Talk:Person/Archive 4

What belongs in the lede here?
Text in discussion:



Added by Stevertigo. -Stevertigo (t | c) 06:42, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I think Steve's recent edits are inappropriate for the lede of this article. The first part of them at least seems like it would be a great expansion to part of Personhood, which really needs better structure and organization. But we do not want to open the debate on the definition of personhood in the lede of this article. We have an entire separate article for that now, and the first section of this article (after the lede) is a summary of that article. Details on who thinks a person is what belong over there, not here; though a summary of what's over there can certainly go here, but it belongs in the Personhood summary section, not the lede.

I'm also not sure that going straight from Boethius et al to Mauss is really appropriate, as (and this may just be a hole in my education) I've never heard of Mauss and he certainly isn't a paradigm-setter in any philosophical matters, as several notable philosophers still living today, such as Harry Frankfurt or Peter Singer, do not use Mauss' socially-constructed concept of personhood at all. Mauss may deserve a mention -- I'll leave it up to Manus here to flesh out who he is and why we should care -- but if so, that is also over at Personhood, not here.

As for what the lede of this article should be, I am somewhat at a loss and open to suggestions. This article is now a summary-style article of at least two other articles about various aspects of persons. The lede is supposed to summarize the article. So the lede here would need to be a summary of a summary of personhood, and a summary of a summary of personal identity. If we can all agree to that, then maybe we can get to work on figuring out what if most important to pull out of the summaries and synthesize into an expanded lede for this article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:16, 11 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Since my additions are the subject, would it not be proper for you to copy my edits here to make them visible and apparent? I agree that Maunus is more qualified to talk about Mauss and his ideas. It seemed clear though that a one-sentence lede is unacceptable, and I thought what better place to start than a a seminal and influential defintion. Were there other definitions of "person" before the western one? Is there an East/West dichotomy here? I dont know. I appreciate that you agree that the current situation is undesirable and that you know you can't do it alone. Perhaps you Maunus and I can cobble something together which is at least passing. -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:31, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
 * - Then it may be that the split of person and personhood is not tenable, if that article robs this one of all substance such that we are left with a one-sentence lede. -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:41, 11 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I did include a link to a diff of your edits, three words into my comment above.
 * You still say "the" western one as though there is only one western definition of personhood, when I just cited two living philosophers who disagree both with each other and with past sources like Boethius and Locke on what constitutes personhood. Since I'm not sure which definition you mean by "the" western definition, I have no idea if others preceded it. I don't know if there is an east/west dichotomy but it wouldn't surprise me and if you have any material on it that would be appropriate for inclusion at Personhood. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The concept of personhood is not exlcuisive to the purview of philosophy - it is equally within the domain of anthropology, sociology and psychology. Mauss is nothing if not a paradigm setter in Anthropology and sociology. I complete reject the idea that the article on person should not have examples of how being a person is defined differently in different places and times. That is setting up a false dichotomy between "Person in western philosophy" and "other kinds of personhood". The core of the issue is that there are different definitions of person in different disciplines, different schools of thought AND in different cultures. The article cannot get around describing that fact. There is no way that an article on "person" cannot also discuss personhood. It is quite possible that the two should be merged. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean to imply that the concept of personhood was exclusive to philosophy; I meant only that Steve's portrayal of 'Boethius and people had this definition, then Mauss and others like him came and changed everything' is inaccurate because not all current authors writing about personhood follow a Mauss-like concept of it (and that I don't know how influential Mauss may be outside of my area of expertise, and will leave that matter to you to explain, but either way his influence isn't all-encompassing as Steve's edits implied). You are the one who created the "in Western Philosophy" and "in Western Law" sections over at Personhood; I would have just included material on Personhood from different disciplines and traditions in with all of that, probably chronologically, as definitions are likely influential across disciplines. (That whole overview section needs better organization anyway, but I don't know if I'm capable of providing it). Likewise I don't mean to exclude that different cultures may have different concepts of personhood, I simply mean to avoid the bias of implying definitively that personhood is just a culturally-defined category; within one culture, there can be much disagreement over what constitutes a person, and some of those parties may assert that their definition applies universally regardless of what any culture may consider a person; again, see those (a majority these days, I hope) who would say that humans of African descent have always been persons just as much as they are in the modern west, even if in some places and times (e.g. the 19th century American south) some cultures did not consider them persons. Conversely I do not mean to exclude the viewpoint that personhood may just be a culturally-defined category, I simply mean not to privilege it as the uncontroversial truth, as there are notable sources which would contest that.
