For the People
Let's first recall John Locke's
(1632-1704) concept of person: "a thinking intelligent Being, that
has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the
same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only
by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it
seems to me essential to it" (Essay on Humane Understanding, Book 2,
Chapter 27, Section 9). Given this, and the astonishing discoveries in
primatology in the last 10/20 years, today we can say that this
concept of person not only englobes us, the commom human beings we
were used to, but also chimpanzees, gorillas and others - in other words, great apes. In fact, there has been a movement composed by primatologists and philosophers called Great Ape Project dedicated to make the personhood status recognized to these non-human animals. On the other hand, this concept obviously excludes toddlers (or children under 6 months) and some deeply mentally-defective human beings.