personhood the condition or property of being a person, especially when this is considered to entail moral and/or metaphysical importance. Personhood has been thought to involve various traits, including (moral) agency; reason or rationality; language, or the cognitive skills language may support (such as intentionality and self-consciousness); and ability to enter into suitable relations with other persons (viewed as members of a self-defining group). Buber emphasized the difference between the I-It relationship holding between oneself and an object, and the I- Thou relationship, which holds between oneself and another person (who can be addressed). Dennett has construed persons in terms of the ‘intentional stance,’ which involves explaining another’s behavior in terms of beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.
Questions about when personhood begins and when it ends have been central to debates about abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, since personhood has often been viewed as the mark, if not the basis, of a being’s possession of special moral status.
See also ETHICS, MORAL STATUS, PERSONAL IDENTITY, PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. E.J.