August 23, 2012 • 26 mins
What exactly is personhood? Over time, the term "person" has evolved to include numerous concepts. In this episode, Julie and Robert explore the nature of personhood, why corporations are considered meta-people and the sticky concept of consciousness.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tuglas.
And to keep things off here, we're gonna respond to
a little bit of a listener mail, uh, because the
entire episode kind of flows from that listening man. Yeah,
(00:26):
I believe that we had a couple of listening emails
that stemmed from an episode that we did on um
kids who were psychotic um or the ability to actually
identify children who might be sociopathic. Yeah, And I mentioned
in passing it's like, oh, personhood, we could do that, Yeah,
because you can talk about person who We talked about corporations,
and we talked about a film that dealt with actually
(00:50):
running corporations through this this test of this uh sociopathic
test and finding out that corporations actually fit the bill there. Yeah,
that if you if corporations were pool and you psychoanalyze them,
your results would be kind of frightening. So we thought, well, heck,
why not do a podcast on personhood and get to
the bottom of this topic. Well, personhood is a deep thing.
(01:12):
To get to the bottom of a kind of bottomless
in a way. So, but we're certainly going to do
our best to to explore the topic and h and
raise questions in your mind about what it really means. Yeah,
and uh and particulo. I wanted to call out listener
Kelly B. She sent to us in emails as well
as did other people. But she she let us know
that it struck her interest personhood because she just finished
(01:35):
a philosophy class on bioethics and they talked about personhood
in ways she said she never imagined were possible, and
she usually even shared her class materials with us. Was
it was really nice, um and and very inspiring to
talk about this. Cool. So personhood, What is a person?
This is um? What constitutes a person? This is rich
(01:56):
philosophical ground. There are many definitions, there's there's a great
deal of debate. Debate has raged on this in philosophic
circles for centuries. Uh, we're not going to nail down
a precise definition in this episode. So so you can
expect to the philosophical questions to continue. But but there
(02:19):
are some basic ideas that we're gonna run through about
what a person is. UM. Some definitions really center in
on the idea that that the person in this case
has strong moral rights UH and is deserving of legal protection. UM.
Other definitions focus in on the idea that this quote
unquote person has higher moral status than other living things
(02:44):
and and and. One of the the more kind of
succinct definitions comes from philosopher Mary Ann Warren, who lays
out five different UM bullet points for personhood. She says,
one consciousness okay, uh, and in particular, the capacity to
(03:04):
feel pain. So is this quote unquote person and I'm
not gonna stay quote unquote person every time? I person,
So don't worry. But but is this person capable of
feeling pain? Are the conscious of of what's happening around
them and their own pain? Number two reasoning the developed
capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems. Is it
(03:26):
figuring out how the world around it works? Stapler Uh
does not have reasoning at its UH at its disposal.
For instance, UM number three self motivated activity UH is
that doing stuff independent of of either genetic or direct
external control. Does it have a capacity to communicate UM
(03:47):
by whatever means are adequate for that particular person? And
UH is it? Uh? Is it also aware of self concepts.
You know, is it's self aware of itself? Does it
know that it knows something? Um, So these five classifications
are rather useful, but then they're also kind of problematic
(04:10):
as well, because, as we're discussing before we got into
the studio, like what happens with a person if you know,
someone sustains an injury and they lose the ability to
speak if they're unconscious. Like, now you're down to three
out of five? What does that mean? Are you three
fifths of a person? Are you? Or would the scale
really require that you at least hit three out of
five and if you drive down to two then that's it?
Or is it well? And there's all sorts of legal
(04:33):
ramifications here that we'll get into, But I did want
to go to the etymological roots here in terms of
legality and go back to the word person, which comes
from Latin persona, which means mask or to act apart
um person. This idea of a person really sort of
became much more nuanced in Roman society when it would
(04:55):
became attached to the notion of someone's identity and attus
as you mentioned, and then this evolved into the concept
of personhood, which is then a legal right not only
to your name, but to all the wealth that you
accumulate under that identity. Okay, So so in its origin,
it's really more of an idea about public perception of me,
(05:18):
public perception, public wealth, and rights. Right. I mean, if
you're a person, you have specific rights, and it's it's
crazy to say that, but at one time in history,
some people were not considered a person, right, and and
they didn't have rights. And I'm talking specifically about the
fourteenth Amendment, which was a Reconstruction era amendment meant to
(05:42):
bolster the effects of the Civil Rights Act past in
eighteen sixty six, and it said that state and federal
citizenship for all persons, regardless of race, both born or
naturalized United States, was reaffirmed. No state would be allowed
to abridge the privileges and immunities of citizen, no person
was allowed to be deprived of life, liberty, or property
(06:04):
without due process of law. And for the fourth condition,
no person could be denied equal protection of the laws.
