Do we find what makes up a person in the brain? Thomas Fuchs argues that we are persons to each other not as abstract minds, but as living, visible, and palpable beings. This view of the person also corresponds to the biological reality of the organism: the brain is not the locus of consciousness, but an organ of mediation for the relations of the conscious organism to the environment. It is not the brain, but the living person who feels, thinks, and acts.

John Behr, Regius Chair in Humanity, University of Aberdeen, queries the erasure of death from the horizon of sight in the modern Western world: what challenges does this erasure raise for our understanding of ourselves as embodied human beings?

Who is a person? The “status view” that all human beings are persons opposes the “criterial view” that only humans with certain capacities are persons. Our choice between these views matters. If recognition of the human rights and protection of a human being depends on their being recognised as a person, then exclusionary definitions, such as the criterial view, are dangerous.