Hmm. I see his point, I thinks, but I … think it does mean that, actually. Without fully understanding the definition, you should be less sure that a better understanding wouldn’t classify them differently.
Picture a slave-owner saying something similar about a slave, for instance. Slave-owners were even more confused than we are about personhood, and I think it’s clear that they weren’t “crystal clear on what [isn’t a person”, in retrospect.
Sure, there are debatable cases. But there are also clear-cut ones, like a bacteria, while alive, has no personhood”, and if your model predicts that it has more personhood than a human (as IIT does for consciousness for a certain 2D configuration), then you should not call whatever your model describes a bacteria has more of as “personhood”.
Hmm. I see his point, I thinks, but I … think it does mean that, actually. Without fully understanding the definition, you should be less sure that a better understanding wouldn’t classify them differently.
Picture a slave-owner saying something similar about a slave, for instance. Slave-owners were even more confused than we are about personhood, and I think it’s clear that they weren’t “crystal clear on what [isn’t a person”, in retrospect.
Sure, there are debatable cases. But there are also clear-cut ones, like a bacteria, while alive, has no personhood”, and if your model predicts that it has more personhood than a human (as IIT does for consciousness for a certain 2D configuration), then you should not call whatever your model describes a bacteria has more of as “personhood”.