The thesis of person essentialism is that “any being that is ever a person cannot exist at any time without being a person” (DeGrazia, 30). In other words, being a person is essential to our existence. The human organism merely houses or constitutes the person, so for beings like us, the human organism may exist without possessing rational thought or self-awareness in the form of a ‘pre-person’ or a ‘post-person’. In this view, ‘pre-persons’ are not beings like us (they are instead a precursor to us), and ‘post-persons’ are no longer considered to be alive. There is certainly contention surrounding the definition of ‘persons’, but it does take on a fairly standard meaning in the context of the Psychological Criterion for Personal Identity, which posits that psychological continuity is essential to our continued existence. One of the earliest accepted definitions of personhood was introduced by John Locke. He describes a person as a “thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places” (Locke). Lynne Rudder Baker believes that personhood requires a first-person perspective, “a perspective from which one thinks of oneself as an individual facing a world, a subject distinct from everything else” (Francescotti, 44). Mary Anne Warren describes five relevant criteria for personhood: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity for complex communication, and self-awareness (Francescotti, 44). Harry Frankfurt requires self-motivated activity and freedom of the will for personhood (Francescotti, 44). When considering all of these definitions and criteria, one might notice that several groups of humans do not fit within these standards, yet denying them personhood (and thus, full moral status and rights), would be extremely controversial. Among them are infants and small children, individuals with severe mental disabilities, and those in the late stages of dementia. For the purposes of this essay, I will not discuss humans such as anencephalic infants and those in persistent vegetative states, as they lack any mental activity altogether. Some believe that this ‘problem of nonparadigm humans’ is best solved by putting them in a category of ‘borderline persons’. However, it becomes difficult to conceptualize a way to decide who qualifies in a non-arbitrary way when considering that phenomena such as selfawareness and free will are nearly impossible to measure. Challenges to Person Essentialism
I have already established that a problem with person essentialism under a Lockean definition of personhood is that it excludes many sentient beings, thus putting their moral status into question. In this section, I will explore some of the objections to the implications of this view. David DeGrazia outlines an objection to 35
Person Essentialism and its Drawbacks