 * I also don't mean that this article shouldn't discuss personhood at all. It does discuss it, right now, in the first section. All I mean about taking new content about personhood over to Personhood is that this article should discuss it as a summary of that article, so all the intricate details on it should go over there, and the broad strokes on it should go here, summary-style. We shouldn't be building up content about personhood here; we should build it up over there, and then bring the most important bits of it over here. As for merging them, they were just split a few months ago, so that this article could incorporate other articles just as relevant to persons as Personhood is. If we were to merge Personhood back here, then we would also have to merge Personal identity for consistency, and those are both really long articles as it stands, which would make this article unwieldy. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Ive added the text I wrote to the top of this section, where it can be easily read, that we can discuss it. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 06:40, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * PS:Ive changed the color of the text from green to purple, to give it an air of truth and righteousness. -Stevertigo (t | c) 06:44, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Maunus wrote: - And its within the domain of theology, too. Are we overlooking the theological domain? -Stevertigo (t | c) 06:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe we are. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:14, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * When there are two theories and one claims univesality and the other relativity we don't leave out relativity because by merely mentioning that there are more theories we would be siding against universality - that is illogical. What we do is mention both and say that "this theory claims to be universal but this theory claims that there is no universal definitions". I agree we don't privilege either. But leaving out the many sources that say that being a person is differently defined in different cultures, times and spaces privileges the opposite view.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:14, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * As I said above, I don't intend to exclude the relativist positions either. My only complaint was that your specific edits, worded the way they were, omitted any mention of individual authors having universalist definitions of personhood, and made it sound like personhood was defined only on a culture-by-culture basis, and also that such culturally relative definitions are all correct relative to their respective cultures.
 * My objections, point by point:
 * "...which in turn is defined differently in different cultural, legal and historical contexts" My first thought was "well, definitions also vary from one philosopher to another, I should add that to this list", but then I thought that enumeration of the contexts in which it is variously defined limits us, and opens up endless possibility for quibbling about what else should go in that list, so best not to attempt to give a definitive list at all, and just say that it is defined differently, period.
 * adding "legal" qualifiers. My first thought here was these definitions of personhood are philosophically relevant too, maybe add "and philosophical" to those qualifiers; but again, why add qualifiers when these definitions are interdisciplinary? If some disciplines' definitions or points of contention are absent, then add them, don't limit the scope of discussion.
 * changing "people" (nee "sources") to "groups" again discounts the various different definitions by individual authors of note, speaking independently of any group membership. The rest of it is more suited for inclusion at Personhood (and in the summary thereof further down in this article) than in the lede, and partly redundant with material that's already there. Also, "Anthropologists studying the cultures of the world have noted that in many cultures being a person depends crucially on one's ability to engage successfully in social interaction." is phrased as though personhood just is cultural recognition of personhood ("being a person depends...", not "recognition of personhood depends..."), which privileges relativist definitions over universalist ones.
