An objection is a counterargument directed not against a single argument, but against a concept of person as a whole. It shows that the position is untenable in itself.
The three objections against the empirical-functionalist concept of person
In the debate over the concept of person, three independent objections are directed against the empirical-functionalist concept of person:
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Exclusion objection — The functionalist concept of person excludes newborns, coma patients, severely intellectually disabled people, and the advanced demented from personhood. Directed against Locke, Parfit, and Singer.
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Objection from diachronic identity — If personhood is constituted by actually exercised self-consciousness, the person disintegrates into a sequence of temporally bounded states of consciousness. Directed against Hume and Parfit.
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Performative contradiction — Whoever claims that not all human beings are persons presupposes, in the very claim, the personhood he denies to others. Directed against Singer. Bexten’s own further development (2026) in the wake of Apel’s transcendental pragmatics; it closes a systematic gap in Spaemann and, in this form, is not contained in the 2017 dissertation.
Dialectical asymmetry
Against the substance-ontological and the substance-ontological-relational concept of person there is not a single objection. The entire burden of objection falls on the empirical-functionalist side. See Argumentative-dialectical balance.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.