiguation page.

Overall plan

In summary, here's what I think we need to do, to bring all of these articles in line with each other:

We should definitely get input from the editors at all of these articles before doing anything, and maybe move this discussion to a more neutral place (where would that be?), but for now, thoughts from everyone here? In the meantime, I'll put merge and move templates where appropriate on these articles, and direct discussion to the appropriate sections here.--Pfhorrest (talk) 04:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

This overall plan is not consistent with Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Disambiguation USchick (talk) 05:19, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Would you care to elaborate on that? Where is the inconsistency? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:30, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
You propose to redirect People (disambiguation) to People. What about all the other "people" listed on that page?
Personal identity (disambiguation) redirecting to Personal identity is in direct violation of policy. see Wikipedia:Disambiguation. USchick (talk) 05:50, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Ah, I think you misunderstand me. The list above is a picture of what I would like the final arrangement of article names to have as their content. The suggested steps to reach this arrangement were listed above. With regards to the disambiguation pages, you need to take the suggestion for the non-dab page and the suggestion for the dab page in conjunction. So, for those two examples you list here:
  • My vision is to have, at the article titled "People", essentially what is currently at the article titled "People (disambiguation)", and then for that latter title to redirect to the former. In other words, to delete the article currently titled "People", and move the article currently titled "People (disambiguation)" to its place. That is not a violation of policy; disambiguation pages do not need to have "(disambiguation)" in their name if there is no other article with that name, see for example "Personal identity" below.
  • "Personal identity (disambiguation)" currently redirects to "Personal identity", which is already just a disambiguation page - this is not my doing. My vision is to have at the title "Personal identity" the substantiative article which is currently at "Personal identity (philosophy)", and not have any disambiguation page as there aren't multiple ambiguously-titled articles named "Personal identity", just two tangentially related articles that could be disambiguated in a hat note on the main article. In other words, just to move "Personal identity (philosophy)" to "Personal identity", and add a hat dab to that.
--06:43, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
I think we need a third opinion about titles of articles. What you're describing does not fit Wiki policy as I understand it. Also, I think personal identity and the philosophy of a person belongs on the person article. USchick (talk) 18:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
This sounds like a major change, which I'm not sure is entirely needed, though it might be reasonable to rename the People article to something else, and then move People (disambiguation) to the non-parenthetical title. In the meantime, I have reverted one of the changes at People (disambiguation), and recommend proceeding more slowly here. --Elonka 23:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
@USchick: I'd love to have a third opinion, but I'm still not clear on what you think the policy violation is. Is it having a disambiguation page at a title that doesn't say "(disambiguation)"? Elonka here doesn't seem to think that would be a problem with "People (disambiguation)" moving to "People". It's also done all over wikipedia, see America for example (a disambiguation page), and America (disambiguation) which redirects to the non-parenthetical title. WP:Redirect supports that (with that exact example) as legitimate. If it's not that, then I'm not sure what the problem you see is.
I agree that (a summary of) discussion of personal identity should go at "Person", but that is certainly not the only thing to do with persons -- defining personhood is a big deal too, which is what I would expect as the main discussion at an article titled "Person", and which is and has been the bulk of the content here -- so if you are suggesting that "Personal identity (philosophy)" be moved to "Person" in place of what is currently here, I disagree. I think it should be included WP:summary style here, but have the bulk of its content in its own article -- and then "Personhood" (now with a lot of the content that was here) be likewise summarized here but with its own main article.