So really what you're seeing here is um this concept,
this consciousness of self, this abstract really sort of coming
into concrete terms in terms of material possession or even
just trying to navigate the world. And it's interestingly to
(06:27):
like you said, when you look back in time, you
can definitely find plenty of cases where not everyone was
really afforded the same level of personhood as the other
humans around them, certainly a like like just in the
city American South, you know, in the relatively recent history,
(06:49):
a man had more rights than a woman, and the
man had more rights than the slaves that he owned,
to say nothing of animals and and and uh, and
you know corporations and what have you. Then you have
you have shamanistic religion, say you know, uh, you know
cultures and say the the Amazon or Siberia or and
(07:11):
also also Tibet's early bond religion was was animistic as well,
where animals have a kind of spiritual essence or or
there are other belief systems where even inanimate objects have
kind of a spirit and to a certain extent, you
could say they have a kind of limited personhood and
that these things are not mere objects, but there are
(07:33):
things that matter on a spiritual level. Um and uh.
And that changes the way that you interact with them,
not not to the point where one would say I'm
suing a cariboo this week, but to the extent well
because the cariboosessions, or maybe it would be the other
way around. The cariboo could not sue me, but it
(07:54):
would be a matter of when I kill a cariboo,
it maybe has a little more weight because that or
who means something in a larger sense. You know. What's
interesting too, is that there's some some I guess you
could say radical thought that if you wanted to drop
out of society, if you wanted to um, divorce yourself
from this notion of of material wealth and all those trappings,
(08:16):
that you would inhabit an animalistic like existence wherein you
don't have, you're not saddled with things or with this
idea of legality or rights. Yes, interesting, and that you've
mentioned that, and some of the definitions of personhood I
encountered really focused in on social aspects of personhood, and
(08:41):
and they even one even maybe argument that if you
removed all of one's social um not me know, the activity,
but just relationships in general, like a man alone on
a desert island becomes less of a person because he
has no interaction with real people. And then of course
then he applies personhood to evolve Lleyball and you got
you something. You're talking about Wilson. What's the name of
(09:04):
that movie again? Um? It was Tom Hanks is the Island,
Diane Island, The Island, Dude, the Island, Pure Cats Away, right,
I think so, Yeah, I just remember Wilson more than
that though, because that was really interesting because the Wilson
is the protection of the person. Um. What I wanted
(09:25):
to to mention here is that I think that all
these conditions, these five conditions that you talked about, consciousness
really seems to be the one that stands out the most,
this underpinning of what a person is or what personhood.
And that's great too, because it's like, all right, so
what makes a person? All right, they gotta have they
got to be conscious. And then you're like, all right, great,
well what's consciousness? And and then you fall down the
(09:47):
well because that's that's that that's the big one of
the big philosophical questions. What is human consciousness? I mean,
it's not only philosophical, neurological, it's well, it's a it's
it's an area that multiple fields continue to try and
figure out. I mean, it's also the domain of of spirituality.
And religion, like just trying to figure out what is
(10:07):
going on with the with inside this mind and this
this person that we think we are um like just
self personhood is just impossible to wrap our heads around. Well,
it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was really interested in
this idea of consciousness and personhood, and he translated philosopher
Detrestes writing on Personhood and Treatise on Political Economy, and
(10:32):
here's a quote from it. It says, now, this idea
of property can only be founded on the idea of personality.
For if an individual had not consciousness of his own existence,
distinct and separate from every other, he could possess nothing.
He could have nothing peculiar to himself. So again here
(10:52):
you see the legality of the issue really rising up
again with this idea of consciousness, which then gets into
the territory of as as Kelly B. Pointed out, something
you wouldn't normally think of living wills. Okay, because now
you have this idea of Okay, Uh, I have to
meet these conditions. Have to be conscious, I have to
(11:13):
be capable of rational thought, I have to be self aware,
I have to be capable of purposive behavior. And I
have to possess a sense of my own existence over time,
so my today's self and then my tomorrow self. And
so you do get into this whole area of Okay,
now my personhood is existing in different tenses and it
(11:37):
really does affect um this ability to govern your life
at later stages. Yeah, some of the definitions of person
who has been encountered to also mentioned um the idea
that there is something consistent over the course of a
life span for this person. Okay, so the ideas that
(11:58):
from from birth to death there is U. You know,
Julie may change, but there is a certain Julie nous
two this person that remains the same. But uh, but
then you that raises questions, well, what happens when Well,
first of all, even though the julianus may remain the same, Um,
(12:19):
Julie from a year ago and Julie from a year
a year from now are kind of two different people
and to varying degrees. And uh. And certainly you look
at cases where individuals have dementia or they've they've encountered
something even maybe even less severe that has significantly changed them.
How does personhood factor into that? You look at I
(12:40):
mean you encountered this. We're not you personally, but we
all encountered this in looking at the cases of of
convicted felons. You know, someone goes to jail for a
murder when they're you know, when they're eighteen, and then
when they're sixty years old, like they're they're a different person, right,
I mean there, I mean, I'm granted legal in an
(13:01):
actual and legal sense, they are the same person that
committed that crime in the past, but in another sense,
they are really not that person anymore. They're not an
eighteen year old who killed somebody. There this older person
who has who has had all these other life experiences
between two. I mean, you could get ever more complex.
