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The Decline of Juridical Humanism

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Personhood Beyond Humanism

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Law ((BRIEFSLAW))

Abstract

Central to juridical humanism is the perception of the human being as an entity elevated above the rest of nature, including animals, from which they are separated by a metaphysical abyss resulting from specific properties unique to humans and only to humans. These properties endow them with a moral value that cannot be compared to any other. The roots of this way of looking at the relationship between people and other animal species can be found in the Christian vision of the human as an imago Dei and in the earlier Aristotelian concept of scala naturae (a hierarchical order of beings, crowned with man). In modern times, this image has been preserved principally in Cartesian psychophysical dualism, according to which the human being—unlike other living creatures—consists of two substances: the physical substance of the body and the immaterial thinking substance (res cogitans). It is to the latter that they owe rationality, free will, the ability to think and to express or communicate the content of their thoughts in language, the sense of self or identity (ego cogito), as well as other qualities that make them persons.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ryle (1949), p. 15.

  2. 2.

    Descartes (1637), p. 56.

  3. 3.

    Descartes (1637), p. 57.

  4. 4.

    Carruthers (2013); Safina (2015); Bekoff (2007).

  5. 5.

    As rightly pointed out by Wojciech Załuski, this dependence may in many respects question the legitimacy of treating human beings as persons (in the sense defined by traditionally adopted psychological criteria); see Załuski (2015).

  6. 6.

    On the role of evolutionary anthropology in the philosophy of morality and law, see Załuski (2013).

  7. 7.

    Berridge (2003); Panksepp (2005).

  8. 8.

    Griffin (2001).

  9. 9.

    For more details, see Pietrzykowski (2012), p. 105 f.

  10. 10.

    Pisula (2015).

  11. 11.

    The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, written and signed by Philip Low, Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, Bruno Van Swinderen, and Christof Koch. The signing ceremony took place on 7 July 2012, in the presence of Stephen Hawking (available online at: http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf).

  12. 12.

    Descartes (1637), p. 59.

  13. 13.

    Descartes (1637), p. 51.

  14. 14.

    See, e.g., Kaminski et al. (2008), pp. 224–234.

  15. 15.

    See, e.g., Kenward et al. (2005), p. 121 f; for more details, cf. Walkup and Beck (2011).

  16. 16.

    See, e.g., Schel et al. (2013).

  17. 17.

    Hillix and Rumbaugh (2004), p. 237 f; Saxton (2010), p. 38 f.

  18. 18.

    Hillix and Rumbaugh (2004), p. 59 f.

  19. 19.

    For more detail, see Terrace (1987, 2011).

  20. 20.

    See, e.g., Hillix and Rumbaugh (2004); DeGrazia (1996), p. 190.

  21. 21.

    Koerth-Baker (2010).

  22. 22.

    Cf., e.g. Midgley (2002), p. 159.

  23. 23.

    Whiten et al. (1999).

  24. 24.

    Sherry and Galef (1984); Nicol (1995).

  25. 25.

    Ben-Ami Bartal et al. (2011).

  26. 26.

    For more details, see Brosnan and de Waal (2003); de Waal (2006), p. 45 f.

  27. 27.

    For a classical exposition of the triune brain hypothesis, see MacLean (1990).

  28. 28.

    For more details, see Lis and Pietrzykowski (2015).

  29. 29.

    Judgement of the Constitutional Tribunal of 10 December 2014 (K 52/13) in a bench composed of: Andrzej Rzepliński (Presiding Judge), Maria Gintowt-Jankowicz (Judge Rapporteur), Stanisław Biernat, Zbigniew Cieślak, Małgorzata Pyziak-Szafnicka, Mirosław Granat, Leon Kieres, Andrzej Wróbel, and Marek Zubik. Dissenting opinions to the entire judgement or its parts were submitted by: Teresa Liszcz, Sławomira Wronkowska-Jaśkiewicz, Piotr Tuleja, Stanisław Rymar, and Wojciech Hermeliński.

