Short
Selections from
When
Is a Person?
Pre-Persons
& Former Persons
The following paragraphs give a
taste of the contents of this book.
They also appear on the back
cover of When Is a Person?
Consciousness Defines Personhood
If everyone agrees that the patient is
unconsciousness,
and if the doctors say there is little hope of consciousness returning,
then that patient has become a former person
because the other capacities that define personhood
(memory, language, & autonomy) depend on
consciousness.
[p. 18]
Remembering a Person
If you who survive me want to remember me as a
person,
you should apply yourselves to reading my books
and sharing my ideas with others who can benefit from them.
My person will be much better encapsulated in my books
after I have lost my memory than in my body.
The memories now contained in my brain reside in living cells,
which are inherently impermanent and subject to decay.
But even when my brain can no longer recognize my own words,
the various persons I have been during the several phases of my life
will be better preserved in my written words than anywhere
else. [p.29]
How Language Defines Personhood
When human animals first developed the
capacity to speak,
they burst out of the animal kingdom.
About 100,000 years ago, our ancestors gradually emerged as persons.
Since then, all human cultures have created abstract symbols,
which the persons of those cultures use every day
in the complex process of interacting with other persons.
Thus, language is essentially an interpersonal
phenomenon.
[p. 34]
Computer Memory is not the Same as
Human Memory
But even tho all these words went thru an
‘electronic memory’,
which kept every key-stroke for as long as I wanted,
the computer never understood a word of this text.
A computer does not comprehend what is stored in its ‘memory’
any more than a book in the library understands what it
contains. [p. 38]
The Questions of this Book will
Define the Author’s Personhood
My Medical Care Decisions Committee
will have to decide when I have become a former person,
using this book as their
guide.
[p. 39]
Created
11-7-2008; Revised