Who really nailed down that personhood? Especially if you now
(13:23):
go back to a living will that was made in
a certain year of someone's life, and let's say that
they have experienced brain death or um some other circumstance
which has changed their lot in life. Now you have
to consider whether or not their their past self really
as it's um an agreeance with their now self their
(13:43):
present self. And to suss all of that the legality
out of that situation, which becomes really interesting. Um I
thought this would probably be a decent place to mention
something called personhood USA. This is a group uh behind
multiple multiple state level measures to define life as beginning
(14:04):
at conception um rather than than birth. And this is
this idea that personhood really happens with his I go, right, yeah,
I mean because ultimately, when you're talking about personhood, it
also becomes a question of when does it begin and
when does it end? Like when does it end? Like
does that you have to wait till the hardest stop
till the brain is dead, un till it's till the
(14:25):
body has decomposed. Is there a certain amount of legacy
personhood where it's like, all right, well the brain has died,
but the body still lives, so it's not really a
person anymore. But it was so we're gonna be cool
with it. And then in terms of birth, yeah, is
it is? It is a person? A person upon birth
does doesn't meet those conditions that we talked about, right, Yeah,
(14:48):
depending on you know, it comes down to the language
of it, like which definition are gonna throw out? If
you're gonna focus on consciousness, then you have to wait
between twenty and thirty two weeks uh into gestation and
that's when uh, cortical neurons become capable of firing in
ways that make consciousness possible. Okay, Um, And then you know, culturally,
you've you you see case especially in the past, where
(15:12):
children had limited levels of personhood because on a you know,
up until a certain age that was not guaranteed that
they were going to really survive. So to what extent
where the parents willing to invest in that child, so
you might have personhood might not kick in until like
age one. Um. And then uh, and then you've you've
seen you know, as far as arguments about does it
(15:33):
begin upon conception? Does it just life begin ejaculation? You know,
are are dry humps people? I don't know? Yeah, No,
I mean it's very It's interesting because it has this
idea of personhood USA of this group. Um. If if
they were to um have legislation past as they are proposing,
(15:55):
you're basically saying that they would you know, outlaw abortion
at any point in a pregnant see for any reason
and potentially ban the use of in vitro fertilization and
many types of contraception. So even IVF this technology under
under these um conditions of parenthood USA or parenthood personhood
(16:17):
USA uh would not be in use anymore. So the
reason I bring this up is because personhood isn't just
uh let's define you know, the self and all the
belongings that we have. It extends for for uh more
into these other realms of existence. Um and as you say,
birth and death. All right, well we're gonna take a
(16:39):
quick break here, and when we come back, we will
drive forward into discussions of corporations as people, um, artificial
intelligence as people, animals as people, um, and maybe even
people as people. We'll see, we'll see how it goes. Yeah,
and you might even get admit ramund question. All right,
(17:02):
we're back. Well, you you bettered everyone up with mention
of it, So go ahead give us that Mint Romney
impersonation that that is so central to the discussion here.
Corporations are people, my friend? No, that was good. That
was good. That was good. That was not a sound
clip that was duly doing. Yeah, yeah, that wasnt. Romney's
not here with us. Um why do we rom that up? Well,
(17:25):
it's funny and it's topical because on one hand it's
um ntt Romney does have a lot of money and
at times comes off a little robotic. So it's it's
easy to have a lot of fun with the idea
of corporations as people because we're also talking about the
ais as people as well. But but yeah, it's important
because you get into this, uh, this idea of attributing
(17:46):
personhood do things that are not really people. Um. No
matter where you are on the political side of the discussion,
there's no denying that a corporation cannot be hit by
a bus. Um, a corporation, uh cannot go swimming in
a pool, well certainly not a small pool. Um. It's
it's a rather different thing than a human being, and
(18:10):
yet we have attributed it a large amount of personhood
status when it comes to uh the law. Metaphysical personhood
is what we're talking about. And um, what happened Basically
you can kind of look at the evolution of corporate
personhood in this way. Uh. You had the Santa clar
(18:32):
versus Southern Pacific around the turn of the century case,
and this really helped define the personhood of corporations in
terms of the fourteenth Amendment. So basically what lawyers did
as they said, you know, we we want um, you know,
we want corporations to be able to have certain rights
that humans do. Is there a loophole here? And essentially
(18:53):
the fourteenth Amendment was this loophole. So this, UH, this
gave that this case actually gave corporation a modicum at
that time of personhood rights. So when we're talking about rights,
we're talking about UM rights to sue and be sued,
vote and exercise free speech. So it was limited at
(19:15):
that time. And particularly if you think back to Roosevelt
and about nineteen o seven or so, there were further limitations,
particularly with campaign money. Okay, so Roosevelt said, there are
limitations here. You can't just go around giving corporations. You
can't give campaign money to two candidates that they like
in swing votes. Essentially, that would be crazy. Although in
(19:38):
two thousand and ten the decision was made by the
Supreme Court to essentially repeal about a hundred years worth
of legislation at least when it comes to that, and
UH is free speech. Corporations are people and money is
the thing that corporations speak with. So corporially which now
(20:01):
can UM can use their money to advance a political candidate,
although they cannot give it directly to that candidate or
to that campaign, but they can put up one million billboards,
or they can air commercials or or any other way
of trying to support that candidate. UM. I can help
(20:24):
but think when I'm thinking of of corporations as people,
I can't help but think of and and the idea
that we are giving personhood to something that does not
really exists. I keep thinking of tulpas, which are in
the like Tibetan mysticism. Is this uh this uh, this
thought form. It's the idea where you get three people
in a room together and they both all three of
(20:45):
them really believe in um in something. If they all
really believe, say in a woman with fiery red hair,
and then that then that that tulpa is born out
of their thoughts. They think it, and they make that
that that vision manifest and reality. And so especially if
(21:07):
you look to u to ancient Roman law, you get
this idea of of a juristic person. This is a
single non human entity that legally represented a group of
many people. So money, money comes out of me, it
comes out of the other two people in the room. Uh,
and we use that money to breathe life into this toolpa,
into this non real thing. Our money makes it real.
