Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #21

Crashcourse philosophy has been truly masterful at handling difficult topics in a very rational way. Keep up the good work.

5:20 Child abuse and extreme bullying survivor here. I can confirm this view to be true. When you are not recognized as a person be anyone around you, arguing in favour or you being a person is completely useless. Really, the thing is that when a capable, fully functioning human is denied personhood, the morally correct thing to do is to offer a helping hand by caring about that non-person, restoring their personhood in the process. I am eternally grateful for the person who did that to me

MY OPINIONS ON THE MATTER!

Crash Course Whatever: Hank poses a question, Hank guides us through reasoning to get the answer Crash Course Philosophy: Hank poses a question, Hank guides us to more questions which are even more frustrating and a little bit mind blowing, then you eat gelato and weep silently

Philosophy should be mandatory in school.

he had glasses in his mother's womb

Regarding the gradient theory of personhood, how do you determine where someone falls on that gradient? If we take that theory in conjunction with Singer's theory (since they don't appear to be mutually exclusive theories), then a cow may be considered more of a person than a week-old fetus, since the cow at least has the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, whereas the fetus does not. In which case, abortion of a fetus in the early stages of development has no more of a moral implication than slaughtering a cow for meat. On the other hand, it may in fact make the matter of slaughtering animals such as cows for meat even more controversial, since cows have now been promoted to persons and killing them could be considered murder. To go even further, if we believe that persons can forfeit their personhood by committing grievous acts against other persons (like murder), then a lion (which is now technically a person since it can feel pain and pleasure) hunting and killing a gazelle (also now a person) is forfeiting its personhood by killing another person. But since lions are cold-blooded animals and must kill other animals (mostly persons) to survive they can never be persons, since their survival precludes their ability to be persons. Therefore, a person cannot be defined by its ability to feel pain and pleasure if persons are also capable of forfeiting their personhood through seriously immoral acts against other persons. By extension, all carnivores have forfeited their personhood by murdering other people (that is, if they have killed the animal themselves).

I thought of philosophy as a rubbish subject but you showed me what philosophy really is. I find it very interesting now. Thank you!

Thanks to Crash Course Philosophy, is now my favorite subject.

Tough to talk about but worth it

"if all you need are human DNA, then my mouth cells are persons" 3:54 Then shows red blood cells, which do not have DNA when they mature =.=

I don't think it is necessary to take away one's personhood in order to punish them for their actions. ...It is by their being people that they can be punished for what they have done. If you take away their personhood, it is like you are trying to punish a rock for not being a tree.

My problem with Personhood is we only have one real example, Us. A sample size of one is difficult to examine. That's why I've always been fascinated by Neanderthals. In many ways they were very different than us but we would seem to give them personhood.

I find that the gradient approach is serving me quite well on a moral basis now. Thanks so much for this video!

It is extremely brave of you to make this episode.

"I'm sure no one in the comments will be shouting their opinion at all" - LOL thanks Hank, I just spat my porridge all over my phone at that line! 😂

Warren's criteria also excludes about a third of humanity at any given point... you know, the part that's asleep, as in, not conscious, not able to communicate and definitely not self-aware.

>3. Self-motivated activity >4. Capacity to communicate or >Social Criterion Dang guess I'm not a person

i think hank does a great job of talking about these kinds of things in a neutral, objective way, which is important when educating. good job, hank!

Can I just say how much I appreciate that the ads were at the end of the episode. Thanks squarespace !