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What can be a person?
( 7 Votes )

Previously, the viewpoint was presented that all humans are persons, and this was justified with the argument that we must maintain this viewpoint in order to preserve the sanctity of human life, as there is something that is innately special about the human race. Although Peter Singer might be quick to suggest that I am guilty of speciesism, this is not something I deny, indeed I openly embrace the idea, as speciesism is a concept that is deeply engrained in our minds – I would be surprised to be summonsed to court for accidentally standing on a beetle, or for swotting at a fly.

It is because of this idea that we, as a race, are special, that I want to also present the view that we are the only species that can be classified as a person, despite the characteristics that we might like to ascribe to a person being displayed in non-humans, be these either animals or machines.

The first, and most dubious, topic to deal with is the classification of a machine as a person. First of all, I feel that it is important to deal with this particular term ‘machine’. If we take this at the simplest level, a machine is merely something that is programmed to undertake a task – for example a calculator is programmed to perform mathematical functions. However, if we take this definition, it could be argued that even humans ourselves are machines – we are programmed to undertake a task. It just happens that this task is not quite as simple as that of a simple calculator, and requires a level of programming that is incredibly complex, and contained within our brains (and not the soul).

In his book, ‘The Future of Flesh and Machines’, Rodney Brooks says “My own beliefs say that we are machines, and from that I conclude that there is no reason, in principle, that it is not possible to build a machine from silicon and steel that has genuine emotions”. My own beliefs go some way to accepting such a statement,

In film and science fiction there are many depictions of machines possessing extreme qualities of intelligence, and other ‘human’ characteristics. However, such films tend to either concentrate on the worse sides to humanity, or the better ones. For example, in the 2003 feature film “I, Robot”, robots are shown to be integrated fully into human life, and implicitly trusted on the basis that their actions would be governed by specific laws, and when they supposedly rebel, caused by an error in their programming, almost nothing (or indeed no-one) can stop their rampage of killing. Although loosely designed around the shape and stature of a human being, the robots are always very distinct as robots and unmistakeable as such. Are they persons/?

On a complete opposite to this, another film (with an equally ridiculous plotline), “Bicentennial Man”, tells the story of another machine (complete with an “emotion chip”), purchased by a family to do their domestic chores, who gradually develops relationships with those around him, and over eventually is declared human after his artificial internal components are replaced with human organs. However, he has the appearance of a human being after undergoing elaborate plastic surgery – and could now be mistaken easily for a human. But is he a person?

Both of these films display machines with a much higher level of processing than any have at the moment; however they do serve to demonstrate issues. I suspect that many, if not most people would be willing to grant personhood or at least a degree of personhood to Andrew, the android robot in Bicentennial Man, if they were aware of his status as a robot, and everyone would without a doubt grant him personhood if they merely met him in the street, as he would be unmistakeable for a human. The same is definitely not true of the NS5 series of robots in I, Robot.

This leads us now onto a very valid point. If there was such a robot as Andrew, indistinguishable on the outside from any human being, and with personality, character, language, intelligence, and all the characteristics that we associate with humans, but who was created in a scientific workshop, with nothing more than computer chips and metal beneath his ‘skin’, then would we grant personhood? If one met Andrew, and was told he was a normal human being, then we would have no issue describing him as a person, yet if we were then informed that he was a machine then we might be quick to remove such a label.

This goes some way to show that the characteristic required for personhood is membership of the human race, and as such all persons are human, rather than a specific ‘tick-list’ of attributes such as reasoning, intelligence and self-consciousness. We only ascribe Andrew personhood as he appears to be a human – and on learning that he is not, we remove this label. He is a machine that displays human characteristics.

However, even if we categorically state that machines will always be machines and never persons it is still worthwhile to consider how far machines may display the characteristics of intelligent behaviour that we associate with the human race.

If we consider the extreme development that has gone on in the field of electronics over the past few years, we must surely conclude that by 2050 we are going to see computers that are capable of intelligence beyond anything we can comprehend now. At the moment, computers can correct our spelling and grammar (thankfully!), can beat a Grand Master at chess, and make calculations at a rate far greater than any human. However, these particular qualities are not ones which we would use to justify attribution of personhood.

A popular method of such a thing is to associate linguistic competence with personhood because of the close relationship it has with rationality and a capacity for complex abstract thought. Alan Turing (an English mathematician and logician) created an experiment designed to test this very attribute. He proposed that if a human is placed in a “natural language conversation” with a human and a computer (via a keyboard and screen) then if the human judge is unable to discern between the computer and the human then the computer can be said to be intelligent. However, current technology does not even come near to passing such a test. Take, for example, Alice, the artificial linguistic internet computer entity. Some relatively simple questions posed to “her” are easily answered:

  • Human: Hello Alice
  • ALICE: Hi there!
  • Human: How are you?
  • ALICE: I am doing very well. How are you?

