Animals as Persons

Abstract

Far from being contrary to common sense, the idea that some nonhuman animals can be persons conforms to a certain prominent strand in common sense. Three conceptions of personhood are distinguished: legal, moral, and metaphysical. The subject of this book is the metaphysical sense of person. Four essential conditions of metaphysical personhood are identified: consciousness, cognition, self-awareness, and other-awareness. These conditions are advanced as individually necessary and collectively sufficient for an individual to qualify as a person. A person is an individual that is conscious, in the sense that there is something it is like to be that individual; it is a cognitive agent capable of engaging in reasoning; it is aware of itself; and it is aware of others precisely as other persons.