What is important? With Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?

Justin Leiber presents an argument for the rethinking of the term personage as it applies to certain animals and complex machines. Commission respondent Peter Goodman lists the prerequisites needed to be considered a person: the ability to think, feel, make choices, are conscious, and use language in fascinating and complex ways. The book then precedes by means of an argument between parties to evince ALs, a supercomputer, and Washoe Deltas, a chimpanzee, personage. This quarrel included determining and exploring the similarities between humans, animals, and machines in terms of physiology, psychology, and consciousness. Leiber, speaking, through Mary Godwin, explains the books ultimate purpose in the last dialogue: But my tales...appeal to a natural extension of personhood, one consistent with the extension to all humans, albeit fitfully and incompletely (Leiber, 67). Why is it important? In our society, we have a responsibility to provide the same opportunity and justice to everyone with intrinsic dignity and worth (Leiber, 8). The arguments posed by the complainants are not as Counselor Goodman suggests frivolous upon their face (Leiber, 4). Rather, Counselor Godwin shows that the termination of AL and Washoe-Delta without determining their personage equates to murderthat abominable act which cannot be allowed in our society without exhaustive deliberation. The matter is less important for human beings than it is for beings which do not currently hold the status of person, and are not given the rights they deserve. Such an act is uncivil, and may result in a rebellion akin to The Planet of the Apes. Society, for civilitys sake, must avoid becoming overrun by what Mary Goodwin calls irrational chauvinist monsters (Leiber, 67).