Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?

“This is a dialogue about the notion of a person, of an entity that thinks and feels and acts, that counts and is accountable. Equivalently, it’s about the intentional idiom—the well-knit fabric of terms that we use to characterize persons. Human beings are usually persons (a brain-dead human might be considered a human but not a person). However, there may be persons, in various senses, that are not human beings. Much recent discussion has focused on hypothetical computer-robots and on actual nonhuman great apes. The discussion here is naturalistic, which is to say that count and accountability are, at least initially, presumed to be naturally well-knit with the possession of a cognitive and affective life.”
     —Justin Leiber, from the Introduction

“A delightful book, beautifully written and psychologically acute.”
     —Peter T. Manicas, Queens College, CUNY

“Written in a lively and entertaining style, this little book, which deals with topics such as ‘personhood,’ animal rights, and artificial intelligence . . . makes some rather difficult philosophical points clear in an unpedantic fashion.”
     —M. E. Winston, Trenton State College