(21:30):
Our money is an extension of us, and this thought
form is an extension of that money. So the corporation
flows out of that and uh and from there. I
found it interesting that Thomas Jefferson, along before the fourteenth Amendment,
he had he had apparently suggested explicit language to govern
corporate entities in the Constitution. For instance, he had one
of the stipulations that he had brought up was requiring
(21:51):
maximum lifespans for corporations. So, yeah, explain the maximum life
spans a bit more. Well, my understanding of this, it
would be like those three individuals in the room that
believe in the fiery red woman and and create her
out of their thoughts. If they die, then then the
top of the thought form can't exist anymore. It was
(22:12):
it was made of their thoughts, and if they cannot
think those thoughts and it is gone. Um. Likewise, a
corporation is made out of money coming from people. You know,
those people were no longer there, then the money cannot
sustain it and it must die. So in this scenario,
be sort of like the stockholders. So this this this
uh person who would be attached to the stockholders lifespan
(22:33):
as opposed to what is new as opposed to this
this situation now where yea, a corporation is a maybe
a person on on this legal level, but it's also
a person that cannot die. I mean it cannot die
in the sense that you and I can die, uh
and it and it also can't say, be put in
prison if it does something wrong. Well, and I think
(22:55):
that the criticism that comes up here is that when
you have a really powerful UM corporation with a ton
of capitalist spend that UM that is sort of immortal UM,
then then it's not a level of playing field. They
are not a person they even though they have the
(23:15):
rights of a human. And so that I think is
what people take issue with when it comes to politics,
especially because then you have something that's sort of like
a superhuman um, you know, because you know, each corporation
billions and billions of dollars, right um and and uh
and trying to um influence the way that the politics
(23:37):
are played out in the public arena. Yeah. Unif situation
where's like, hey, this this person that you guys created
or that your grandfathers created just uh, I don't know,
destroyed a town or or landed on my house or
you know or or did some sort of evil in
the world, and uh, it's yeah, yeah, I mean with
the golem, is you know, very very into that idea
(24:01):
of the topa of the thought form, a non living
thing that is given life u through magic or in
this case finance and law. And it doesn't necessarily have
critical thought. It is only the column is only tied
to what has it has been told to do? Right,
It's not necessarily thinking is is this the best situation
(24:23):
here for everybody involved? Well? You here too. You see
discussions about various corporations and the discussions of the values
within that company, and and there's a lot of discussion about, well,
what are the values that are put in place when
that company is created? And while those values might not
necessarily stand the test of time as that corporation grows
(24:45):
and adapts over time, it's still those a lot of
times that those values are still kind of in its
DNA um like uh like not to toot our own horn,
but you know, we worked for Discovery Communications, and I
feel like there are some there are some good values, uh,
in the DNA of that company. And I'll talk to
other people who work for companies that will remain nameless,
(25:06):
that that that maybe don't have as good of d
n A going on, that like that some of some
values were missing in the the the origins of that
particular company. Okay, so I mean that's the programming, if
you will. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, is that
it's almost like programming the code and and what do
you program there? Because again, the you know, the company
(25:27):
is going to outlive all of us, so what does
it look like several generations down the line. All right, Well,
look at this point in the discussion, we really need
to take a break and we're we're adding this in
uh post recording. We just uh we just talked about
personhood quite a bit in this recording session, and we
really decided we need to split it up into two
(25:48):
episodes to do with justice. Yeah, definitely, we had to
have this foundation in order to talk about the next section,
which will be about robots and animals. Um So at
this point we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up.
