Abstract
The concept of personality is one of the most difficult issues in modern and contemporary philosophy, specifically when we reflect on whether human beings with extreme mental disabilities (e.g. those with Alzheimer’s disease or in persistent vegetative state) are endowed with human nature and personality. This paper will examine two different philosophical views in order to respond to that question. First, we will analyze Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, according to which personality can be denied to human beings with extreme mental disabilities, although we will argue that it is possible to have a more inclusive interpretation of the Groundwork, based on the connection of the concepts of human nature, dignity, rationality, autonomy and personality. Secondly, we will discuss Peter Singer’s contribution. In some of his works, he argues that the concepts of rationality, dignity and equality are not extensible to beings with extreme mental disabilities, since they do not have a morally relevant life. In his opinion, the status of this group of beings should undergo a thorough revision. If this revision were carried out, i.e., if the philosophers reflected on the personality of beings with extreme mental disabilities, they would – according to Singer – most likely have to face their own speciesism related to the status of non-human and non-rational beings. In order to broach the controversy, we will draw on the concepts of numerical and qualitative identity, and we will make a critique of Derek Parfit’s psychological view about identity. If we, following Kant, admit a necessary conceptual philosophical distinction between, on the one hand, what a human being is and, on the other, what the concept of a moral person means, we can make a critique of Parfit’s and Singer’s positions. In doing so, we hope to make a strong case for the claim that beings with extreme mental disabilities have a human and rational nature, and therefore deserve the status of persons.
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Notes
- 1.
We use ‘rationality’ in this article in a normative and also descriptive sense: ‘In its primary sense, rationality is a normative concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in such a way that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought to choose it. […] Rationality is also a descriptive concept that refers to those intellectual capacities, usually involving the ability to use language that distinguish persons from plants and most other animals.’ (Gert 1999)
- 2.
‘And even if you are a vegetarian – as I am – you are very likely going to think – as I do – that what happened in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2011, was a greater tragedy than what happens daily at a slaughterhouse. But why? Unless we take refuge in religious teachings, which not all of us share, the answer has to be because of some difference between humans and animals. That difference, however, cannot merely be the fact that we belong to one species and chickens belong to another.’ (Singer 2005)
- 3.
‘The definition of person that I hold is, as I have written in Practical Ethics and other works, derived from John Locke’s definition of a person as “a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places”.’ (Singer 2005)
- 4.
We think that the use of ‘minimally conscious states’ is justified because there is some evidence that patients in a persistent vegetative state have kept the capacity for consciousness: ‘The most serious moral objection to taking organs from persistently vegetative patients, even with their advance consent, is that at present there is often uncertainty about their condition. The two most important forms of uncertainty concern the possibility of recovery and the possibility of consciousness of which external observers are unaware. Recent research has demonstrated that some people who had satisfied the clinical criteria for persistent vegetative state had not in fact lost the capacity for consciousness. In this relatively small group of patients, compelling evidence of certain forms of consciousness has been discovered, and in at least one case there has been a complete recovery of normal consciousness’ (McMahan 2009). Some signs of lucidity are also reported, although not scientifically proved, in relation to patients with Alzheimer’s (Franzen 2002).
- 5.
Why Parfit? Here, making Schechtman’s words our own: ‘I choose Parfit for three reasons. First, his view is, for my purposes, perfectly representative. There is no argument I make against Parfit which could not be applied to any other standard psychological-continuity theory without significant alteration. Second, Parfit’s view is one of the strongest versions of this theory, and, finally, it is the version of the psychological-continuity theory which has been most discussed in the recent literature.’ (Schechtman 1990, 72)
- 6.
We use the female pronoun for all persons and human beings in this text (both female and male).
- 7.
See Section 75 ‘Simple teletransportation and the branch-line case’ of Parfit’s book (1984, 199).
- 8.
Compare with footnote 3.
- 9.
Singer is partly right when he says that ‘We cannot claim that biological commonality entitles us to superior status over those who are not members of our species’ (2009, 572–573). Our inner code is a necessary but insufficient basis for some capabilities that other species do not have. Patients in persistent vegetative state and patients with Alzheimer’s disease share this inner code and, more importantly, they share meaningful experiences with other human animals in a way that nonhuman animals cannot. Our higher cognitive abilities are rooted in our biological structure, but maybe there are other paths to those abilities. So, if there were other beings also capable of sharing these meaningful experiences (i.e. aliens with higher cognitive abilities), they would also have been granted personality.
- 10.
