There's one alternative for defining the basis of "rights" and "personhood" that I don't hear expressed much. It's not romantic (you might call it deeply cynic

There's one alternative for defining the basis of "rights" and "personhood" that I don't hear expressed much. It's not romantic (you might call it deeply cynical) or all that satisfying, emotionally, but it's extremely parismonous and cuts through many moral dilemmas. It's "social contract": I grant you personhood because you've forced me to. How? Because you can kill me if I'm mean to you. And you can really help me if I'm nice to you. By treating you like a "person", I'm extending a set of manners to you. I do this because you can reciprocate a social contract with me, both negatively (harm me if I harm you) and positively (help me if I help you) to a great enough extent. Even if I kill you because you're powerless against me, other people will know I killed you, and they might kill me because they're scared I'll kill them, and people have written this down into laws saying you don't have the right to kill others, and so I have to resist killing you because you are "a person". Maybe I'll also feel bad because I'm programmed with empathy, which is another way you fill the social contract (I'm harmed by harming you). What about a dog? Or a person in a coma? Here it gets circular. These beings cannot fulfill the social contract to the extent a normally-functioning adult human can. But if normally-functioning humans care enough about these beings to extend them personhood, I'm again forced to extend personhood to those beings as well: if I don't, the more powerful humans will harm me. Or, to flip it, if I [harm|help] beings that the powerful humans care about, I'm [harm|help]ing the powerful humans. Because they're powerful, they will reciprocate the social contract in kind. The circularity is: if enough humans decide a tree is a person[0] and will charge you for murder if you kill the tree, you have no choice but to go with it. Basically: you go along to get along, unless you don't have to and can force others to. That's always the way it's worked and will work. 0: https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-and-is-fighting-for-its-own-survival https://www.fastcompany.com/90738287/this-tree-owns-itself-a...