You guys can find us on Facebook where we are
Stuff to Blow your Mind, and you can find us
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can always email us at blow the Mind at Discovery
(26:09):
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is It How stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tuglas.
And to keep things off here, we're gonna respond to
a little bit of a listener mail, uh, because the
entire episode kind of flows from that listening man. Yeah,
(00:26):
I believe that we had a couple of listening emails
that stemmed from an episode that we did on um
kids who were psychotic um or the ability to actually
identify children who might be sociopathic. Yeah, And I mentioned
in passing it's like, oh, personhood, we could do that, Yeah,
because you can talk about person who We talked about corporations,
and we talked about a film that dealt with actually
(00:50):
running corporations through this this test of this uh sociopathic
test and finding out that corporations actually fit the bill there. Yeah,
that if you if corporations were pool and you psychoanalyze them,
your results would be kind of frightening. So we thought, well, heck,
why not do a podcast on personhood and get to
the bottom of this topic. Well, personhood is a deep thing.
(01:12):
To get to the bottom of a kind of bottomless
in a way. So, but we're certainly going to do
our best to to explore the topic and h and
raise questions in your mind about what it really means. Yeah,
and uh and particulo. I wanted to call out listener
Kelly B. She sent to us in emails as well
as did other people. But she she let us know
that it struck her interest personhood because she just finished
(01:35):
a philosophy class on bioethics and they talked about personhood
in ways she said she never imagined were possible, and
she usually even shared her class materials with us. Was
it was really nice, um and and very inspiring to
talk about this. Cool. So personhood, What is a person?
This is um? What constitutes a person? This is rich
(01:56):
philosophical ground. There are many definitions, there's there's a great
deal of debate. Debate has raged on this in philosophic
circles for centuries. Uh, we're not going to nail down
a precise definition in this episode. So so you can
expect to the philosophical questions to continue. But but there
(02:19):
are some basic ideas that we're gonna run through about
what a person is. UM. Some definitions really center in
on the idea that that the person in this case
has strong moral rights UH and is deserving of legal protection. UM.
Other definitions focus in on the idea that this quote
unquote person has higher moral status than other living things
(02:44):
and and and. One of the the more kind of
succinct definitions comes from philosopher Mary Ann Warren, who lays
out five different UM bullet points for personhood. She says,
one consciousness okay, uh, and in particular, the capacity to
(03:04):
feel pain. So is this quote unquote person and I'm
not gonna stay quote unquote person every time? I person,
So don't worry. But but is this person capable of
feeling pain? Are the conscious of of what's happening around
them and their own pain? Number two reasoning the developed
capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems. Is it
(03:26):
figuring out how the world around it works? Stapler Uh
does not have reasoning at its UH at its disposal.
For instance, UM number three self motivated activity UH is
that doing stuff independent of of either genetic or direct
external control. Does it have a capacity to communicate UM
(03:47):
by whatever means are adequate for that particular person? And
UH is it? Uh? Is it also aware of self concepts.
You know, is it's self aware of itself? Does it
know that it knows something? Um, So these five classifications
are rather useful, but then they're also kind of problematic
(04:10):
as well, because, as we're discussing before we got into
the studio, like what happens with a person if you know,
someone sustains an injury and they lose the ability to
speak if they're unconscious. Like, now you're down to three
out of five? What does that mean? Are you three
fifths of a person? Are you? Or would the scale
really require that you at least hit three out of
five and if you drive down to two then that's it?
Or is it well? And there's all sorts of legal
(04:33):
ramifications here that we'll get into, But I did want
to go to the etymological roots here in terms of
legality and go back to the word person, which comes
from Latin persona, which means mask or to act apart
um person. This idea of a person really sort of
became much more nuanced in Roman society when it would
(04:55):
became attached to the notion of someone's identity and attus
as you mentioned, and then this evolved into the concept
of personhood, which is then a legal right not only
to your name, but to all the wealth that you
accumulate under that identity. Okay, So so in its origin,
it's really more of an idea about public perception of me,
(05:18):
public perception, public wealth, and rights. Right. I mean, if
you're a person, you have specific rights, and it's it's
crazy to say that, but at one time in history,
some people were not considered a person, right, and and
they didn't have rights. And I'm talking specifically about the
fourteenth Amendment, which was a Reconstruction era amendment meant to
(05:42):
bolster the effects of the Civil Rights Act past in
eighteen sixty six, and it said that state and federal
citizenship for all persons, regardless of race, both born or
naturalized United States, was reaffirmed. No state would be allowed
to abridge the privileges and immunities of citizen, no person
was allowed to be deprived of life, liberty, or property
(06:04):
without due process of law. And for the fourth condition,
no person could be denied equal protection of the laws.
