“What does it mean to be a person? What distinguishes who is one from what isn’t? Science hasn’t explained it. But us people, we do it all the time, even though we have different opinions about what constitutes a person. It used to be just white people (or whatever tribe you belonged to) to a lot of people. And it still means only human people to most of us. Yet more of us are recognizing the existence of dog people and cat people, while some of us range farther and more wildly. We’ve experienced real communicational interplay between humans and individuals from other tribes of life that were as deeply fulfilling and meaningful as anything between humans. Of course if “people” means only humans by definition, then we shouldn’t call those other guys “deer people” or “parrot people.” But what if that’s a mistake?

If a person is something that has a distinct personality, then humans aren’t the only ones who fit the bill. All life forms love to show off their own personalities, whether or not we’re noticing. And many field biologists will assure you that they’ve seen plenty of personalities in members of their chosen species. So what if we’re still like those Indian tribes thinking they were the only “real people?” Considering a “person” as anything that has its own personality, then what’s a personality? We would propose that a personality is that which enables one to move oneself in one’s own chosen ways instead of being a puppet. It’s about having your own desires and values that motivate you in not entirely deterministic ways. In other words, having a personality means being one’s self.

A “person” can be defined as any existing thing that is unpredictably energized by its own self-motion. And since all individual organisms are sentiently self-moving, they all have their own personalized selfhood and they deserve to be recognized as existing persons deserving some respect. Not that we all have to love every insect or microbe, but life is not all-out warfare. We’re in this together. And unless we can start considering the “who-ness” of our biological mates on this incredible Spaceship Earth we’re riding, we’re probably going to keep driving this biosphere into the biggest multi-species annihilation since the comets killed off the dinosaurs 64 million years ago.”

— George Gorman