It is a topos of postmodern law and political philosophy to speak about the "change" of the concept of sovereignty, and to put the current forms of state existence in opposition to the "classical" theory of sovereignty. The theoretical content of this "classical" doctrine is too easy identified with the empirical reality of the Westphalian state system and understood as an apotheosis of the autonomous, independent states and legal systems. In this thesis I have therefore tried to investigate the logical core of the doctrine of sovereignty of two important political philosophers of the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf. Based on the analysis of the central works of both authors, in the light of the latest research, the work shows that their understanding of sovereignty can only be understood with the help of the analysis of the concept of fictitious (or fictitiously) created artificial (moral) person. Sovereignty is no term for an empiricial force or violence, but the name for an imaginative absolute power that is connected to the artificial sphere of fictitious legal reality which is radically separated from the empirical world. The "sovereign power of the Commonwealth" is related to the fictional character of the state, which is identical to the concept of people (populus). The...

abstract: This Thesis contends that if the designer of a non-biological machine (android) can establish that the machine exhibits certain specified behaviors or characteristics, then there is no principled reason to deny that the machine can be considered a legal person. The thesis also states that given a related but not necessarily identical set of characteristics, there is no principled reason to deny that the non-biological machine can make a claim to a level of moral personhood. It is the purpose of my analysis to delineate some of the specified behaviors required for each of these conditions so as to provide guidance and understanding to designers seeking to establish criteria for creation of such machines. Implicit in the stated thesis are assumptions concerning what is meant by a non-biological machine. I use analytic functionalism as a mechanism to establish a framework within which to operate. In order to develop this framework it is necessary to provide an analysis of what currently constitutes the attributes of a legal person, and to likewise examine what are the roots of the claim to moral personhood. This analysis consists of a treatment of the concept of legal personhood starting with the Greek and Roman views and tracing the line of development through the modern era. This examination then explores at a more abstract level what it means to be a person. Next, I examine law's role as a normative system, placing it within the context of the previous discussions. Then, criteria such as autonomy and intentionality are discussed in detail and are related to the over all analysis of the thesis. Following this, moral personhood is examined using the animal rights movement of the last thirty years as an argument by analogy to the question posed by the thesis. Finally, all of the above concepts are combined in a way that will provide a basis for analyzing and testing future assertions that a non-biological entity has a plausible claim for legal or moral personhood. If such an entity exhibits the type of intentionality and autonomy which humans view as the foundation of practical reason, in combination with other indicia of sentience described by "folk psychology", analytic functionalism suggests that there is no principled reason to deny the android's claim to rights. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Biology 2011