Who's a Person? It Depends on What They Want . . .

Should the substance of political rights be determined before we grapple with the question of moral personhood?  Glen Whitman sees an advantage in doing so. (HT: Volokh)  An excerpt:

1. What beings (adults, children, fetuses, animals, aliens, etc.) are deserving of moral consideration? Call this the question of moral personhood.

2. What political rights, privileges, and powers should beings with moral personhood have? Call this the question of political status.

In intellectual circles, we usually regard moral philosophy as preceding political philosophy. We therefore address these two questions either (a) separately, or (b) in that order. We decide who constitutes a moral person – whose rights or interests therefore deserve consideration – and then we talk about the political status of such persons. But in practical politics, I think people consciously or unconsciously answer these questions using a kind of backward induction, considering political status first and then moral personhood. That is, they begin by asking what rights, privileges, and powers will be accorded to persons within a political system, and then (taking the previous answer as given) they decide who ought to be regarded as a person and to what extent.

Perhaps he is correct that, as a practical matter, the substance of the political rights at issue will affect the public's comfort level with recognizing the moral status of the rights claimant.  But as a matter of principle, letting moral personhood flow from the political status that a given society is inclined to tolerate would turn the moral anthropology upside down.

Rob