On People: Recognition and the Disclosure of Persons
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 12, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19533694 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that recognition, not observation or use, is the primary mode through which persons are disclosed, and that its three levels (image, becoming, presence) are simultaneously moral-psychological and political-structural, so neither side of the Honneth-Fraser debate is adequate alone. Contends that current AI cannot enact recognition at the level of essential ground because it lacks the analogical basis for Husserlian pairing and cannot undergo the constitutive transformation genuine recognition requires, and that the quality of recognition a person receives shapes their subsequent access to being and the world. |
Abstract
This paper develops the first domain-specific study in a five-paper inquiry into the disclosure of being and the world. It argues that persons are disclosed primarily through recognition — a mode of access irreducible to observation, use, or inquiry that carries constitutive ethical weight. The paper unfolds a threefold movement from appearance (the person as image), through potential (the person as becoming), to essential ground (the person as presence). It engages the Honneth-Fraser debate on whether recognition is primarily a moral-psychological or a political-structural category, proposing that the three levels of disclosure correspond to both dimensions simultaneously and that neither account alone is adequate. Ricoeur's (1992) ipse identity grounds the philosophical account of what recognition properly acknowledges. Husserl's (1960) Fifth Cartesian Meditation provides the phenomenological account of how the other is constituted as an absent presence, never directly accessible to intentional acts. The argument that current AI cannot enact recognition at the level of essential ground is developed across three steps — the absence of the analogical basis for Husserlian pairing, the impossibility of the constitutive transformation that genuine recognition requires, and the distinction between moral agency simulation and moral agency enactment — and is placed in dialogue with the literature on artificial moral agency (Wallach & Allen, 2009; Sparrow, 2004; Floridi, 2014). The three levels are demonstrated through a mentor-student encounter examined phenomenologically, philosophically, and contemplatively. Contrary positions — enactivism, feminist critique of recognition, and the care tradition — are engaged rather than ignored. The PSS-15 self-positioning scale, M⁵ framework, and relational regime theory are integrated as structural constructs, with empirical claims clearly marked as provisional pending peer-reviewed publication. The paper argues that the quality of recognition persons receive is not only a matter of interpersonal ethics but an epistemological condition shaping the whole of their subsequent access to being and the world.