I'm not clear on what you mean by "the philosophy of a person". Are you objecting to my inclusion of the main "Philosophy" section from here onto the Personhood page as part of "Overview"? I didn't understand why you didn't copy that yourself when you were moving content over; that entire section is about personhood in abstract, how to define what is or is not a person; it's just not about the personhood of some particular set of beings (women, slaves, animals, etc). Or are you just talking about the philosophical bent of "Personal identity (philosophy)"?
@Elonka: Agreed about moving slowly; that's what I asked of USchick with her edits to this article, so I'm happy to adhere to it myself. And glad to see you could support moving People (disambiguation) to People.
Do you have anything to say in support of keeping what's at People now? My complaint about it is that it is basically some dictionary stuff about how the word "people" is used (and WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary), and then short summaries of two other things people might have meant to find when they searched for "People" -- in other words, it's an overly-verbose and yet incomplete disambiguation page already. So I think it should become a proper disambiguation page; and since there already is a proper disambiguation page for that subject, that should just be moved there, and what's there now deleted.
As to the scope of this proposal, I really don't think it's that drastic. The most substantial change I'm suggesting is splitting off content from "Person" to "Personhood" and then summarizing it here (which USchick seems to be supportive of), and summarizing "Personal identity (philosophy)" here as well (which previous editors have been supportive of). Besides that, I am suggesting that one overly-verbose pseudo-disambiguation page ("People") become a real disambiguation page, and that some other disambiguation pages be replaced by their primary topic, with appropriate moves and redirects to facilitate that.
--Pfhorrest (talk) 03:35, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
I support the proposal to go slowly. According to policy, People article should be about the primary topic,, and People (disambiguation) is for other uses. In my mind, this is what I envision (and welcome your thoughts): The concept of people is very broad and the article can be expanded to include related concepts like Indigenous peoples, Ethnic group, Human, We the People, Enemy of the people, and Society. The main article Person is a good place to talk about all concepts related to the individual and any related philosophy. The article Personhood is mainly about the struggle for different groups to achieve the status of personhood. It can also have brief summaries with links to People, Person, etc. USchick (talk) 16:18, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Policy is that People should be for the primary topic if there is a primary topic; see the example about America above, again, for which there is no one clear primary topic, so it is just a disambiguation page. Right now what's at "People" is just verbose disambiguation between various other things one might have meant by "people" -- Commoner and Popular sovereignty -- plus some dictionary content that doesn't belong here to begin with, and an off-topic paragraph about personhood that belongs better here or at Personhood. If there was any appropriate, original content on the page (e.g. if you think you can flesh it out into some), I would support keeping it where it is; my objection it that there isn't, it mostly just disambiguates, so it should be just a disambiguation page. Just to illustrate, I'm going to make an edit in a moment to remove the inappropriate content from there, so you all can see what I mean when I say all that's left is disambiguation. Feel free to revert afterwards if you have any objections.
Besides my suggestion for People, was there anything else you thought was in violation of policy? It sounded like you thought the whole thing was problematic, not just that one piece.
Your vision of Personhood as being about "the struggle for different groups to achieve the status of personhood" seems like it would be more fitting for its old title at Personhood movement. If it's to be at "Personhood" simpliciter, it should be about personhood in general and attempts to define it in general, including philosophical attempts at defining it; not just about specific struggles for specific groups to achieve legal recognition, though that should be included too, as it is. I'm still not clear if you are meaning here to object to the "Philosophy" content that you left behind when you moved the entire rest of the "Philosophy" section, which I subsequently moved over to Personhood too -- are you?
--Pfhorrest (talk) 02:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Go ahead and let's see what the final version look like. I'll be busy with work for a while and not involved much here. USchick (talk) 21:05, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Has anyone here given any serious thought to integrating (merging) person, personhood, and people? Or at least merge people into person? Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:27, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Boethius' definition