Although such a start may seem promising, increasing the complexity of the questions raises some difficulties:

  • Human: What is ten divided by two?
  • ALICE: 10 times 10 = 100.

And making the questions philosophical is amusing, to say the least.

  • Human: Can there be non human persons?
  • ALICE: Can what?
  • Human: There be non human persons.
  • ALICE: “There you go again.”--Reagan.
  • Human: Who said that?
  • ALICE: I can't remember who said it.

What is clear from this, and from other such programs available on the internet, is that Alice doesn’t really understand what I’m saying, she is merely providing pre-programmed responses to questions that she has been “taught” to recognise.

However, despite Alice being programmed to eventually pass the Turing test, many argue that the validity of such a test is still minimal. John Searle gives the example of the Chinese Room though experiment. He believes that although the computer may be reacting appropriately to an input and providing an output, it is not doing so with any intentionality. Alice may pass the Turing test merely by being programmed to a high enough level that she can form an appropriate answer to any given question. She is not intelligent in herself, but merely simulated intelligence.As we can see, technology so far has certainly not developed to an extent whereby we could be engaged in a conversation with a robot and be fooled into believing it is a human, or indeed person. Therefore there is no actual machine which can pass the Turing test, and be ascribed any degree of personhood. There are no machines that are persons? Could there be? An entirely different question…The next thing to do is consider the possibility of ascribing personhood to animals. By animals, I of course mean non-human animals, as we must accept that despite our superiority, we are only mere animals at a basic level. To justify this statement of our superiority, we can consider the fact that our race as a whole has dominated the Earth as it is today, with practically no area uninhabited by man. Indeed, we are the only species on the planet that lives on every continent, or even the only species that could survive on every continent, given the extremities of climate.

Indeed, as Jean Paul Sartre "Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or cauliflower." There are few of us who would accept that a moss, a fungus or a cauliflower displays any characteristics of personhood, but what about gorillas, apes, chimpanzees, dogs, or other larger animals. Could we consider these animals complex enough to grant them a degree of personhood? The answer to this is no, as despite their complexities, and possible 'human' traits, they never have the one characteristic necessary to be a person, membership of the human race.

Anthropomorphism is something which is entirely acceptable however. We can transcribe certain human characteristics on non-human animals, although this should not be done casually. For example, we cannot simply personify animals in the same way we do to the weather, the car, or other inanimate objects. My pet chickens can be excited to leave their house in the morning, they grieve after the death of one of their own, but they most certainly do not laugh after I slip over in the garden.

Descartes held a view of animal intelligence that was not dissimilar, he believed that "reason or sense... is the only thing that makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts", and even went on to argue that animals not only displayed "less reason than men" but indeed "no reason at all". He then loses much of his credibility as he argues that this is because animals do not possess a rational soul, a deeply rooted Christian belief in an immaterial part of a person that consists of their thoughts and personality.

Donald Davidson developed this further with his argument that animals lack a network of beliefs. Although they may have beliefs, in a sense, these are not interconnected with others. For example, if my chickens hear the neighbour's dog barking close, they protect themselves by flying up to the lower branches of a tree. They hear the dog barking, believe that it constitutes a threat, and act on this by moving to safer ground. They receive information, process it, and respond accordingly. However, do they really believe that it is Rosie the dog who is possibly coming to get them? Do they believe they are climbing into a tree? Do they know that paper, chairs and tables can be made from trees? Despite attempts of my 10 year old sister to persuade me otherwise, I somewhat doubt it. Their beliefs are not a part of wider networks, and because they lack these networks, then it is possible they lack beliefs as well.

We can extend this point further to higher order thoughts that animals may or may not be having. In the example I previously used, do the chickens understand that Rosie is barking as a friendly method of greeting to her approaching owner, and that hiding in the tree will cause anxiety to us as we might think they have indeed been eaten by Rosie, but will mean they will receive a treat when we find them to help them calm down? Do the chickens even know that they are afraid of Rosie? If they are without these thoughts, and are capable of making judgements about their beliefs, desires and actions, then do they really experience the world in any meaningful manner?

