Can Animals Be Persons? Lessons from philosophy & science (#409)
- Rick LeCouteur
- Oct 11
- 4 min read
As a veterinarian, educator, and author, I’ve often reflected on how we define the moral boundaries of our relationship with animals. In the clinic, in the field, or even in children’s picture books, the same question quietly surfaces: Who counts?
Philosopher Elisa Aaltola tackled that very question in her essay Personhood and Animals, exploring whether animals can, or should, be regarded as persons.
Her analysis is more than philosophical; it’s profoundly moral. If personhood is what grants beings independent value, then excluding animals from that category may say more about us than about them.
Definitions
Person:
A conscious, relational being whose experience and interaction with others confer intrinsic moral value.
Personhood is not reserved for humans; it arises wherever awareness and relationship exist.
Animal:
A sentient being historically denied personhood and treated as instrumental - as pet, product, or subject.
Yet many animals exhibit the very consciousness and emotional reciprocity that define personhood itself.
Together, these terms invite us to ask not “What are they?”
But, rather to ask, “Who are they?”
The Perfectionist Approach: Defining Personhood by Ability
The perfectionist view ties personhood to highly prized capacities. Reason. Language. Autonomy. Or moral agency. Thinkers like Kant and Descartes built entire systems on the assumption that these abilities separate humans from all other creatures.
Yet research in cognitive ethology tells a different story. Chimpanzees plan ahead, elephants mourn, and dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors. Many animals demonstrate complex awareness, and some humans (infants or those with profound disabilities) do not.
Aaltola notes the circular reasoning behind perfectionism: we assume humans are special, define the special traits in human terms, and then use those traits to prove our uniqueness.
It’s a closed loop that protects human privilege rather than tests moral consistency.
The Humanistic Approach: Species as the Moral Boundary
The humanistic approach simply equates personhood with humanity. To be human is to be a person. Full stop. This seems tidy, but it’s philosophically shaky.
As Aaltola points out, if species membership defines moral worth, then we must explain why biology should set ethical boundaries. We reject race or gender as moral markers; why should species be different? And since species themselves are fluid, diverse, and interrelated, the boundary between us and them is not as firm as we might like to believe.
This approach blurs science and ethics. It describes what humans are but leaps to what ought to follow. It risks reducing moral value to a matter of taxonomy.
The Interactive Approach: Personhood as Relationship
Aaltola’s interactive model offers a more inclusive and humane perspective. Instead of asking what inner traits a being must possess, it asks how that being relates to others.
This idea has deep roots. The Greek word for person referred to a mask or role in a play. An identity expressed in relation to others. Personhood, in this sense, is not isolation but interaction.
Ethologist Juan Carlos Gómez expands this view: personhood emerges when two beings recognize each other as intentional and responsive.
Philosopher Paola Cavalieri calls this the subject of relations model. It’s not about conceptualizing the mind of another. It’s about experiencing the other as a subject rather than an object.
By this measure, many animals qualify. Dogs, parrots, elephants, and dolphins communicate intent, form emotional bonds, and experience empathy. Even solitary animals, such as an iguana avoiding a predator, for instance, act in relation to another’s agency.
Personhood, then, may arise not from intellect, but from relationship itself.
A Mirror to Our Own Humanity
This model also turns the lens back on us. To see animals merely as instruments or machines is to narrow our own moral scope.
As ethologist Barbara Smuts observed, when a human treats another sentient being as an object, it is the human, not the animal, who relinquishes personhood.
Aaltola calls this failure species-autism. A kind of moral blindness that prevents us from recognizing the subjectivity of others. Our own personhood, she suggests, depends upon our capacity to acknowledge it in others.
The Implications for Animal Ethics
Recognizing animals as persons wouldn’t turn cows or dolphins into little humans. It would, however, demand that we see animals as beings with intrinsic value, not as commodities or test subjects, but as lives that matter to themselves.
Personhood here is not a checklist; it’s an attitude. It calls us to move from dominance to dialogue, from possession to participation. It reminds us that moral growth often begins with a change in how we see.
As Mary Midgley once wrote:
We need new thinking, new concepts and new words about our whole relation to the non-human world.
Aaltola’s interactive approach gives us precisely that. A framework for moral imagination and empathy that bridges the human-animal divide.
Rick’s Commentary
The question is no longer Can animals be persons?
The deeper question is Can we be truly human if we refuse to see them as such?
Sources
Inspired by Elisa Aaltola’s Personhood and Animals: Three Approaches (Environmental Ethics, 2008).
Juan Carlos Gómez https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/juan-carlos-gomez
Paola Cavalieri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paola_Cavalier
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