The Catholic Encyclopedia refers to Boethius definition of "person"

"Naturæ rationalis individua substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature)"

as "the classic definition," one on which they elaborate as a basis for further treatment (they get into Trinitarianism, actually). I have to admit its a good definition: person ultimately has something to do with rationality - an individual something of a rational nature. I know you've been doing a lot of good work here Pfhorrest, what do you think? -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:03, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back Steve, I hope your semi-retirement is treating you well :)
I think the definition of a person is a controversial enough subject that we can't privilege any one definition over another, no matter how old or "classic" (not that that the Catholic Encyclopedia is an unbiased source on the matter either), without opening up a long discussion on the matter. And also that we've moved the detailed discussion about definitions of personhood (the bulk of what was once this article) into its own article, Personhood, and it would be wise for us to direct readers and editors there for discussion of that matter. This article is now a summary-style article of that and Personal identity, which itself should really be Diachronic personal identity, but we don't have an article on Synchronic personal identity yet.
I think ideally this article should eventually answer at least three questions in brief: What makes any person a person at all? (Personhood) What makes a particular person that person? (Synchronic personal identity) And what makes that person now the same person they were before, or will be later? (Diachronic personal identity). With each having its own article with more details on the matter. The lede shouldn't delve too deeply into any of those questions, but just sort of summarize what the questions are. Which, looking now, it doesn't do for either type of personal identity, even the one we have an article on. And I'm not even sure the stuff on Roman law and Christological debates belongs there either, though maybe in an etymology section. I think I will do that in a moment.
A possible compromise, if you really want Boethius on this page, would be to add a paragraph to the lede of Personhood, or reorganize a better first paragraph for its Overview section, briefly summarizing different approaches to defining personhood, and include Boethius in there; then we include that paragraph in the summary of Personhood on this page. What do you think? --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:28, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Yeah I'm back sort of. Ive thus far been cleaning up articles dealing with important religious concepts. It was just a matter of time before I bumped into something you've been working on. Im mostly just reading these related articles and trying to make sense of them. One observation is that they seem to need more citations - particularly the personal identity article. Otherwise I'm detecting a general editing theme that's trying to keep these person articles coherent and cohesive with each other. Its not an easy task. I'm not sure why synchronic and diachronic need their own articles, but Im not keen on their subject matter either. In all things look ok. I'd like to see more of an introduction at this article - one paragraph ledes don't satisfy my curiosity about a topic. -Stevertigo (t | c) 04:38, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Frankfurt quote - is it saying anything?

