Thought experiment. I write a list of entities on the board, in no particular order: a five-year-old child, an ant, E.T., a patient in PVS, someone in a temporary coma, a 90-year-old scientist who has just discovered a cure for cancer but has not yet passed it along, a Labrador Retriever, a serial killer…. The class is informed that all the individuals on the list are trapped in a burning building with no way out (response to student question: static prevents E.T. from phoning home). Only we can save them. At hand is a primitive Star Trek transporter (fellow nerds always perk up at this point), primitive because it can only transport one entity at a time. No, the scientist cannot put the ant in his pocket. This will result in a creepy fusion such as we’ve all witnessed in The Fly and other deathless works of speculative fiction.

I am teaching Contemporary Moral Problems, a freshman core course, in central Oklahoma. Many, MANY students are pro-life. It is hard to motivate a discussion without religious overtones. It is hard to talk about personhood without an immediate segue into souls. I have adopted the following strategy in order to motivate intuitions about what personhood may consist in and what rights might be ascribed to different kinds of individuals (and in order to demonstrate that non-religious intuitions about the matter are possible).

No, there will be no piggybacking. Instead, we will be forced to rank these individuals with respect to rescue-worthiness, knowing full well that the entities on the bottom of the list will perish. Who belongs on the bottom of the list? Cries of “ant!” and “serial killer!” usually dominate, except in cases where someone has done the reading in advance for the euthanasia unit. Why? I ask each proposer of a candidate, and list the relevant reasons on the board as they provide them. Reasons must be given for low ranks ascribed to each individual (“I step on them all the time” is not accepted as a legitimate reason). Once reasons are canvassed for the two most unpopular candidates, a vote is taken, and that individual is crossed off the list.

The level of class participation, the sheer excitement, the shouting, is always surprising. I now close the classroom door in advance to prevent complaints from professors of less noisy classes. Pretty much every criterion of personhood comes into play in the justifications students give: genetic humanity (some favor even the PVS patient over E.T.), basic sentience and the capacity to feel pain, developed cognitive capacities such as intelligence, connections and relationships and ties with others. Secondary issues of when a being might possess interests and rights to begin with, what they must consist in (Why save the lab before the ant? They all want to), and what might mitigate them or warrant special consideration, are also on the table.

The best part is that these things are on the table because the students have suggested them, not because I’ve neatly outlined it for them in a PowerPoint. It’s basically a brainstorming session for groups to which all students feel motivated to contribute.