Those of you who enjoy rabbit holes will want to read a recent decision by a Delaware judge that begins with this:
“What is a ‘person’? When one cuts to the heart of the matter, that is the question. Philosopher Diogo Joao Baptista Gomes of Brachtenbach, Luxembourg has answered the question as follows:
The rabbit hole opened before me. i came in
First, the philosopher Diogo Joao Baptista Gomes? Is this ancient philosophy? Was he a founding father? Why haven’t I seen it mentioned as legal precedent before?
Turns out Gomes is a guy you can find on X and Facebook. His X description is “Born in Portugal | Raised in Luxembourg | Studied English and Philosophy | Currently an English teacher in Luxembourg.”
His most recent post on X, dated April 12, 2024, is: “#Cryptocurrency waiting for @Bitpanda to process my deposit so I can buy on the dip. Got some alt coins in mind.”
I checked to see if he had moved to Bluesky. The only thing I found was this random comment: “Opening with a five-paragraph quote from ‘Diogo Joao Baptista Gomes’ is not encouraging, and it became less encouraging when I googled and couldn’t find any reference to it outside of this case.”
I dug down my rabbit hole and didn’t find any recent posts from Gomes, but I did find a similar quote to the transition from the court’s decision. Gomes was the winner of “a book” given in 2022 by for answering a “question of the month.” The question was “What is a person?”
Could the judge who wrote this opinion be an avid Philosophy Now reader with a photographic memory? Could the judge be an artificial intelligence with a special interest in the question of personhood? Did the judge promote Gomes from English teacher to philosopher?
I can’t answer these questions and I didn’t have time for them because there were other questions created by that quote to dig down my rabbit hole.
What do I do with Gomes’ assertion that the fetus is not a legal person?
Is there a robot that has been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia? It’s true! Somehow I missed the stories in 2017 about Sophia the robot becoming a citizen of Saudi Arabia. She doesn’t seem to live there, but, according to Wikipedia, she does said the creator “That Sophia would use her citizenship to defend women’s rights in her new state of citizenship.”
No word on how it’s going.
And then I started to wonder if artificial intelligence should weigh in on legal entity issues. Aren’t they biased?
Being the cynical type that I am, I wondered about the referees using AI. We see many stories about lawyers being censured for using fraudulent AI. Are referees using rogue AI too? If they are, will they harm themselves?
It was getting late. I was getting tired. I had a sudden realization: I barely made it to page 3 of a 20 page decision!
I had to read the rest of this opinion. I went ahead.
There were more philosophical questions.
For example, why would the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware sue to stop participation in democracy? Is the ACLU biased in favor of the people?
That’s how it looks.
The ACLU sued the Town of Fenwick Island to challenge a law that allows “the dilution of the votes of human beings by the votes of artificial legal entities.”
Fenwick had allowed voting by non-resident property owners – including “trusts, limited companies, partnerships and corporations”.
A person had to be a US citizen and at least 18 years old to vote. An artificial entity simply had to be an “entity domestic to the State of Delaware” – although “the person casting a vote for such entity must be 18 years of age on or before the date of the election and a citizen of the United States.”
So if a high school student forms an LLC, they should get an adult to vote for them – maybe the guy who buys them beer.
Philosophical question no. 1: Does this seem strange to you?
Plain old question: Why is the ACLU now suing over a law passed in 2008 in a town with a population of 355?
The ACLU claimed that the Fenwick Act violated the Elections Clause in the state constitution which states “All elections shall be free and equal.”
Philosophical question no. 2: How is this law equal?
If a man creates a faith and then votes in the name of the faith and also in the name of his human self, doesn’t that make people without faith less equal?
There’s also the fact that human babies can’t vote, but corporate babies can. Isn’t this age discrimination?
The judge, in case you were wondering, ruled that the ACLU “had not demonstrated that this policy violates the one person/entity/one vote principle.”
All people in Delaware should now form as many trusts, LLCs and corporations as they can. You can never have too many votes.
Last rabbit hole task for you: Go to your favorite search engine to find news about this decision and see if you can find one that points out anything odd about the philosopher/teacher’s opening statement.
Make of it what you will.
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