I find the question as posed to be completely unanswerable. It’s akin to asking “At what degree of athletic prowess does a fraternity member become a sprint to the finish line”.
Minds do not become persons.
If you meant “sentient beings” when you said “persons”, minds do not become sentient beings either.
If you meant “people” when you said “minds” and meant "sentient beings when you said “persons”, well that doesn’t quite happen either, at least not without some elaboration on where “consciousness” does or does not come into play. And there is a major risk of self-referential definition of terms here.
If you meant “banquet” when you said “person” and meant “supper” when you said “human mind”, you probably posted this in the wrong forum.
My dog definately will point at her toy when it is named. “Hey, where’s the Squid? Okay, go get it!” Mirror test, no, but a relative of hers did when she was a puppy… and then a week later no longer did.
Many of my dogs watch TV, and several of them have shown interpretations of the plot in their actions.
They all recognize other dogs on TV. And, while watching Westminster, one’s uncle showed up, and he got so excited he charged and tackled the TV, paws out, barking, nose to TV.
The same dog showed the most visible ‘plot interpretation’ I’ve ever seen. Watching a nature show about bears, which the dog favored (He also liked soccer, especially long kicks down the field), suddenly, in a tiny corner of the screen, a blind opened and a man got out. The dog started warning-barking the man, apparently telling him to go back into the blind as it was not safe.
This, I note, is also the dog who figured out how to turn on the TV with the remote control after watching people do it.
Contrawise, the Iguana liked NASCAR, but that was just because his head was next to the stereo system.
Dogs is different. See my previous link for a science-speaking person with the white coat and all who has something to say on the matter.
Late Edit: The mirror thing was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen. The bottom strip of the couch was mirrored where it met the floor. Puppy comes in, prances about, sees the mirror, attacks it. Pauses. Hops back. Hops forwards. Noses it. Tilts her head back and forth. Promptly ignores it from then on.
I agree that 2-3 years is way too late. Even at age one, kids will try to keep something you are prying from their hands. Before age 2, one of the very first words they learn is “mine”.
And even if dogs don’t pass the mirror test, I understand that some parrots do.
So yes, a single benchmark won’t do. For every test, we might just find an animal that passes it, which only reflects that animal intelligence is very varied and specifically suited to that animal’s needs.
I agree, but for a different reason - I don’t believe a gradual process involving many separate threads of sometimes-interdependent and sometimes-redundant processes can be reduced to a consistent series of discrete ‘points’ that work for enough cases to be a useful measure.
I am afraid that you are right. I would like to reach that conclusion rather than just assume it, though. ETA: I return to the example of adulthood. It cannot be measured and we ballpark it differently in different cultures but there is some level of consistency on what we want to see in an adult. What is it that we seek to find in a person?
There are three levels of understanding. Plant, animal and human.
Dogs cannot reason but are great companions. Or maybe that is why they make such great companions. They are more responsive then your spider plant too.
I thought about this for a bit, while struggling to remember what I learned about how the human brain forms and the evolution of consciousness.
And at each stage I found that it’s easy to find an animal that does what we do. Looking at the examples above: the ability to point, self recognition, communication, problem solving.
What’s more, at each stage there are “persons” that lack that ability, but still get to be people.
So I put this challenge to you, perhaps it’s not an internal phenomenon, but rather a social construct. As a society we all seemed to agree that a monkey/ape isn’t a person, but it’s slightly higher than other animals. It is slowly becoming understood how smart dolphins are, and as the information improves we start to rank then higher. As a society we are able to agree what makes person, what makes pet (dog, cat), and what makes food (pig, cow, chicken).
And on the other side of the coin, notice how easily one group is able to look at another group and say, “not human.”
Unfortuntely, I think its one of those ‘know it when I see it’ judgments that defies any general and reliable scheme of definition.
I saw a mini-lecture on this problem recently (can’t remember where) - a demonstration was made of an attempt to determine personhood, when presented with candidates such as: Human baby, adult chimpanzee, normal adult human, adult human idiot, disabled human, (hypothetical)sentient robot, etc.
It is possible to draw up a very contorted and conditional set of rules that will pick out the answers we want from these candidates, but they’re only the answers we predefined as correct anyway, so nothing new is achieved.
My dog can reason. We trained him to sit at street corners before crossing. He abstracted this into sitting in the middle of the block to tell us that he wanted to cross. Also, when he wanted to get to food on the ground in the park which I wouldn’t let him eat, he tricked me into getting ahead of him so he could double back for it.
But reasoning doesn’t imply self-awareness. Our subconscious minds can reason, and problem solve, but are not self-aware.
Yes, That is exactly what makes us higher then animals. That we are self aware. I wish I could teach my dog to stop at street corners. He will sit for a treat but all bets are off when he out on his leash…
IMHO The human ‘essence’ or ‘soul’ preexists the human mind. It is the point of when our soul starts using the mind that we can start to develop our own paths and start developing our own sense of reality. I’d say it is the point where the forming body gives sensory input to a mind that is capable of ‘feeling that’ and the soul says ‘what is that’ and starts using his/her mind.
But the human mind is not the person, just a sensory interpreter with some processing ability for the soul.
Right. That’s the problem and why I think most people don’t want to touch this one. We want whatever system we come up with to include all humans and exclude all non-humans. That’s going at it backwards.
I say say what you think is right and if some humans are out and some non-humans are in, then that’s what it is. Otherwise there is no point in having this discussion at all. Just equate humanity to personhood and be done with it.
One of the problems (or if not a problem, a lack of help) comes from it seemingly being only humans who are considered persons, currently. So if we make comparisons, they’re almost always going to be against a normal human adult, because that’s the only being that in general we’d agree on in advance. Which means we’re sort of forced into considering personhoood based on human traits; in a sense, we’re judging personhood by the symptoms, rather than the cause.
There’s animals that pass the mirror test, as noted above. That would indicate self-awareness, at least in my eyes. And many young babies fail it.
The Supreme Court used viability as a demarcation point and you won’t find the term “brain waves” used in their decision but this is what was discussed in the scientific community at the time the decision was made. You can get some sense of it from Carl Sagan’s thoughts on the subject.
Yes, as I said, the court used physical viability as a benchmark of law. But at the time, the science brought forth for public consumption talked in terms of what makes us human. clearly it is our ability to think that differentiates us from other animals and I have to believe the court took this into consideration. Physical viability is certainly part of it but in this discussion I would think brain wave activity would be a good indicator when it transitions from random patterns to something recognizable.