The law has already given "personhood" to non-sentient (yet intelligent in their own way) hive minds like corporations, so there is some fuzziness with who the "person" at the center might be with a non-objective and continuing evolution of the view of what is and isn't a "person" by the law. I'm not sure that "law" is a better option than empirical science and information theory, but you've certainly given me fodder for thinking deeply about all this - for which I thank you!
Law does not “give” personhood to inanimate entities without human beings' close involvement. It is not possible to create a corporation that has no natural human board, and on those few occasions when a court has recognized standing for elephants and trees, it is because a person feels injured by some harm to the object that law otherwise fails to recognize. The more important concern is when we cease to recognize human beings as worthy of legal protection as persons. That is, of course, the sad history of the law: that it has failed to recognize human dignity and allowed human beings to be treated as property.
I still recall the day, perhaps eight years ago, when you stopped in my office to share the assertion that "everything is information." Interesting, even in the days before AI, but clearly inadequate. If everything is information, then who's being informed? And, if there is no knower, then why make the claim? In any event, I'm pleased to see where your long path has taken you and dearly hope that you can help maintain the person at the center of law and lawyering.
Scott, I think you may be remembering the conversation somewhat differently than I do. “Everything is information” was not a thesis I regarded as adequate. It was the ontological claim I was interrogating in the paper that was written by the winner of the Pryor Prize. My concern then, as now, was that an engineering abstraction could be mistaken for a complete account of reality and then imported into law.
Nor does Shannon information—or quantum information—require a conscious knower, so I do not think the decisive objection is simply to ask who is being informed. The deeper question is whether the successful encoding and transmission of selected differences warrants the conclusion that reality itself is information. I regard that as a contextual ontological question that remains open to serious debate.
I agree that law must remain answerable to the reality and dignity of persons, but that formulation raises the question I am trying to press: What does the law take a person to be? What account of personhood falls within the constraints of empirical science, avoids reduction to information or computation, and responds adequately to posthumanist critiques of the autonomous, self-sufficient human subject? As Susanna Blumenthal’s work shows, law does not simply receive a settled account of the person; through its doctrines of agency, capacity, and responsibility, it helps construct the person it recognizes. A coherent jurisprudence must make that constructive work explicit and subject it to critical scrutiny.
Keeping the person at the center has not been the destination of a long detour. It was the animating concern of the project from the beginning. What has changed is my understanding of how demanding the question really is.
The law has already given "personhood" to non-sentient (yet intelligent in their own way) hive minds like corporations, so there is some fuzziness with who the "person" at the center might be with a non-objective and continuing evolution of the view of what is and isn't a "person" by the law. I'm not sure that "law" is a better option than empirical science and information theory, but you've certainly given me fodder for thinking deeply about all this - for which I thank you!
Law does not “give” personhood to inanimate entities without human beings' close involvement. It is not possible to create a corporation that has no natural human board, and on those few occasions when a court has recognized standing for elephants and trees, it is because a person feels injured by some harm to the object that law otherwise fails to recognize. The more important concern is when we cease to recognize human beings as worthy of legal protection as persons. That is, of course, the sad history of the law: that it has failed to recognize human dignity and allowed human beings to be treated as property.
I still recall the day, perhaps eight years ago, when you stopped in my office to share the assertion that "everything is information." Interesting, even in the days before AI, but clearly inadequate. If everything is information, then who's being informed? And, if there is no knower, then why make the claim? In any event, I'm pleased to see where your long path has taken you and dearly hope that you can help maintain the person at the center of law and lawyering.
Scott, I think you may be remembering the conversation somewhat differently than I do. “Everything is information” was not a thesis I regarded as adequate. It was the ontological claim I was interrogating in the paper that was written by the winner of the Pryor Prize. My concern then, as now, was that an engineering abstraction could be mistaken for a complete account of reality and then imported into law.
Nor does Shannon information—or quantum information—require a conscious knower, so I do not think the decisive objection is simply to ask who is being informed. The deeper question is whether the successful encoding and transmission of selected differences warrants the conclusion that reality itself is information. I regard that as a contextual ontological question that remains open to serious debate.
I agree that law must remain answerable to the reality and dignity of persons, but that formulation raises the question I am trying to press: What does the law take a person to be? What account of personhood falls within the constraints of empirical science, avoids reduction to information or computation, and responds adequately to posthumanist critiques of the autonomous, self-sufficient human subject? As Susanna Blumenthal’s work shows, law does not simply receive a settled account of the person; through its doctrines of agency, capacity, and responsibility, it helps construct the person it recognizes. A coherent jurisprudence must make that constructive work explicit and subject it to critical scrutiny.
Keeping the person at the center has not been the destination of a long detour. It was the animating concern of the project from the beginning. What has changed is my understanding of how demanding the question really is.