 * --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:14, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * You don't need to justify your removal, I would much rather see you give your suggestion of how to structure the lead in a way that includes both philosophical, religious and legal definitions (with their frequent claims of universal validity) and the findings of crosscultural variability and patterns. from anthropology. Also incidentally I've done some literature searching and I can find a lot of work on personhood, but I haven't really found anything about "person" as separate from that (except for pro-life treaties). I think it is a mistake to separate person and personhood - unless sources treating the two separately can be found (Mauss arguably does) I think they should merged. In a certain way "person" is simply the concrete instantiation of whatever abstract definition one gives to "personhood".·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not suggesting that there is a subject of "persons" which is separate from "personhood", but that the subject of persons is broader than the subject of personhood. Would you not agree that Personal identity is about persons just as much as Personhood is? There are several issues relating to persons, among them what makes any entity count as a person (the issue of personhood, which we have a large article on), what makes one person that person and not another person (one kind of personal identity which we don't yet have an article on), and the issue of what makes a person at one time the same person as that person at another time (the other kind of personal identity, which we do have another large article on); and there are quite plausibly others, maybe some we have already, or others that have yet to be written on here at Wikipedia.
 * The point being, this article shouldn't be just about the first of those questions, personhood; it needs to incorporate those other questions too, so if you want to merge Personhood here we should also merge Personal identity and any other articles there may be on persons here. Or, we can summarize them all here in an overview article on persons. And the lede can be a summary of those summaries.
 * Which I think it's getting to now, with my latest edits. The etymology section is really about the definition of personhood, but says something about it neutral enough that I think it's suitable for the lede without going all into the debate. (The summary of Personhood then gives a longer overview on what that debate is about, what is at stake, and what some of the positions in it are). Then there's a sentence noting the two issues of personal identity (and a later summary section of Personal identity). What do you think of how it stands now?
 * As for more material on anthropology, you appear to be the anthropology expert around here. I can't say how best to incorporate material about it since I don't know much about the material about it. I welcome you to flesh out anything that's missing at Personhood, and then we'll summarize those additions in the summary section on it here as well. --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:54, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * What do we think about person → personhood, and if the latter article gets too full, we can split off personhood ←→ person again? -Stevertigo (t | c) 08:30, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * You mean merge Person into Personhood? What becomes of Personal identity then; merge that in there too? Why not merge them both here in that case? (because the result would be an unwieldy monstrosity)
 * Will someone please at least acknowledge that that article exists, and is summarized as half of this article right now? --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:59, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * "Person" needs a definition, or rather at least a treatment of the definition and its variance. If this article is to be separate from "personhood" this article will need its own treatment of a definition. Your concerns regarding this article and the personhood article appear inconsistent. I understand that you just don't know exactly what to do about the situation. But repeatedly reverting my additions based on a conflicted idea about how this article and the personhood article relate is not a noble way of editing. I don't have any interest in the personal identity article, because Im not sure it even needs to exist. Are you? It appears to be pure philobabble, based entirely in a misconceived notion of time, and a materialistic concept of (human) being. -Stevertigo (t | c) 09:11, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * In what way are my concerns inconsistent? My position is and has remained that a detailed discussion of the debate over defining personhood belongs in the article on that subject -- and that some of your edits here would be really helpful over there -- and that this article should summarize that material without duplicating all of it. And that we already have a summary of that material here, and going into depth about the particular details about it in the lede, or in a separate section, before we ever get to that summary is inappropriate organization for this article.
 * I could see room for an addition to the summary here of an overview of different positions on general definitions of personhood, but that should include not just Boethius and Mauss as your edits do, but all the other intervening history which is currently in an unorganized state over at Personhood. I think we should direct our efforts to developing a well-organized writeup of different definitions of personhood and the history of their development -- much like you are starting to do here -- over there, then take what we get, write a concise overview of it, and put it here, in the first section of this article.
 * As for your opinions on Personal identity, dismissing a well-sourced and detailed article as "philobabble" hardly lends you and credibility on the subject. I'm not saying anything about what I think about the topic, other than that it is unquestionably a notable one and unquestionably about persons. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:24, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