So really what you're seeing here is um this concept,
this consciousness of self, this abstract really sort of coming
into concrete terms in terms of material possession or even
just trying to navigate the world. And it's interestingly to
(06:27):
like you said, when you look back in time, you
can definitely find plenty of cases where not everyone was
really afforded the same level of personhood as the other
humans around them, certainly a like like just in the
city American South, you know, in the relatively recent history,
(06:49):
a man had more rights than a woman, and the
man had more rights than the slaves that he owned,
to say nothing of animals and and and uh, and
you know corporations and what have you. Then you have
you have shamanistic religion, say you know, uh, you know
cultures and say the the Amazon or Siberia or and
(07:11):
also also Tibet's early bond religion was was animistic as well,
where animals have a kind of spiritual essence or or
there are other belief systems where even inanimate objects have
kind of a spirit and to a certain extent, you
could say they have a kind of limited personhood and
that these things are not mere objects, but there are
(07:33):
things that matter on a spiritual level. Um and uh.
And that changes the way that you interact with them,
not not to the point where one would say I'm
suing a cariboo this week, but to the extent well
because the cariboosessions, or maybe it would be the other
way around. The cariboo could not sue me, but it
(07:54):
would be a matter of when I kill a cariboo,
it maybe has a little more weight because that or
who means something in a larger sense. You know. What's
interesting too, is that there's some some I guess you
could say radical thought that if you wanted to drop
out of society, if you wanted to um, divorce yourself
from this notion of of material wealth and all those trappings,
(08:16):
that you would inhabit an animalistic like existence wherein you
don't have, you're not saddled with things or with this
idea of legality or rights. Yes, interesting, and that you've
mentioned that, and some of the definitions of personhood I
encountered really focused in on social aspects of personhood, and
(08:41):
and they even one even maybe argument that if you
removed all of one's social um not me know, the activity,
but just relationships in general, like a man alone on
a desert island becomes less of a person because he
has no interaction with real people. And then of course
then he applies personhood to evolve Lleyball and you got
you something. You're talking about Wilson. What's the name of
(09:04):
that movie again? Um? It was Tom Hanks is the Island,
Diane Island, The Island, Dude, the Island, Pure Cats Away, right,
I think so, Yeah, I just remember Wilson more than
that though, because that was really interesting because the Wilson
is the protection of the person. Um. What I wanted
(09:25):
to to mention here is that I think that all
these conditions, these five conditions that you talked about, consciousness
really seems to be the one that stands out the most,
this underpinning of what a person is or what personhood.
And that's great too, because it's like, all right, so
what makes a person? All right, they gotta have they
got to be conscious. And then you're like, all right, great,
well what's consciousness? And and then you fall down the
(09:47):
well because that's that's that that's the big one of
the big philosophical questions. What is human consciousness? I mean,
it's not only philosophical, neurological, it's well, it's a it's
it's an area that multiple fields continue to try and
figure out. I mean, it's also the domain of of spirituality.
And religion, like just trying to figure out what is
(10:07):
going on with the with inside this mind and this
this person that we think we are um like just
self personhood is just impossible to wrap our heads around. Well,
it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was really interested in
this idea of consciousness and personhood, and he translated philosopher
Detrestes writing on Personhood and Treatise on Political Economy, and
(10:32):
here's a quote from it. It says, now, this idea
of property can only be founded on the idea of personality.
For if an individual had not consciousness of his own existence,
distinct and separate from every other, he could possess nothing.
He could have nothing peculiar to himself. So again here
(10:52):
you see the legality of the issue really rising up
again with this idea of consciousness, which then gets into
the territory of as as Kelly B. Pointed out, something
you wouldn't normally think of living wills. Okay, because now
you have this idea of Okay, Uh, I have to
meet these conditions. Have to be conscious, I have to
(11:13):
be capable of rational thought, I have to be self aware,
I have to be capable of purposive behavior. And I
have to possess a sense of my own existence over time,
so my today's self and then my tomorrow self. And
so you do get into this whole area of Okay,
now my personhood is existing in different tenses and it
(11:37):
really does affect um this ability to govern your life
at later stages. Yeah, some of the definitions of person
who has been encountered to also mentioned um the idea
that there is something consistent over the course of a
life span for this person. Okay, so the ideas that
(11:58):
from from birth to death there is U. You know,
Julie may change, but there is a certain Julie nous
two this person that remains the same. But uh, but
then you that raises questions, well, what happens when Well,
first of all, even though the julianus may remain the same, Um,
(12:19):
Julie from a year ago and Julie from a year
a year from now are kind of two different people
and to varying degrees. And uh. And certainly you look
at cases where individuals have dementia or they've they've encountered
something even maybe even less severe that has significantly changed them.
How does personhood factor into that? You look at I
(12:40):
mean you encountered this. We're not you personally, but we
all encountered this in looking at the cases of of
convicted felons. You know, someone goes to jail for a
murder when they're you know, when they're eighteen, and then
when they're sixty years old, like they're they're a different person, right,
I mean there, I mean, I'm granted legal in an
(13:01):
actual and legal sense, they are the same person that
committed that crime in the past, but in another sense,
they are really not that person anymore. They're not an
eighteen year old who killed somebody. There this older person
who has who has had all these other life experiences
between two. I mean, you could get ever more complex.