"The criteria for being a person... are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives." -Harry Frankfurt

This speaks a little bit to the idea that the concept of "person" is important, but is it saying anything about what the idea means? It doesn't appear to. Perhaps this scholar has written other more eloquent things on the subject? Im not going so far as to call it vague, a problem typical in philosophy articles, but if we're going to pick a quote to stand as the introduction to personhood, I think we can do better. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 04:28, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

That quote was chosen in another very long debate here about the lede, as it says something about what a definition of personhood is meant to capture, without favoring any particular definition of personhood. Sometimes vagueness is required to maintain a neutral point of view, when there is sufficiently little agreement on even the definition of a subject.
In an earlier revision of this article (in the midst of that debate) I suggested using that quote for a more substantial but still neutral lede: 'A person is a being, such as a human, that has "those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves".' But the other editor in the debate disputed that. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:08, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I see. -Stevertigo (t | c) 07:37, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Can we delete the "the precise definition of which is the subject of much controversy" part?

This passage in the lead sentence is vague, and could possibly be rewritten in a better way. Controversies regarding the definition can be stated after the actual definition is given in some explanatory form, perhaps in a secondary paragraph. Definitions and definitive language are immensely helpful, particularly where the topic is contentious and the definitions are difficult. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Which "actual definition"? That is the problem. There is no single uncontroversial definition, so stating any one outright in the article's own voice would violate NPOV. And we have a whole other article to discuss the controversy in defining personhood, namely Personhood, so reopening that debate in the lead of this page would be redundant, especially since we already have a summary-style section on personhood immediately following the lead here.
Can you state, if you were to just change that opening sentence on your own whim right now, what you would change it to? Maybe that will lead to more fruitful discussion over what should or should not be in there. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Is rationality a commonly stated property of person, according to the sources you've read? -Stevertigo (t | c) 05:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve - it is the same as with mind. There isn't a single definition, but many mutually exclusive ones. You can't just arbitrarily choose one.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:29, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Maunus, thanks for your interest in this article also. I understand that sources can differ. What I'm asking Pfhorrest is if the sources (the ones he is referring to) agree on the issue of rationality. If they can agree on one or two things, that provides a basis for us to write more definitively, and less vaguely. -Stevertigo (t | c) 21:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
This one has also been on my watchlist for ages. So thanks for your interest. I can certainly provide sources that disagree that rationality can be regarded as a universal aspect of personhood. The concept of rationality itself is not universal.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:39, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
They would contradict the idea of rationality? That sounds interesting. Can you list a couple such contradicting sources here? -Stevertigo (t | c) 23:43, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Marcel Mauss "The Person As a Category Of The Human Mind"( was the first attempt to understand the concept of personhood in a cross-cultural context, without simply reifying the notions developed in Western philosophy. Read a good summary here: [2]). Mauss' work is the starting point for thinking about personhood in psychology, anthropology and it is even influential among some philosophers. Read for example Carrithers et al. "The category of the person Anthropology, philosophy, history"[3] or Marilyn Strathern, or Paul Kockelman. These works don't tend to mention "rationality", but rather see the "person" as the particular clutural construct that determines what kinds of entities 1. have minds 2. are possible to engage as social beings. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:04, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

((Fictions (personages, masks, corporations, name-aliases) do NOT associate. Only people do that. /-bam/))

