DO WE HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CRITERIALIST VIEW OF PERSONHOOD?
DO WE HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CRITERIALIST VIEW OF PERSONHOOD?

Summary/Abstract: The main aim of this paper is to assess various contemporary methodological approaches to the definition of personhood from the perspective of legal theory. The criterialist point of view is undoubtedly the dominant one in contemporary analytic philosophy. It assumes that our classification of entities that can be characterized as persons follows from their fulfilment of certain necessary and sufficient conditions. This kind of approach stems from a series of questions about the nature of personhood that have been analysed at least since Locke, and has found its contemporary articulation (more or less explicitly) in the work of authors such as Frankfurt, Dennett, French or Goodman. However, the shortcomings of this approach have been exposed by Chappell. Social constructionism may be considered the main alternative, but this group of positions has also been the subject of some persuasive criticism, e.g., by Wiggins. Drawing on Millikan and Bach, I argue that a viable alternative would require a modification of certain ontological assumptions about the classification of real kinds and the specificity of socially constructed entities.

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