The exclusion objection is the gravest charge against the empirical-functionalist concept of person. It runs as follows: whoever binds personhood to actual capacities such as self-consciousness, the use of reason, language, or interests in one’s own future, systematically excludes whole groups of human beings from the circle of persons.
Those affected are the embryo and the fetus, the infant and the small child, the sleeper and the unconscious, the severely mentally disabled and those suffering from advanced dementia, and the person lying in an irreversible coma. For all of these human beings it holds that they can exercise the required capacities either not yet, not just now, no longer, or not at all. According to the empirical-functionalist criterion they are therefore not persons — with all the consequences for their moral and legal status.
This is not a rhetorical objection but the consistent result of the position. John Locke tied the self to the capacity for memory. Derek Parfit drew from this the inference that psychological continuity constitutes personal identity. Peter Singer finally spelled out the consequence: on his position, infants are not persons, because they do not yet have preferences regarding their own continued existence.
The exclusion objection shows that the empirical-functionalist concept of person suffers from a more deeply lying error: it confuses the being of the person with her behavior. According to the principle agere sequitur esse, acting is the consequence of being, not its measure. Whoever does not actually think is not for that reason a non-thinking being — he is a thinking being that is just not thinking. The capacity persists even when it is not actually exercised.
The substance-ontological concept of person circumvents this objection, because it determines the person not by actual acts but by the nature of the bearer. Every being with a rational nature is a person, regardless of whether it is currently unfolding that nature.
In the argument map on the concept of person: The exclusion objection becomes visible in the map above all in Spaemann’s syllogism Diagnosis of the Oblivion of the Person and stands as the common ground of refutation behind the attacks on Singer, Locke, and Parfit.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Objection; directed against: Empirical-functionalist concept of person
Chapter assignment: Chapter 3: What Is a Person?
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 13 (Are There Potential Persons?).
- Seifert, Josef (1997): What is life? The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life. Rodopi.
- Singer, Peter (1993): Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See also
Empirical-functionalist concept of person, Substance-ontological concept of person, Agere sequitur esse, Embryo, Dementia, Diachronic identity objection, Performative contradiction, John Locke, Derek Parfit, Peter Singer, Robert Spaemann, Chapter 3: Concept of Person