Some changes in the personality can be so radical that some persons who knew a given person before the accident she suffered are no longer able to recognize her as the same person. ‘Consider the case of Phineas Gage. A metal projectile from an explosion penetrated his skull while he was working […]. The projectile damaged an area of his frontal lobe, the region of the brain that mediates cognitive functions such as reasoning, decision-making, and impulse control. The frontal lobes also mediate the cognitive and affective traits associated with personality. Some of his cognitive capacities were intact following the accident. But he became impulsive and impaired in his capacity for rational and moral decision-making. His emotions changed radically, and his behavior became erratic. There was such a change in his personality that those who knew him claimed that he was “no longer Gage”’. (Glannon 2013, 148; see also Damásio 1996, 23)
- 11.
For the concepts of ‘external autonomy’ and ‘potential external autonomy’ see (Barbosa-Fohrmann 2015). In this paper and in a forthcoming one the concept of ‘potential external autonomy’ is slightly modified into ‘latent external autonomy’ (Barbosa-Fohrmann 2016). The concepts of ‘external autonomy’ and ‘latent external autonomy’ are interpretations of the Groundwork. In few words, latent autonomy means the possibility of developing and manifesting the autonomy that all humans are born with in their action as persons with physical and emotional environment.
- 12.
A different perspective understands that the ‘capacity for conscious awareness’, the capacity that confers us our personality, is a question of neurological function, so ‘We cease to exist when we permanently lose this capacity. This occurs when there is irreversible cessation of integrated cortical function in the brain enabled by the thalamus and the brainstem ascending reticular activating system, as this function is necessary to generate and sustain awareness of self and one’s surroundings.’ (Glannon 2013, 247)
- 13.
Compare with the meaning of ‘boundness’ (Lesser 2006).
- 14.
There are some difficult issues relating to hypothetical consent, which cannot be addressed here, as they would go beyond the aims of this paper.
- 15.
We assume that even a solitary person in some phases of their life establishes some social relationships.
- 16.
‘The right to be your own master is neither a right to have things go well for you nor a right to have a wide range of options. Instead, it is explicitly contrastive and interpersonal: to be your own master is to have no other master.’ (Ripstein 2009, 36).
- 17.
‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as means’. (Kant 1998a, 38)
- 18.
Animality, humanity and personality are predispositions of human beings to goodness. Our animality moves us as living beings towards self-preservation, procreation and community building. As rational beings, we compare ourselves to others, this is what the predisposition to humanity allows us. Personality is conferred to the rational human being that is also a responsible being, so she is susceptible ‘to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice’. (Kant 1998b, 52) (italics in the original)
- 19.
‘This objection [the fear of elderly persons that every injection would be lethal] might be met by a procedure allowing those who do not wish to be subjected to non-voluntary euthanasia under any circumstances to register their refusal. Perhaps this would suffice; but perhaps it would not provide enough reassurance. If not, non-voluntary euthanasia would be justifiable only for those never capable of choosing to live or die’. (Singer 1993, 192–193)
- 20.
By using a question Kant clearly affirms his goal: ‘Since my aim here is directed properly to moral philosophy, I limit the question proposed only to this: is it not thought to be of the utmost necessity to work out for once a pure moral philosophy, completely cleansed of everything that may be only empirical and that belongs to anthropology?’ (Kant 1998a, 2)
- 21.
‘Wherever an object of the will has to be laid down as the basis for prescribing the rule that determines the will, there the rule is none other than heteronomy; the imperative is conditional, namely: if or because one wills this object, one ought to act in such or such a way; hence it can never command morally, that is, categorically.’ (Kant 1998a, 50)
- 22.
“…Kant’s theory implies that if some members of our biological species lack ‘humanity’ in this sense, whether temporarily or permanently, then not every member of our species is an end in itself. It seems evident that young children and people whose rational capacities are severely impaired simply do not have the capacity to set ends according to reason. On Kant’s theory, therefore, they have to count as non-persons and are not ends in themselves”. (Wood 1998, 185 n.4)
- 23.
Our argument has clear limits. We do not intend to expand it in order to include, e.g., fetuses or anencephalic children. This does not imply that such beings do not deserve protection; we think they do, but other arguments that lie beyond the scope of this paper are needed to confer personality on them. The same applies to nonhuman animals. There is a fair demand for rights that protect nonhuman animals from cruel actions. Singer’s arguments are suitable for such a task.
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Barbosa-Fohrmann, A.P., Barreto, G.A.F. (2017). Are Human Beings with Extreme Mental Disabilities and Animals Comparable? An Account of Personality. In: Kurki, V., Pietrzykowski, T. (eds) Legal Personhood: Animals, Artificial Intelligence and the Unborn. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53462-6_9
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