Persons, Mind and Value

Persons, Mind and Value focuses on the link between persons and values: and as values are linked with the mentality of the subjects, relevant features of mind have been brought to focus.Philosophical accounts of personhood have often been used for building normative ethical theories and persons have usually been thought of as moral agents, responsible for their actions done with freedom. Against the backdrop of this, the authors have attempted to delineate the concept of moral personhood which, they argue, is built on spirituality and moral commitment. Although morality is not entirely a matter of pure rationality and moral agency requires self-transcendence and spirituality, the book nonetheless brings out a stricter sense in which moral personhood applies to beings who are rational moral agents. Persons’ being rational as well as spiritual beings implies that they be moral beings.In course of the defence of such concept of moral personhood, interesting contrast has been made between personhood vis-a-vis (higher) animal consciousness on the one hand and artificial intelligence on the other. And illuminating allusions are made to the possibilities of ‘non-human persons’ and ‘human non-persons’ which inevitably lead to conceiving personhood admitting of degrees or levels in its application to human as well as non-human beings. However a firm defence is given to the theory that moral personhood cannot apply to beings who are not even minimally rational.The book is an excellent exercise in analytic elucidation and will immensely benefit students, researchers and anyone interested in moral philosophy and philosophy of mind.