The Requirements for personhood

The most important considerations is whether a fetus has ‘personhood’. The reason, of course, is that if the fetus meets the requirements for personhood, then the moral worth of the fetus is on par with that of any other human and, presumably, deserves the same rights.

propose a definition that meets the criteria discussed in the section on definitions.

Please be aware that you are not being asked to simply find a definition!  Your aim is to develop a definition that is so precise that without fail it only includes what counts as a person and nothing else. Below is an example of how this works. Your post must show some critical thought being applied in the following way.

Simply giving a definition is not sufficient.

Here is an example: A person is a being who is capable of rational thought.

Now that we have something to start with, we need to test it.  First, we can ask if there is anything capable of rational thought that is not a person.

Can you think of any? Do dolphins or elephants, for example, have rational thoughts? (You might notice that this pushes us further to ask what we mean by ‘rational’ or ‘thought’!)

So, significant problems arise with this definition.  For instance, it wouldn’t seem to include infants, mentally incompetent persons, and so forth. ‘Rational’ is also somewhat ambiguous and so, even if the definition works, we now need to provide a clear definition of ‘rational’.

Since the proposed definition didn’t include something that it should have, we need to modify it. Again, we could try to define rationality, but let’s go a different route.

Second example: A person is a being that is warm-blooded.  This definition doesn’t seem to work because it doesn’t exclude all that it should.  For instance, some fish are warm-blooded and it doesn’t seem as if they should fall into the same ‘category of value’ as humans.

So, again, the definition doesn’t work. But what happens when we try to refine it with other mental or biological components? Or perhaps behaviors? Something else?

Note that I don’t expect this assignment to be easy in the sense that you’ll quickly come up with a definition.  (No one has come up with a definition that isn’t controversial for some reason or another.)

The point is to gain a better understanding of what it takes to define a term clearly and un-controversially. You MUST offer a definition and then test it. Just like in math class, show your work