You wrote in the comment line of your revert: - I disagree with your arbitrary premise for what belongs in this article and what belongs at the personhood article.

- I appreciate your idea of building upon what Ive written, that it could be developed more, to include more of the lively conversation that has gone on through the last millennia. But again, I don't think your premise of robbing this article to develop the personhood article makes any sense. Both articles should be developed, if they are to remain separate articles. Otherwise we can just merge everything to personhood.

And personal identity is not "well sourced." It has only four cited passages. It has only three listed sources. BTW Ive added three tags to the lede. Regards, and good night. -Stevertigo (t | c) 09:30, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It has few inline citations, and a huge block of general references. It could use improvement by citing specific sentences to those sources, but its original authors clearly pulled together an impressive amount of reference material for it. (My only work over there was some recent organizational efforts, tagging, etc).
 * And again, I am not suggesting "robbing" this article of anything. I am suggesting that additions to this article should be cognate with additions to Personhood, as this is a summary style article; and that we can better develop material to add to this article by working with the material already at Personhood and getting it to a state that can be nicely summarized here. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:38, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Where did you get the notion that this article should be a "summary style" version of that one? -Stevertigo (t | c) 09:49, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Personal identity was first mentioned here by User:Logicalgregory in Talk:Person/Archive_2 and Talk:Person/Archive_2. I dismissed its relevance at the time, but by Talk:Person/Archive_3, when I was arguing against a separate Personhood article (then new) because what else is there to say about persons beyond what constitutes personhood (in other words, what's you're saying now), User:USchick pointed out a number of things, some of them irrelevant, some of them reducible to personhood, and also Personal identity, and I came around to thinking that maybe Personhood could be viable on its own, if this was a summary of it and Personal identity. --Pfhorrest (talk) 10:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for that history. We now come to the inevitable conclusion that that conceptualization doesn't work, because this article needs to stand on its own. Either that, or it becomes a redirect. There is no reducing articles about notable subjects to "summary style" just to stunt them in favor of another article's growth. Note also that a little redundancy doesn't hurt. -Stevertigo (t | c) 10:19, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Been waiting for Manus or anyone else to comment here before replying, because I don't have much to say, but just so you know I'm still here: I disagree that the article doesn't work as a summary style or can't stand on its own as one, or that summary style (why the scare quotes? it's a mainstream Wiki guidelines with templates dedicated to it any everything) stunts articles. I'm also not opposed to all redundancy, I just think we need to keep articles in WP:SYNC; so detailed content goes in the articles, and summaries of it (there's some redundancy) goes in the summary article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:44, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

On a more substantial note, the Charles Taylor quote which is currently citation #1 on Personhood, before he goes into his own definition of the criteria which constitute personhood, says something very similar to the Frankfurt quote we're currently using as a pull quote both there and here, and I think something cited to them could work as a neutral but more substantial basis for an opening definition of personhood both at Personhood and here.

Taylor's quote as cited is: Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights. But underlying the moral status, as its condition, are certain capacities.

And the full version of Frankfurt's quote is: There is a sense in which the word 'person' is merely the singular form of 'people' and in which both terms connote no more than membership in a certain biological species. In those senses of the word which are of greater philosophical interest, however, the criteria for being a person do not serve primarily to distinguish the members of our own species from the members of other species. Rather, they are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives. Now these attributes would be of equal significance to us even if they were not in fact peculiar and common to the members of our own species. What interests us most in the human condition would not interest us less if it were also a feature of the condition of other creatures as well. Our concept of ourselves as persons is not to be understood, therefore, as a concept of attributes that are necessarily species-specific. It is conceptually possible that members of novel or even of familiar nonhuman species should be persons; and it is also conceptually possible that some members of the human species are not persons."

Frankfurt then goes into details on what he thinks those attributes are.

I think what both these passages have in common is saying that personhood is whatever attributes (capacities, criteria, etc) give something the status of moral significance which we attribute to most human beings. Some way of phrasing this, cited to both of these passages, might be a good, neutral way of saying something about persons and personhood without privileging any specific point of view. However, one editor here previously, who seemed to share similar view to Manus here, disliked the "attributes" language as discounting the importance of social recognition (I think, I never really got clear on what his position was), so we'll see if anyone finds this biased in some way. I'm thinking something like (and this could use a lot of cleanup, I'm sure):

"A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes warranting a status of moral importance or concern, bestowing rights and responsibilities. Precisely what capacities or attributes warrant such status, and what beings possess them, is the subject of much debate..."

Personhood could then say something like:

"Personhood is the status of being a person, that is, a being of moral importance or concern, the bearer of rights and responsibilities. Precisely what capacities or attributes warrant such status, and what beings possess them, is the subject of much debate..."

