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Person (umbel:SubjectConcept)
person, human, layman, laymen, manpower, mortal, mortals, people, persons
Definition
A specialization of SocialBeing and IndividualAgent: the collection of all persons. Personhood is a vague, emotionally loaded yet extremely salient concept with respect to common-sense reasoning. Something is an instance of Person if it is an individual IntelligentAgent with perceptual sensibility, capable of complex social relationships, and possessing a certain moral sophistication and an intrinsic moral value, or -- if it lacks certain of these characteristics -- is a member of a distinct type of SocialBeing (usually a species) which generally possesses such characteristics and is therefore acknowledged by other members of that type as a person within their social systems. Most currently known instances of Person are instances of HomoSapiens but there is no reason why all need be (consider Hobbits in the fictional world of LordOfTheRings_Trilogy). They need not even be instances of BiologicalLivingObject (consider the possibility of a person-like AI). Also note that Person excludes non-human "legal persons", who are, however, included in the collection LegalAgent.
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