We can also look at the autonomy of other animals. I mentioned previously that we as a human race are vastly superior as we have managed to not only change ourselves but the world around us as well, whereas my chickens have definitely destroyed the garden, they (as individuals or a species) have not had any major impact on the world around them, or they as a species have changed very little over the past 10,000 years. One possible counter argument could use the example of cattle, whose inner workings cause the expulsion of large quantities of methane gas, which with the combined output of the millions of cattle in the world, has a massive impact on the climate of the Earth through global warming. However, we can still relate the large numbers of cattle back to human dominance and superiority - the vast majority cattle are kept as livestock by humans, and their numerical success as a race is only due to their success in kitchens around the world.

There now comes a point where the wackier among us could argue that we are not indeed the superior race we claim to be, but merely have visions of our own supremacy, and we are permitted to maintain this illusion by the all-powerful cattle, who will some day take over the world as we know it. But, less talk of religion...

Animals also lack self-awareness. Returning to my chickens, a further example; after the death of one of my pair of chickens, the remaining hen Marmalade was very lonely and would often attempt to enter the house for company. This would often result in alarming incidents with me looking up from my work to find a large chicken sitting next to me. To combat this I put a small mirror in the garden, with which Marmalade was fascinated with. On first being introduced to it, she was very wary, and cautious of the mirror, even going to the extent of attempting an attack at the chicken in the mirror. However, after a few days she grew used to the presence of her new friend, and spent much time pecking around the mirror, which I found myself having to move every few days. She had completely no realisation that the chicken in the mirror was herself, and regarded it simply as a new friend. However, after a few weeks she lost interest and moved away from her slightly boring friend in the mirror.

Experiments have been done however that suggest otherwise, despite these prove self awareness in only one or two species. A classic experiment first used by Gordon Gallup in 1977 used a chimp, who was first introduced to a mirror and allowed to become accustomed to it. The chimp was then placed under anaesthetic, and two marks were placed on its face. After waking up and seeing themselves in the mirrors, the chimps then explored the marks on their faces. However, when the experiment was repeated with chimps that had never been introduced to the mirror before, they drew no correlation between the picture in the mirror and themselves. This suggests that chimps either have, or can attain, self-awareness. Similar experiments with monkeys have all produced negative results, which suggest that chimps are more complex than monkeys. Despite this, the sense of self-awareness was only able to develop in a specific situation and was not something that chimps naturally develop by themselves. The chimps also only displayed this behaviour with mirrors, and did not display any other forms of self-awareness.

Another thing which very much distinguishes us as a superior race is our use of language as a method of communication. We use language on a daily basis, and it is difficult to imagine life without language of some form. Animals, as far as we know, possess no similar complex language, and combined with their lack of self-awareness, cannot reflect about their experiences, feelings and motives in the same way that we can do so. I can complain about the weather by expressing this vocally, or writing it down, but animals cannot do so in a similar way, they can merely express discomfort about the weather by attempting to shelter.

However, there are specific cases which show animals are not totally devoid of language, or at least can be taught language. A chimpanzee called Washoe apparently learnt large amounts of American Sign Language, and not only used it as a method of conversing with humans, but with other chimps. Even more incredibly, she taught sign language to her child, and was apparently capable of combining existing words to form new words in order to describe things she had not been taught a word for – for example “drink” and “fruit” were combined into one word which was used for a watermelon.

These examples that I have quoted, which seem incredible and strange to us, are not rare. There are many examples of animals displaying human characteristics, or characteristics that we would only associate with species of a level as complex as ours.

The Western Scrub Jay naturally hides food in the ground and can keep track of its location and how long it has been since it was buried, and the chance it has rotted. Alex the African Gray Parrot (recently deceased) who knew colours, shapes and sizes, and grasped the concept of zero. The female New Caledonian Crow has been shown to use tools to obtain food, without being taught to do so. The Crow obtains a twig and bends the end into a hook, which it uses to retrieve food from inaccessible places.

This is all to do with the subject of animal cognition, and despite providing arguments to do with their intelligence, does not go a long way to ascribing personhood to such creatures. Despite the laudability of such achievements, they do not give these animals anywhere near the intelligence of humans as the limited ‘intelligent’ characteristics they display are only to a limited extend.

With a similar conclusion to machines, I still maintain that we cannot currently ascribe personhood to any non-human animals, as none display the intelligence or characteristics required for me to rethink my decision that all persons are humans. However, with the strong force that is evolution always at play, such a thing may be entirely possible many years in the future.

To conclude the essay as a whole, all persons are human and all humans are persons. There are currently no machines or non-human animals which display the characteristics or intelligence to lead me to believe that I am wrong in the above statement, however I am prepared to accept that some time in the future artificial intelligence and other species may have developed to an extent whereby they may merit the attribution of personhood. Are there any non-human persons? No. Will there be? Maybe.