Any objections to this line of thought? (I'm not happy with my exact wording and will revisit it later for refinement). --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:44, 16 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The person article should contain a section dealing with the definition of person. The personhood article should have a section dealing with the definition of personhood. Regards, -Stevertigo (t | c) 04:24, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The definition of personhood is what defines a person.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:13, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes exactly, thank you. Personhood is the status of being a person. To define what it is to be a person is to define personhood. --Pfhorrest (talk) 16:47, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This is not accurate. Even when an individual is recognized as a person, their status of personhood can still be questioned. For example, a slave is recognized as a person (not plant or animal), but their legal status of personhood is not recognized. Another example, a foreign government can sometimes be classified as a "person" and at the same time have no status under personhood. USchick (talk) 17:48, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think your definitions make sense if are to have two separate articles here. I think the definition of either depends so much on the other that it makes more sense of merging them.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:46, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Maunus makes a good point: If the meanings of person and personhood are so intertwined, such that they inter-reference the other (and where development of one seems to detract from the other), it indeed makes sense to merge them. -Stevertigo (t | c) 01:35, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * A person is an entity. Personhood is a moral status. Two different concepts require two different articles. Currently, both articles are less than ideal and can be developed further. Here is a discussion about The Political Economy of Personhood USchick (talk) 17:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Definition
Excuse me, but I need to interject my two cents here. First of all, please allow me to couch the following in terms of simple Set-math, group-math, as we learned in Elementary School.

A. Definitions 1. People := (Man, Woman, Neutran, Mixed, Other) ; multiples folded-in.

B. 1. Person has neither flesh nor bone; 2. Person := (fictional name, alias) 3. an Actor is NOT the mask (person) 4. in all Legal jurisdictions descended from England, Person is defined as (corporations, trusts, partnerships) (with some variation in selected terms but these are the most common) Men & Women are NEVER mentioned, neither is the Sovereign holder of power which is People (Chisholm, ca. 1793) because the king's power devolved & was transferred to the colonial People when the king was evicted. 5. as mentioned on the main page, "person" from latin.persona originally meant "mask" or "facade." I submit that language-concepts, which are used to communicate thoughts, have not changed in millenia; only the language itself has changed and variegated itself. A Person is still and only a mask, an alias, by which men & women (People; other Persons) present or re-present (again) the characteristics which are to be made known.

C. Examples:
 * 1. the Actor William Shatner, portraying the fictional character Captain James Tiberius Kirk; Leonard Nimoy portraying Mr. Spock;
 * 2. the Actor Charlton Heston (late & great) portraying real-man Moses from Egypt; (also late & great)

Oh, and by the way, the plural of people is NOT person; and the two words are not and have never been related in either conjugation or meaning. Back to using Set maths again,
 * 1. People := (Man, Woman, plural-forms)
 * 2. Person := (mask, alias-name, (corporation(s), trust(s), partnership(s))

And again, only People have flesh, bone, and blood. Persons do not. The fundamental meaning of the word "person" is ``the mask that an actor wear to portray certain characteristics.''

If you don't grok that and dispose of all the philosophical melodrama, you will never comprehend why things are the way they are, and why things became that way in the past.

Oh and BTW, it is writ in the Bible that "God is not a respecter of persons." There, `persona' would have been a better translation but not everyone has exited The Matrix, of which this discussion is fundamental.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.180.150 (talk) 16:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Your two cents are very welcome! I just love the definition in this article, but of course, it is outrageous. And by the way, the article says that the plural of person is people. Which also is not quite correct. Please, be WP:BOLD and edit the lead!  Lova Falk     talk   18:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * the plural of person is masks, corporations, trusts, partnerships.

-- Thanks very much for the encouragement: I thought I signed with my initials, /BAM/ Also, according to your last words above, I ask, how can you "love it" when you wrote "it's wrong" just before loving it? Do you mean that you `love error?" :) I hope not. be well. 67.233.12.64 (talk)
 * I said it was outrageous, not that it was wrong. This definition makes me smile every time I see it. Face-smile.svg  Lova Falk     talk

PS. if these words which I've writ are well-recieved, then would someone please incorporate them into the main article? -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.12.64 (talk) 13:54, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you check a couple of other Wikipedia articles, you'll see that the way in which you wrote the definition, is not in the same way as it is done in Wikipedia. For instance, see Woman. You think you could write something like that? I hope you're well as well!  Lova Falk     talk   10:07, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