I looked at that summary, so I gather that Mauss viewed "person" as a socio-cultural construct? Is that correct? I would point out that any word or concept regarding a component of society and|or culture would naturally be a cultural "construct" of some kind. From the summary:
Thus, a clan or other similar group might possess a finite stock of names. The name typically represented, not only membership in a group but also a specific position within it, and so individuals might change names within the course of their lives. Such names, Mauss suggested, were akin to masks..
The idea attributed to Mauss here seems to be that names, like masks, might have the property of interchangeability - not something that jives with the meaning of "name" as we us it to identify and represent individuals. We are stuck with our names, just like we are stuck with our gender - we can't simply throw them out. Someone's proper name is not the mask. "triangle" is not a mask for a particular class of 3-legged objects. The Man is the actor in everything he does, regardless of his name, real (parentally-assigned or alias chosen.
The end result of this evolution was a conception of personhood in terms of individual consciousness rather than as the embodiment of set social relationships. These ideas have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of anthropologists who reject any teleological dichotomy between European societies as essentially dynamic and non-European ones as static."
His ideas got shot down I gather. Does Mauss say anything in his conception of "person" that would contradict the idea of rationality? That "person," at some level, is rational? -Stevertigo (t | c) 00:50, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't know of anyone who does not view the person as a socio-cultural construct, that is pretty much the only possible way to view the person. Person is to human as gender is to sex. Rationality has nothing to do with his or most other conceptualizations of Person that I am aware of. Mauss doesn't contradict the idea of rationality because it is irrelevant for his understanding of the concept. Rationality is a concept that is meaningful to some western philosophers but which doesn't have universal currency. I think that the closest one can come to see rationality in cross-cultural definitions of persons is that being a person generally comes with expectations that a persons behavior have some degree of predictability, as a minimum requirement for engaging it as a social being. (I think a possibility of a basic definition of person would be "a social being", i.e. a being that is capable of engaging socially with other persons in a community.) Mauss' ideas of the Mask in indigenous North american culture (I think Kwakiutl) was that in that culture people were named after the masks resembling gods. And that being a named individual therefore implied being one of the masks. Therefore his idea of the person was that a culture has a repertoires <add>myriad</add> of possible ways of being a person that an individual has to fit into in order to be considered a person. In most countries having a name is one of those criteria. And, no, Mauss' ideas did not "get shot down"; that is a ridiculous way of talking about the founder of a field of inquiry. His ideas have been further developed. every anthropologist working at the beginning of the century (except the Boasians) had the idea of a teleological dichotomy between "primitive" and European societies. that is a single aspect of his ideas about personhood that has been superceded. You are going to have to read the entire thing instead of snippets taken out of context.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:01, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: Mauss appears to quote Cassiodorus: "Cassiodorus ended by saying very precisely: persona - substantia rationalis individua (Psalmum VII). The person is a rational substance, indivisible and individual. It remained to make of this rational, individual substance what it is today, a consciousness and a category. This was the work of a long study by philosophers, which I have only a few minutes left to describe." - This is significant, I think, as it deals with the concept of rationality as it existed historically. -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:06, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that seems significant. Note that he redefines rational to being a category that has a consciousness (i.e. mind). A person is something to which we attribute mind. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:17, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
OK, according to Collins (same PDF): "Compare the person first as a 'rational individual substance' and only later 'what it is today, a consciousness and a category'" - the distinction represents a kind of development from an old idea about person to a newer one - one that involves the concept of "category." A category is a linguistic/logic construct - we use it to describe what in math would be called a set, something which is contained by means of a unifying property. Its seems rather opaque to call this a "development". -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:23, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
That is not what Mauss means by category he means a cultural construct, i.e. an abstract concept defined by social convention. So the development is that Mauss did not assume that what it means to be a "rational substance" is something that all people at all time define in the same way - a considerable development.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
"Rationality" as Boethius and Cassodorus use it does not mean that "a persons behavior have some degree of predictability, as a minimum requirement for engaging it as a social being." A dog can behave predictably, and be socially engageable, and yet it will not act *rationally in the way a human being will. -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:27, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
And a dog can be a person, showing that rationality has nothing to do with person hood. A fetus doesn't act rationally either.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
A dog cannot be a person. It cannot love in the way a person can, it cannot think or respond in the way a person can. A fetus, like a small child, has the potential to grow into a rational being, hence we regard it as a living thing of a rational substance, even if it doesn't act "rationally" (in the colloquial usage of the word). I would submit though that even a fetus (of a certain minimum cognitive development) will think in a way that is rational - ie. it will try to categorially understand itself and its world. And, since we are on the subject, in an ideal world, a corporation cannot be a person either. Im reading Mauss' section and Im getting the sense that something is lost in translation when he uses the word "category." -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:34, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
SO now being able to love is also a criteria for being a person? You may not think that a dog can be a person, but that is like... your opinion man. The word category has a long and glorious genealogy of meaning within anthropology, it does have similarities with the linguistic/logic use - but it stresses the socially constructed nature of the categorizational scheme. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·
And the problem with "rational" is that it also doesn't have a good definition. SOme people would define it just as "act in one's own selfinterest" in which case a dog and a cockroach can act rationally.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:41, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
(Phone's ringing Dude.) While Im sure there are people who will dress up their pet goldfish and talk to it and pretend its a person, there is an astronomical difference between human beings and the beasts with regard to what goes on in their brains. Granted beasts are different, and some have more brains than others. But even the highest primates can barely string three sign-words together, while a human two-year old can babble on for days. (Infinite use of finite means). And of course acting in self interest ≠ rationality, in the way we use it, though I do get your point that at some level even the insects are basically logical (catch fly, eat fly, etc.). But thats logical, not rational. There's a difference. -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:53, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
The point is that beings are defined as persons not based on what goes on in their brains (they don't even need to have brains) but in accordance to how the society in which they are recognized as persons think they do. Deities and deity effigies can be regarded as persons with minds and social lives, so can dead people, spirits, pets. You don't need to have a mind for me to consider you a person - I just need to think you do. And it matters little if the mind I think you have is rational. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:57, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

