Although there is already a thread for "What makes a good person?" ( http://atheistforums.org/thread-2550-pag...ght=person )... I'm asking an even more fundamental, altogether different, and perhaps even more important(?) question. That being: what is a person? What must a thing be for it to be a person? Would not personality denote a person?
By being human is a thing automatically a person? But then, would not other beings (Synthetic intelligences, at least some fellow animals, etc) be people? What moral implications does the status of a thing as a person bring in regards to acting upon it? Should it be considered moral and proper to eat other people so long as they don't share our specie? So many implications, such a broad subject.
So what do you lot think?
By being human is a thing automatically a person? But then, would not other beings (Synthetic intelligences, at least some fellow animals, etc) be people? What moral implications does the status of a thing as a person bring in regards to acting upon it? Should it be considered moral and proper to eat other people so long as they don't share our specie? So many implications, such a broad subject.
So what do you lot think?
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day
