Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?: A Dialogue

by Justin Leiber

Overview

"This is a dialogue about the notion of a person, of an entity that thinks and feels and acts, that counts and is accountable. Equivalently, it's about the intentional idiom--the well-knit fabric of terms that we use to characterize persons. Human beings are usually persons (a brain-dead human might be considered a human but not a person). However, there may be persons, in various senses, that are not human beings. Much recent discussion has focused on hypothetical computer-robots and on actual nonhuman great apes. The discussion here is naturalistic, which is to say that count and accountability are, at least initially, presumed to be naturally well-knit with the possession of a cognitive and affective life." --Justin Leiber, from the Introduction

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872200029
Publisher:	Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/15/1985
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

"Written in a lively and entertaining style, this little book, which deals with topics such as 'personhood,' animal rights, and artificial intelligence . . . makes some rather difficult philosophical points clear in an unpedantic fashion." --M. E. Winston, Trenton State College

"A delightful book, beautifully written and psychologically acute." --Peter T. Manicas, Queens College, CUNY

From the Publisher