Could Personhoods Live Symbiotically Within Other Personhoods?

Abstrakt

Does personhood require a biological brain, or can it emerge within broader systems of viable interaction? This paper challenges anthropocentric models of personhood by examining how persistent forms of agency arise in systems that sustain themselves through long-term interaction with their environment. Using the example of a highly autonomous space station and its human crew, I argue that viability alone does not automatically imply personhood. Rather, personhood emerges when viable systems enter stable relations of mutual dependence, shared responsibility, and coordinated persistence. Building on the traditions of autopoiesis and viable computation, the paper proposes a relational and substrate-independent perspective in which personhood is understood less as an intrinsic property of isolated individuals and more as a normative status arising within symbiotic forms of life. In such systems, failures propagate across agents, protection becomes mutually necessary, and continued existence depends on sustained cooperative effort. This perspective moves current AI discourse away from narratives of isolated superintelligence and existential rivalry toward ecosystems of heterogeneous yet compatible agents capable of sharing responsibility for maintaining common worlds.