Human Being

Short Description

A Human Being is a person of flesh and blood (homo sapiens), each of which qualifies as:

• a party, because it sets its objectives, maintains its knowledge, and uses that knowledge to pursue its objectives in an autonomous (sovereign) manner;
• an actor, as it is an entity that can act (do things);
• a jurisdiction, as it has a (non-empty) set of objectives, one scope (i.e. its own body and knowledge), one legal system (i.e. the moral and ethical rules it has adopted for guiding its behavior) and one party (i.e. itself) that operates this legal system within itself.

In our framework, we assume that humans owns themselves (especially in their personal jurisdiction). However, we recognize that whether or not a person decides to owns itself lies in the autonomy of that person. So it may happen that a person chooses to (willingly or forced) relinquish this ownership to another party (which one might call 'slavery').

Purpose

The purpose of of defining the human being is that it allows us to document that it also qualifies as a party, an actor and a jurisdiction.

Criteria

A Human Being is a person of flesh and blood (homo sapiens).

Notes

Various contexts have related notions:

• natural person is a human being that - in a legal sense - holds rights and duties, and that can sue and be sued.
• legal person is a non-human entity that - in a legal sense - holds rights and duties, that can sue and be sued, and hence (legally) treated in a similar fashion as a natural person.