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
- 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.