-- Thanks for the encouragement but I'm only interested in eradicating error :) in all its various & nefarious forms! heh. I read the Woman-article, and wasn't impressed; I read internal conflict.  As for Person-article and your encouragement, I want to focus on one needle per haystack at a time.  If I edit, I might have to begin with a hachet and I'm sure most readers & other editors here won't like that. (I wrote an article years ago which was subsequently deleted and I was rebuked for "violating style" -- pure BS but when I tried to restore, it was undone) so, ... I'm alittle "gun-shy") (it WAS a good article)

I think that I'd rather add my text to the main instead of rewriting so everyone can see what truth is and then contrast it with the rest of the text. My focus is also on the meaning of words. As above, People (both genders) are not Person. (masks) We can wear them, then we be actors. IMNHO, this is insidious and perpetrated against us, much to our hurt. This personage is abused most predominantly in courts, judicial & legislative. It is presumptive against us people and only because we are uninformed and woefully uneducated.

This is my purpose for writing here.

stay well. /bam/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.12.64 (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I am not fond of the direction being suggested in this talk section, but I would like to ask a question of those suggesting it: what would you have the singular of "people" be? Like say you want to say something about a group of people, and then something about each... what, "peep"?... in that group?
 * That aside, while "person" clearly has its etymological roots in a word meaning "mask", the vast majority of the literature on the subject does not use it in that sense, but instead as the singular of "people", whatever that's supposed to be. --Pfhorrest (talk)


 * Well-asked and good question: IMHO proper usage would have us refer to a man or a woman, either directly by name or by some other indeterminate phraseology, in good and proper English. Alas, that isn't taught in government-run schools (godless churches); even in so-called religious-based schools, it isn't taught.  For myself, it took me some time to unlearn "all the crap I learned in high-school" (kudos to Paul Simon for damned good lyrics) and to take the time (years) to learn good and truthful subjects.  It wasn't difficult once I learned the actual meaning of certain words.  Even the study of Law (such as it is & how it's presented) became far easier.  I can now unequivocally say that the alleged distinction between common English, professional English, King's English, dialect, usage, or whatever it's called, is completely bogus and utter non-sense.  When referring to People, "Person" is always the wrong word to use except in cases where someone is using an alias, which, after all, is what a person (persona.latin) is!!!


 * Thanks for the question! be well.  /bam/ --  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.233.12.64 (talk) 14:13, 28 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Your bias is showing, but that aside, more to the point: This article, and the two articles it is a summary of, are about beings which are in some important way or another similar enough to humans to be accorded a special status of moral and legal importance, that commonly called "person". That is the term that all of the literature on the subject uses, so that is the appropriate title for the article on that subject here on Wikipedia, but to give you the benefit of the doubt, I am asking: what else would you have this article be called? "Man" is clearly inappropriate for multiple obvious reasons, and "Human" is likewise inappropriate because a large amount of the material is discussing the inclusion or exclusion of various groups of humans and non-humans from this status. So what would you have it be? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * And what do we do if it's not a man or a woman, as in hermaphrodite? Since all of God's people are created in His image, what would you suggest about that? USchick (talk) 14:29, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hermaphrodite? Use the Creature's proper and given name.  Same for Men & Woman!  Persons also have names, thought they aren't members of the family of Man.


 * My ultimate suggestion is that we must not change something's or Someone's name just for convenience. Changing a creature's name results in a name that does not refer to the same creature; and I object to the use of the word  "being": "human (being)" is not equivalent to "Man"; The name of the whole group of People (without exception) is Man. And it is self-evident who all the members are. We are each self-identifying when we know the truth of who and what we are.  The introduction of the word "human (being)" is strictly modern and a wholly unnecessary & unwarranted changing of our name.


 * The main-article is about Person, but my objection is that there is no definition of that word which contemplates People, which are strictly Men and Woman. My purpose in objecting and writing the above, is to show that because of seriously poor and error-ridden education, we are all responsible for misusing, abusing, and destroying the language.


