Abstract

Lynne Rudder Baker offers an account of what it is to be a human person, involving what she calls a “first person perspective,” that is separable from her constitution-view of human persons and adaptable to a variety of rival views of personal ontology. I argue that this account fails, no matter what view of personal ontology it is coupled with, on account of giving biological humanity an absurd role in determining the personhood of both possible human and non-human person-candidates. The failure of Baker’s account suggests difficulties for any view that would grant personhood to marginal case humans while denying it to non-humans with relevantly similar psychological properties.