The big idea: We've built up the person from feeling, self-awareness, agency and responsibility. None of those said 'must be human'.
The sharp question: So here's the sharp question the whole topic has been aiming at: could an animal, or an AI, ever count as a person?
The Australian philosopher Peter Singer pushes hard on animals. If what earns a being moral status is that it can feel — suffer and enjoy — then to ignore an animal's suffering just because it isn't human is speciesism, a bias like racism. A great ape that is self-aware and communicates, he argues, has a stronger claim to personhood than many assume.
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That reply — 'a person to a degree' — is exactly how one African tradition has long thought about personhood.
Wiredu and Menkiti: personhood is earned: Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu and Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti describe a view common across many African communities: personhood isn't something you simply have at birth — it's something you earn and grow into through your life in a community.
Personhood comes in degrees
As Menkiti put it, personhood comes in degrees: a newborn is a full human being but not yet a full person; you become more fully a person as you take on relationships, duties and a place among others. It's graded and relational, not automatic and individual.
Warren / Locke (Western)
- Personhood = having certain abilities
- Roughly on/off — you meet the marks or you don't
- Located in the individual mind
Wiredu / Menkiti (African)
- Personhood = earned through community life
- Comes in degrees — you grow into it
- Located in your relationships, not just you
Checkpoint — degree view: In one line: for Wiredu and Menkiti, personhood is earned and graded through community — not a switch you're born with, but a status you grow into. That reframes the animal/AI question: it's not 'is it a person, yes or no?' but 'how far along is it?'
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Now turn the same tools on a harder case — a machine that talks like a person.
Go further — higher-level insight: The deepest worry about AI personhood isn't cleverness — it's whether there's anything it's like to be the machine. A chatbot can produce the words 'I'm sad' with no inner feeling behind them.
Go further — imitation isn't enough: On Singer's test (real feeling) and the African view (real, lived relationships), imitation isn't enough. Naming the gap between behaving like a person and being one is a top-band move.
How Section A works: An unseen stimulus (text or image) [25]. Personhood — who counts as a person, and whether a non-human could — is one of the strongest issues to reach for, and this whole topic feeds it.
The task: Task: with explicit reference to the stimulus and your own knowledge, explore a philosophical issue related to what it is to be human.
Stimulus — A care-home installs a talking robot companion. A resident says: "She listens, she remembers my stories, she says she cares about me. My own daughter says it's just a machine — but honestly, some days she feels more like a person to me than half the people here." With explicit reference to the stimulus and your own knowledge, explore a philosophical issue related to what it is to be human.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Common mistakes: 1. Describing views instead of arguing them. 2. Ignoring the stimulus — quote the robot 'saying she cares'. 3. Only one view — top bands need tension (abilities vs feeling vs community). 4. No conclusion — decide, with a reason. 5. Name-dropping — a name earns nothing without its argument.