Who really nailed down that personhood? Especially if you now
(13:23):
go back to a living will that was made in
a certain year of someone's life, and let's say that
they have experienced brain death or um some other circumstance
which has changed their lot in life. Now you have
to consider whether or not their their past self really
as it's um an agreeance with their now self their
(13:43):
present self. And to suss all of that the legality
out of that situation, which becomes really interesting. Um I
thought this would probably be a decent place to mention
something called personhood USA. This is a group uh behind
multiple multiple state level measures to define life as beginning
(14:04):
at conception um rather than than birth. And this is
this idea that personhood really happens with his I go, right, yeah,
I mean because ultimately, when you're talking about personhood, it
also becomes a question of when does it begin and
when does it end? Like when does it end? Like
does that you have to wait till the hardest stop
till the brain is dead, un till it's till the
(14:25):
body has decomposed. Is there a certain amount of legacy
personhood where it's like, all right, well the brain has died,
but the body still lives, so it's not really a
person anymore. But it was so we're gonna be cool
with it. And then in terms of birth, yeah, is
it is? It is a person? A person upon birth
does doesn't meet those conditions that we talked about, right, Yeah,
(14:48):
depending on you know, it comes down to the language
of it, like which definition are gonna throw out? If
you're gonna focus on consciousness, then you have to wait
between twenty and thirty two weeks uh into gestation and
that's when uh, cortical neurons become capable of firing in
ways that make consciousness possible. Okay, Um, And then you know, culturally,
you've you you see case especially in the past, where
(15:12):
children had limited levels of personhood because on a you know,
up until a certain age that was not guaranteed that
they were going to really survive. So to what extent
where the parents willing to invest in that child, so
you might have personhood might not kick in until like
age one. Um. And then uh, and then you've you've
seen you know, as far as arguments about does it
(15:33):
begin upon conception? Does it just life begin ejaculation? You know,
are are dry humps people? I don't know? Yeah, No,
I mean it's very It's interesting because it has this
idea of personhood USA of this group. Um. If if
they were to um have legislation past as they are proposing,
(15:55):
you're basically saying that they would you know, outlaw abortion
at any point in a pregnant see for any reason
and potentially ban the use of in vitro fertilization and
many types of contraception. So even IVF this technology under
under these um conditions of parenthood USA or parenthood personhood
(16:17):
USA uh would not be in use anymore. So the
reason I bring this up is because personhood isn't just
uh let's define you know, the self and all the
belongings that we have. It extends for for uh more
into these other realms of existence. Um and as you say,
birth and death. All right, well we're gonna take a
(16:39):
quick break here, and when we come back, we will
drive forward into discussions of corporations as people, um, artificial
intelligence as people, animals as people, um, and maybe even
people as people. We'll see, we'll see how it goes. Yeah,
and you might even get admit ramund question. All right,
(17:02):
we're back. Well, you you bettered everyone up with mention
of it, So go ahead give us that Mint Romney
impersonation that that is so central to the discussion here.
Corporations are people, my friend? No, that was good. That
was good. That was good. That was not a sound
clip that was duly doing. Yeah, yeah, that wasnt. Romney's
not here with us. Um why do we rom that up? Well,
(17:25):
it's funny and it's topical because on one hand it's
um ntt Romney does have a lot of money and
at times comes off a little robotic. So it's it's
easy to have a lot of fun with the idea
of corporations as people because we're also talking about the
ais as people as well. But but yeah, it's important
because you get into this, uh, this idea of attributing
(17:46):
personhood do things that are not really people. Um. No
matter where you are on the political side of the discussion,
there's no denying that a corporation cannot be hit by
a bus. Um, a corporation, uh cannot go swimming in
a pool, well certainly not a small pool. Um. It's
it's a rather different thing than a human being, and
(18:10):
yet we have attributed it a large amount of personhood
status when it comes to uh the law. Metaphysical personhood
is what we're talking about. And um, what happened Basically
you can kind of look at the evolution of corporate
personhood in this way. Uh. You had the Santa clar
(18:32):
versus Southern Pacific around the turn of the century case,
and this really helped define the personhood of corporations in
terms of the fourteenth Amendment. So basically what lawyers did
as they said, you know, we we want um, you know,
we want corporations to be able to have certain rights
that humans do. Is there a loophole here? And essentially
(18:53):
the fourteenth Amendment was this loophole. So this, UH, this
gave that this case actually gave corporation a modicum at
that time of personhood rights. So when we're talking about rights,
we're talking about UM rights to sue and be sued,
vote and exercise free speech. So it was limited at
(19:15):
that time. And particularly if you think back to Roosevelt
and about nineteen o seven or so, there were further limitations,
particularly with campaign money. Okay, so Roosevelt said, there are
limitations here. You can't just go around giving corporations. You
can't give campaign money to two candidates that they like
in swing votes. Essentially, that would be crazy. Although in
(19:38):
two thousand and ten the decision was made by the
Supreme Court to essentially repeal about a hundred years worth
of legislation at least when it comes to that, and
UH is free speech. Corporations are people and money is
the thing that corporations speak with. So corporially which now
(20:01):
can UM can use their money to advance a political candidate,
although they cannot give it directly to that candidate or
to that campaign, but they can put up one million billboards,
or they can air commercials or or any other way
of trying to support that candidate. UM. I can help
(20:24):
but think when I'm thinking of of corporations as people,
I can't help but think of and and the idea
that we are giving personhood to something that does not
really exists. I keep thinking of tulpas, which are in
the like Tibetan mysticism. Is this uh this uh, this
thought form. It's the idea where you get three people
in a room together and they both all three of
(20:45):
them really believe in um in something. If they all
really believe, say in a woman with fiery red hair,
and then that then that that tulpa is born out
of their thoughts. They think it, and they make that
that that vision manifest and reality. And so especially if
(21:07):
you look to u to ancient Roman law, you get
this idea of of a juristic person. This is a
single non human entity that legally represented a group of
many people. So money, money comes out of me, it
comes out of the other two people in the room. Uh,
and we use that money to breathe life into this toolpa,
into this non real thing. Our money makes it real.