 * A person is a fictional alias, to allow its user to hide his Truename and identity from others, ostensibly so that he may protect his privacy. However, people who are "in government" as either civil or military personnel (slaves) are also using a mask (persona) to allegedly accomplish that which is authorised "in law."  No such man or woman exists, nor has ever lived, who is called International Business Machines (IBM) nor The Congress of the United States.  They both are fictions naming a group of people or additional persona. (subsidiaries)  See, the pronouns are all wrong when discussing persona.


 * The simplest statement to concretely define Person is:
 * a Person is a mask -- James T. Kirk and Moses, the Lone Ranger -- for the portraying of the characteristics, both real an imagined. Batman & Robin, Clark Kent's glasses.

Circular definition
This is a circular definition because: Personhood is the status of being a person. But simultaneously: A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood,[...] 85.193.232.131 (talk) 03:32, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The stuff you bracket out is pretty crucial because that is what makes the definition non-circular when it says "which is in turn defined..."User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:59, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The stuff in brackets is certainly crucial. It defines personhood in many different ways, but always as the status of being a person :-) 85.193.232.131 (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth I've long been unhappy with the circularity of definition left between this article and Personhood, but it's what we settled on after a lot of fruitless debate (between you Manus, and I, and USChick, Stevertigo, etc) and I don't have the energy to dig that all up again. I still think that, as USChick has said, a person is a being (or entity, same thing) and personhood is a status, and those are related in that a person is a being with the status of personhood, and personhood is the status of being a person, but we still need to say somewhere what constitutes that status, and that discussion of such belongs at the article Personhood, and only summarized at Person.
 * As for what that definition should be, of course there are lots of varying specifics but I still think the broad noncontroversial gist of it that should be in the lede (at Personhood) is that personhood is both a status of legal/moral/social importance (that is, having that status bestows importance on whoever has that status), and that it requires meeting some (variously defined) criteria that qualifies the holder of that status for that importance. I think these two quotes from Charles Taylor and Harry Frankfurt are great sources to draw on for this notion:
 * Taylor:

"Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights. But underlying the moral status, as its condition, are certain capacities."
 * Frankfurt:

"There is a sense in which the word 'person' is merely the singular form of 'people' and in which both terms connote no more than membership in a certain biological species. In those senses of the word which are of greater philosophical interest, however, the criteria for being a person do not serve primarily to distinguish the members of our own species from the members of other species. Rather, they are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives. Now these attributes would be of equal significance to us even if they were not in fact peculiar and common to the members of our own species. What interests us most in the human condition would not interest us less if it were also a feature of the condition of other creatures as well. Our concept of ourselves as persons is not to be understood, therefore, as a concept of attributes that are necessarily species-specific. It is conceptually possible that members of novel or even of familiar nonhuman species should be persons; and it is also conceptually possible that some members of the human species are not persons."
 * An older version of this article had an except from that Frankfurt quote in the lede, and I still think something like that would be best. For Person, "A person is a being, such as a human, with those attributes/capacities/etc that are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves / that we regard as most important and problematical in our lives / that bestow a certain moral status such as the bearing of rights / etc"; and for Personhood, instead, "Personhood is the status of having..." such attributes/capacities/etc that are of concern/important/problematic for things like bearing rights / etc.
 * (Cross-posted both at Person and Personhood). --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:57, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

