But modern secular philosophers commonly talk of personhood in a metaphysical sense without implying the existence of any such transcendent realm. Sometimes the term “metaphysics” is taken to refer to a transcendent realm beyond the physical. Metaphysics can be characterized as the study of the nature of reality, in its most basic forms or categories, such as discussion of whether everything that exists is physical (material), or whether there are two ultimate kinds of irreducible stuff, mind and matter. In ordinary discourse we commonly talk of corporations doing good and bad things, as if they should be held accountable for their actions, which does seems to imply we think of corporations as moral agents. One might think of such an entity (a corporation, a team, a group, a society, a nation, etc.) as an artificial person, but one could also say that is it plain and simple a moral person because we treat it as a moral agent and praiseworthy or blameworthy on its own. The philosopher Peter French talks of a corporation as a moral person, meaning not that it is a physical or metaphysical person or that it is human, of course, but that it can be considered a moral agent and held accountable for its actions. Moral patiency is clearly not sufficient for moral personhood, and it is debatable whether it is even necessary. Rocks and stones, for example, clearly are not. But being a moral patient is distinct from being a moral actor, and nonhuman animals as well as humans are held to be moral patients. Moral agents are usually moral patients, and some use the term “moral agent” to include moral patiency. Moral personhood might also be held to include, in a very loose sense, being a moral patient, that is, a being who can suffer at the hands of wrong actions by moral agents. One could argue, though, that there are some rudiments of moral expectation or anthropomorphism involved on the part of the owner. Pet-owners often scold their pets for engaging in certain undesirable types of behavior, such as urinating on the carpet, digging in the garden, or failing to obey a command, but a scream of “bad dog” is not usually considered to imply moral agency. A lion in the jungle killing another animal to eat, or killing a human for whatever reason, is not held to be engaging in morally impermissible or blameworthy behavior. Nonhuman animals, such as dogs, cats, birds, and fish, are commonly held not to be moral agents and not moral persons. Ordinarily, human beings are considered moral agents and moral persons. It makes sense to hold them morally responsible for their intentional actions. Their acts are blameworthy or praiseworthy. Moral agents engage in behavior that can be evaluated as moral or immoral, as morally right or wrong, as morally permissible or morally impermissible.
The moral sense of personhood denotes individual beings who are moral agents. It will be useful to distinguish among different types, contexts, or meanings of personhood: moral, metaphysical, physical, and legal.
Some thinkers use the term “person” in such a way that one is either a person or not, but the situation is not that simple. It also has other philosophical and legal relevance. The concept of personhood is widely involved in biomedical ethics discussions about abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, etc., though it is not always discussed explicitly.
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