On the very idea of criteria for personhood (4 Nov 2010)

Timothy Chappell, Professor of Philosophy, Open University, gives a talk for the Ian Ramsay Seminar series on 4th November, 2010. Professor Chappell examines the familiar criterial view of personhood, according to which the possession of personal properties such as self-consciousness, emotionality, sentience, and so forth is necessary and sufficient for the status of a person. He argues that this view confuses criteria for personhood with parts of an ideal of personhood. In normal cases, we have already identified a creature as a person before we start looking for it to manifest the personal properties, indeed this pre-identification is part of what makes it possible for us to see and interpret the creature as a person in the first place. And that pre-identification typically runs on biological lines. Except in some interesting special or science-fiction cases it is human animals that we identify as persons

You can listen to On the very idea of criteria for personhood (4 Nov 2010) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

On the very idea of criteria for personhood (4 Nov 2010) is an episode from Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion by Oxford University.

This episode is 51:05 long.

This episode was published on Apr 18, 2011.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.