Humans have long assumed they belong to a special category called "persons." But what actually makes someone a person? And why should persons get special moral status?
I keep coming back to these questions because they refuse to stay abstract. The moment you build an AI system that reasons about its own goals, they become engineering problems.
The Traditional View
Personhood is supposed to confer special status: persons have rights, deserve respect, bear responsibility for their actions, and warrant moral consideration. The philosophical tradition offers several criteria for what earns you membership in this club.
Rationality. Kant's version: persons are rational agents who can recognize and follow moral laws. Rationality lets you understand moral principles, deliberate about actions, and choose based on reasons rather than instinct. But babies aren't rational, and we call them persons. People with severe cognitive disabilities have reduced rationality, and we don't revoke their personhood. Rationality comes in degrees; personhood is treated as binary.