weasel words
I removed a lot of meaningless WP:WEASELWORDS from the lead- which in turn is defined differently by different authors in different disciplines, and by different cultures in different times and places. It was reverted with no reason given so I am attempting it again. Volunteer1234 (talk) 21:53, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That text was there after a long and arduous process of trying to come up with a WP:GOODDEF for the lede, which ended with the conclusion that no single definition would be uncontoversial and unbiased so we should instead simply note the fact that the definition of a person is so controversial. I don't think such a phrase qualifies as weasle words; it's not attempting to sound like it's making a concrete claim but then dodging actually doing so in order to avoid making a biased statement, it is simply noting that a disagreement exists in lieu of making any claims which couldn't help but be biased if made. --Pfhorrest (talk) 16:32, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Those are not weasel words it is a factual description of the concept person which does not have one single all encompassing definition.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:56, 5 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It is the most weasely thing I've ever seen on wikipedia. You could put that in any article, it says nothing at all- which in turn is defined differently by different authors in different disciplines, and by different cultures in different times and places. Volunteer1234 (talk) 19:39, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Being vague and being weasely is not the same thing. Weasel phrasings are used to make a view appear in a specific light to push an agenda.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The article personhood to which that phrase defers goes into extensive detail on all those who/which/when/where/how questions, and we don't need to repeat them all over again in the lede of this article. You're right that it doesn't really say anything in particular -- but it lets readers know that there is not just a conspicuous absence of information there that they should try to fill in (with their favorite definition of "person"), there are instead a huge number of controversial claims that we are explicitly not going into right there. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It may be time to revist both this article and the article on Personhood. With some better sources.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:09, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I like the edit you just made to that effect. Gets the same general message across but with more detail good sources backing it. Nice work! --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:22, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Is a being, such as a human?
Isn't it always a human? Pubserv (talk) 19:09, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, there are non-human persons and human non-persons (and partial persons). It is a specific social status which entails a full set of legal rights and social relations.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:58, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Not according to everyone. The article Personhood (linked in the same sentence) is all about the many difficulties in defining the limits of what does or doesn't count as a person, and while certainly most familiar examples of persons are humans, it is a highly contentious position to claim that all persons are humans or vice versa. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Come on, animals can't be called persons! Or is it something else that can be a person, besides humans and animals? Pubserv (talk) 18:34, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Both of those are notable positions. There are things like the Great Ape personhood movement. There are things like corporate personhood. There are questions about the beginning of human personhood. And there are many philosophical definitions of personhood which make no reference to species, but just some general qualities or capabilities or what have you, which allows room for many hypothetical non-human persons we may not have concrete examples of yet. There is no doubt that the majority of the time when someone talks about "a person" they are referring to a human, but that alone doesn't justify defining "person" as "human", and the position that all and only humans are persons is only one among many competing notable positions on the issue. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:52, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Also: God, the devil, angels, demons, fairies, aliens... 31.52.178.182 (talk) 21:58, 30 May 2014 (UTC)


 * "Such as" is jarring. We could note the possible exceptions later in the article, but any common definition such as the Oxford will say that a person is "A human being regarded as an individual" We're not writing an article about business law or animal rights activism, this is a general article about "person". Volunteer1234 (talk) 17:57, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

The Painting
Is there any source that can tell about the meaning of Klee's work as an image of Person concept? הראש (talk) 20:10, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Person: specific species, singular
No mention of the exclusive group-category of creatures that wholly and exhaustively comprise all "person" which is homo-sapiens? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C54:4400:C76:7572:F6CA:4C67:B434 (talk) 14:55, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
 * "Person" and "human" are not synonyms, but in the article Personhood main'd from here, they do discuss the view that all and only humans are person. --Pfhorrest (talk) 18:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

More appropriate for Personhood?
Recent edits] by User:Smht%25& seem to me more appropriate for the article Personhood, which is all about questions about what makes someone a person or not, than for this article, which had most of its content on that topic moved over there before. We don't want this growing to become a duplicate of that article again. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:44, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Main image
I understand that the silhouette is an attempt to be neutral. However, the people clearly represent a specific culture, complete with that culture's stereotypes. Considering how many cultures don't subscribe to that stereotype, would it be more appropriate to use a graphic symbol, such as this?

There should clearly be some sort of image and/or graphic of a person added here... an abstract painting and a pocket watch are neither all that applicable to the subject nor sufficient to accompany this page. Disturbnce (talk) 19:56, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Typo fix request
The first sentence of the thrid paragraph at the top of this article says:

The plural form "people", is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of person.

The first comma does not belong there. The sentence should be something like:

The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.201.14 (talk) 10:01, 7 May, 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ MadGuy7023 (talk) 10:33, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 November 2022
There is a typo and I want to change it because it’s annoying. Usernamesbelike (talk) 18:52, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.  General Ization Talk  18:53, 30 November 2022 (UTC)