  30. 30.

    See http://www.projetogap.org.br/en.

  31. 31.

    See http://www.cetaceanrights.org/pdf_bin/helsinki-group.pdf.

  32. 32.

    See http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org.

  33. 33.

    For a comprehensice review of scientific, moral and legal aspects of chimerisation and hybrydisation technologies see Taupitz and Weschka (2009).

  34. 34.

    Intraspecific chimerism occurs also, albeit rather rarely, in nature, when in the early prenatal stage of development, cells coming from the mother or a twin sibling transfer to the developing embryo. Consisting in the presence of a very small amount of genetically distinct cells, this type of microchimerism is usually insignificant and imperceptible, often discovered by chance. However, it may result in an individual having eyes of different colours or even two different blood types.

  35. 35.

    Bourret et al. (2016).

  36. 36.

    Muotri et al. (2005)

  37. 37.

    Greely et al. (2007).

  38. 38.

    Behringer (2007).

  39. 39.

    See, e.g. Boyce (2006).

  40. 40.

    Attempts to develop a method of obtaining human progenitor germ cells (oocytes and spermatocytes) have been crowned with success, see Irie et al. (2015). Of course, even if they were successfully implanted into a developing animal embryo, there would still remain the problem of embryogenesis of the zygote produced as a result of the fertilisation.

  41. 41.

    Pennisi (2014).

  42. 42.

    Jiang et al. (2011).

  43. 43.

    Macintosh (2015).

  44. 44.

    Putnam (1975), p. 237 f.

  45. 45.

    A prime example of such experiments may be the so-called robo-rat or ratbot—a rat with electrodes implanted in its brain, which enable transfer of signals producing a change in the direction of running and hence, remote control of its path. For more details, see Graham-Rowe (2002).

  46. 46.

    In 2013, MIT Technology Review included Theodore W. Berger’s investigations in the list of top ten breakthrough technologies in the developmental stage (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/513681/memory-implants).

  47. 47.

    For more details, see. Hansell and Grassie (2011).

  48. 48.

    Plutarch, Theseus, trans. J. Dryden; available online at: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/theseus.html.

  49. 49.

    See, e.g., Parfit (1984), p. 199 f.

  50. 50.

    Sulikowski (2013), p. 120.

  51. 51.

    Koops et al. (2010), p. 515.

  52. 52.

    Surowiecki (2015).

  53. 53.

    Flyn (2013).

  54. 54.

    The most important publications addressing these problems include first and foremost: Solum (1992); Chopra and White (2011); Pagallo (2013).

  55. 55.

    Matthias (2007), p. 22.

  56. 56.

    Allen and Widdison (1996).

  57. 57.

    Koops et al. (2010), p. 512.

  58. 58.

    Pagallo (2013), p. 104 f.

  59. 59.

    Koops et al. (2010), p. 539.

  60. 60.

    Chopra (2010), pp. 38–39.

  61. 61.

    For a discussion and criticism of most of them, see Solum (1992), p. 1231 f.

  62. 62.

    Solum (1992), p. 1262 f.

  63. 63.

    Locke (1689).

  64. 64.

    Chopra (2010), p. 40.

  65. 65.

    On the various understandings of the concept of artificial intelligence, see, e.g., Warwick (2013), p. 13 f.

  66. 66.

    For an overview of this issue, cf. Hyslop (2016).

  67. 67.

    In fact, because of the inherent ambiguity and fuzziness of the verb “think,” Alan Turing proposed that the question “Can machines think?” should be replaced by the question “Can machines do well in the imitation game?”; see Turing (1950), p. 433.

  68. 68.

    For the Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence contests and their idea, founder, and history, see http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html.

  69. 69.

    For more details, see, e.g. Ryle (1949).

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    Tomasz Pietrzykowski

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Pietrzykowski, T. (2018). The Decline of Juridical Humanism. In: Personhood Beyond Humanism. SpringerBriefs in Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78881-4_4

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