What is a person?

[Violet]

"Person" is more a term used to define someone within society. It doesn't really have any value linked to morals or sentience; it is used as a legal term.

That's my opinion, anyway.

*Have been kinda busy playing video games, writing essays, helping people move, and shopping at the new Walmart. Oh, and I think I slept once last thursday... might be delusional though *

Is that necessarily true? I think it goes somewhat beyond a legal term, to a somewhat more fundamental root... Would you not say that anything that exhibits 'personality' must already be a person, to an extent at the least?

As in... doesn't calling a thing a 'person' arise from a thing's possession of personality? And hence the definition of a person is the cumulative description of their individual characteristics? I personally think this to be true... but in this case: which quality ultimately defines a 'person', or is it rather the culmination of several characteristics that a person is made?

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Isn't 'a person' a 'human being'! A human being is an animal that has a unique genome which has given it certain traits, that can be differentiated from other species of animal.

You said 'does personality denote a person'. If a person is dead, are they still a person?. I think they are a dead person, but they have no personality! So when is a person not a person then? When they no longer physically exist could be an answer.

I wouldn't declare all people to be humans... it simply isn't able to be backed up unless being human is a required quality of being a person.

Well... once a life-form is dead... it is just that: dead. Whatever 'person' it once was it is no longer, as it has changed sufficiently in state to warrant a different identity (that being a carcass). I think it's just a dead human... anything that made it a person once is now entirely gone so far as I'm concerned.