Persons as Things

Persons are things. We are biological creatures, things of flesh and blood, whose behavior is governed by the same principles that govern the behavior of any other social mammals, plus or minus the complications that come from the recursive possibilities of access to natural language. That much is fact. But to be treated as a thing amounts to a deep insult. To be treated as a thing is to be minimized, rather than engaged with, predicted and controlled rather than reasoned with, written off as the product of our environment rather than appreciated for our unique contributions. Chapter 5 explores what it means to be treated as a thing in a morally problematic way, and argues that the answer must be tempered by the fact that persons are also a kind of thing.