(21:30):
Our money is an extension of us, and this thought
form is an extension of that money. So the corporation
flows out of that and uh and from there. I
found it interesting that Thomas Jefferson, along before the fourteenth Amendment,
he had he had apparently suggested explicit language to govern
corporate entities in the Constitution. For instance, he had one
of the stipulations that he had brought up was requiring
(21:51):
maximum lifespans for corporations. So, yeah, explain the maximum life
spans a bit more. Well, my understanding of this, it
would be like those three individuals in the room that
believe in the fiery red woman and and create her
out of their thoughts. If they die, then then the
top of the thought form can't exist anymore. It was
(22:12):
it was made of their thoughts, and if they cannot
think those thoughts and it is gone. Um. Likewise, a
corporation is made out of money coming from people. You know,
those people were no longer there, then the money cannot
sustain it and it must die. So in this scenario,
be sort of like the stockholders. So this this this
uh person who would be attached to the stockholders lifespan
(22:33):
as opposed to what is new as opposed to this
this situation now where yea, a corporation is a maybe
a person on on this legal level, but it's also
a person that cannot die. I mean it cannot die
in the sense that you and I can die, uh
and it and it also can't say, be put in
prison if it does something wrong. Well, and I think
(22:55):
that the criticism that comes up here is that when
you have a really powerful UM corporation with a ton
of capitalist spend that UM that is sort of immortal UM,
then then it's not a level of playing field. They
are not a person they even though they have the
(23:15):
rights of a human. And so that I think is
what people take issue with when it comes to politics,
especially because then you have something that's sort of like
a superhuman um, you know, because you know, each corporation
billions and billions of dollars, right um and and uh
and trying to um influence the way that the politics
(23:37):
are played out in the public arena. Yeah. Unif situation
where's like, hey, this this person that you guys created
or that your grandfathers created just uh, I don't know,
destroyed a town or or landed on my house or
you know or or did some sort of evil in
the world, and uh, it's yeah, yeah, I mean with
the golem, is you know, very very into that idea
(24:01):
of the topa of the thought form, a non living
thing that is given life u through magic or in
this case finance and law. And it doesn't necessarily have
critical thought. It is only the column is only tied
to what has it has been told to do? Right,
It's not necessarily thinking is is this the best situation
(24:23):
here for everybody involved? Well? You here too. You see
discussions about various corporations and the discussions of the values
within that company, and and there's a lot of discussion about, well,
what are the values that are put in place when
that company is created? And while those values might not
necessarily stand the test of time as that corporation grows
(24:45):
and adapts over time, it's still those a lot of
times that those values are still kind of in its
DNA um like uh like not to toot our own horn,
but you know, we worked for Discovery Communications, and I
feel like there are some there are some good values, uh,
in the DNA of that company. And I'll talk to
other people who work for companies that will remain nameless,
(25:06):
that that that maybe don't have as good of d
n A going on, that like that some of some
values were missing in the the the origins of that
particular company. Okay, so I mean that's the programming, if
you will. Yeah, that's what I was thinking, is that
it's almost like programming the code and and what do
you program there? Because again, the you know, the company
(25:27):
is going to outlive all of us, so what does
it look like several generations down the line. All right, Well,
look at this point in the discussion, we really need
to take a break and we're we're adding this in
uh post recording. We just uh we just talked about
personhood quite a bit in this recording session, and we
really decided we need to split it up into two
(25:48):
episodes to do with justice. Yeah, definitely, we had to
have this foundation in order to talk about the next section,
which will be about robots and animals. Um So at
this point we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up.
You guys can find us on Facebook where we are
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can always email us at blow the Mind at Discovery
(26:09):
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