OK so according to Mauss argument, if I go to McDonalds and I talk to someone from a drive-thru chat box, I get someone on the other end, Im going to regard them as a person, whether they have any brains or not? Is that the idea? Seems like a silly idea. For one, people test each other's ability to think all the time. -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:08, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't remember Mauss ever writing anything about you or McDonalds. It is your assumption that "testing someone's ability to think" has any bearings on whether or not you will se that person as a person. I am continuously offended by your tendency to reject the ideas of much greater thinkers than you and I as "silly" before you have even tried to understand them. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:14, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks to me like you two are arguing about your personal notions of personhood, or whether some notable author's notion of personhood is correct. This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid doing in the article. Note that I explicitly do not want to state that a person is a social construct with no true universal definition, as that is just as biased as asserting any particular definition as universal. Compare, analogously: either asserting any religion to be true, or asserting that all religions are mere social constructs with no basis in truth, would violate NPOV. We can talk about what different religions believe to be true, and we can talk about the anthropology and sociology of religion and how people come to view those things as true; and likewise we can talk about what different sources claim a person to be, and about how different social groups etc come to define that category; but as this is a controversial topic with no consensus among experts in all relevant fields, we can neither state that any one position is correct nor that no position is correct and they're all just baseless social constructions. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

No I am arguing tthat Steve's notion of personhood is irrelevant and that Mauss' is relevant. I don't know of anyone who has argued that there is universally valid definition of Person, but I am sure someone has. If it is sourceable and notable then of course it should be part of the definition. But that just means that we will have a vague definition along the lines of "there is no definition. I am fine with that but Steve tends to be allergic to that and insert his own commonsense definitions instead.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:14, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve is going off of Boethius' definition, which is most certainly notable. I think your bias toward Mauss' type of definition is pretty strong. I explicitly do want to say that there is no uncontroversial, consensus definition (but not that none of the controversial definitions might be correct), as that is necessary for NPOV in this case, and I am arguing against Steve inserting Boethius' or any other definition as definitive; but equally so against you doing so for anything like Mauss' definition. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:23, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve is arguing from his own personal opinion of what the word means. I am pretty sure Boethius never wrote about the philosophical implications of going to a McDonalds driveby. I have not proposed to insert Mauss definition as definitive - because it obviously isn't. I have used it as a counter example to Steve's idea that Boethius' definition is definitive.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:18, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Well apparently Boethius and Cassiodorus came up with strikingly similar definitions of "person" having something to do with rationality. Is this definition too tight, too exclusive? I don't think so, rather I think it makes a good starting point, after which we can talk about Mauss' ideas (Aristotelianism, sort of?) regarding categories, etc. It seems clear that without rationality theres no person. On a humorous note, I thought this was worth mentioning. -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:22, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
No.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:24, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Like I said, without rationality theres no person. -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Luckily for you I disagree.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:37, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah just the kind of cheap shot that totally legitimizes your argument. -Stevertigo (t | c) 02:45, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I think your guys' disagreement (and that of the sources you cite) totally legitimizes my argument that defining personhood is controversial and so no definition stated as fact in the wiki's own voice passes NPOV. --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Its not clear that there is much disagreement. Clearly there is general idea of personhood that is rooted in the idea of rationality. Boethius' and Cassidorus' definitions like I said appear nearly identical, and both appear to have been influential. It seems that somewhere along the way the rationality position was deprecated somehow and replaced with a so-called category idea, even though this idea seems rather opaque. Still, if its a legitimate position, we should represent it in the article. "Person" after all isn't all that complicated an idea - we use it all the time in a certain well-defined number of ways. Hence we can state upfront what the common definition is, according to Wiktionary, and then get into the major divisions, and do so all the while without asserting one POV over another. There is some history to the idea of "person" and we need to represent that history somehow. -Stevertigo (t | c) 05:56, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Wiktionary's relevant current definitions include an individual human being, or the body thereof, which we've already got in the lede right now phrased such as to not exclude possible nonhuman persons; or an individual of some nature with legal standing before a court, without specifying what criteria it is by which an entity is given such legal standing, which we also have something akin to here (the "similar being with whatever criteria constitute personhood" bit). (Irrelevant definitions currently listed at wiktionary include grammatical person, compound noun phrases like "cat person" which I don't think really belong there much less here, and "penis" which is poorly sourced and should probably be removed).
As for disagreement over the definition, please just read the overview section over at Personhood, which is really where any material on this subject belongs. There are lots of people saying some variety of "a person is any entity with x, y, and z capacities", and yes rationality is a common one among them but not universal even among them; then there are lots of other people saying (like Maunus and his Mauss) varieties of "a person is whatever some society calls a person"; and there are still others which say that a person is just a human, they are synonyms and that's that.
Before Personhood was spun off, and most of its content was here, the lede here said flat out that a person was a human. I contested that, as there are clearly notable views on personhood which admit some non-humans, and changed it to give an incomplete list of examples of criteria by which personhood is sometimes defined, including things like rationality. That lead to a very protracted and rather fruitless debate with someone else here over whether personhood can be universally defined by any such list of criteria or if it's necessarily a matter of "whatever is called a person". That lead to something like the current minimalistic phrasing, a bit more verbose, and then shortly thereafter we spun that whole thing off into its own article (Personhood) summarized here along with other articles related to persons, such as Personal identity.
Finding a couple examples of authors who agree with each other is not enough to establish consensus among the experts when we have people here clearly citing their favorite experts in total disagreement with each other, and a whole other article all about those disagreements (and the history behind them), and a summary of it is the first section after the lede here. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:18, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Just to be sure you realize it I am in complete agreement with you. I only introduced Mauss here to show Steve that not everybody in the world defines person has having anything to do with rationality and that therefore we cannot define it as such in the definition. The definition has to be vague and broad enough to encompass all philosophical, legal and cultural definitions of the concept. Also the ones Steve finds "silly".·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok, good to have you on board then, and sorry for any confusion. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:24, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
You removed all mention of culturalk variability in the lead, leaving only discussion of the relevance for Philosophy and law. That is unbalanced and I have removed that sentence as well. NOw we should focus on writing a lead that summarises the content of the article. Or perhaps rather that summarises what the content of the article should be.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:54, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
That passage you removed was more about choice of words in pluralization, i.e. why sometimes we write "people" and other times we write "persons" (the latter only being used in certain technical contexts like philosophical and legal writing, where "people" may have meaning other than the simple plural of "person"), not about the relevance of the concept of a person in any particular field. What I reverted from your edits was just trying to keep any bias toward personhood as a cultural construct out, as there are plenty of notable authors who think there are universal criteria for personhood which apply always everywhere regardless of whether the people then and there think so (e.g. black persons have always been just as much persons as white persons, even when they were legally regarded as mere fractions of persons, and socially regarded as even less). I don't object to anything about the anthropological or sociological importance of different concepts of personhood, but those really belong in the article Personhood rather than here anyway. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:24, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Frankfurt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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