Gerald Bivens

Projects

Definitions

'personhood'=df

Let us mean by "a criterion of personhood" a specification of the characteristic (or set of characteristics) that is such that (1) no being can be a person unless he or she possesses that characteristic, (2) any being who possesses that characteristic is a person, and (3) it is precisely that characteristic that directly confers personhood on whoever possesses it. The person-making characteristic, in brief, is that characteristic (or set of characteristics) that is common and peculiar to all persons and in virtue of which they are persons.1

Notes

  1. Joel Feinberg and Barbara Baum Levenbook, "Abortion," in Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Tom Regan, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993), 197-8.