Yale University is organizing a conference on “Personhood Beyond the Human” for December 6-8, 2013. It will feature, among other proponents of personhood rights for animals, notorious infanticide and bestiality-promoting ethicist Peter Singer.
The conference is co-sponsored by the animal rights group Nonhuman Rights Project and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, in collaboration with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and the Yale Animal Ethics Group.
“The event will focus on personhood for nonhuman animals, including great apes, cetaceans, and elephants, and will explore the evolving notions of personhood by analyzing them through the frameworks of neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, ethics, and law,” reads a description of the conference on its website.
I wonder how attendees would react if Peter Singer suggests to the audience that if they conclude that puppies are persons, then he would not consider them persons until 30 days after birth, and thus it should be legal to terminate them before the age of 30 days. Or consider how they might respond if he suggests that dolphins or whales should be held to his ethical standards.
I think there would be a riot.
What about personhood for unborn baby humans? That, of course, is not part of these attendees’ consideration.