Human Personhood Beyond Intelligence: A Four-Dimensional Relational Ontology for the Age of AI

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Artificial intelligence systems now perform tasks once thought distinctively human, and this performance often shapes judgments about machine consciousness, agency, and personhood. Much of the literature evaluates these judgments by tracking what systems can do rather than by asking what a person is. This article treats that question as ontologically prior. It asks what conception of human personhood can explain why cognitive performance is insufficient for personhood, and can guide claims about artificial personhood and moral status. Using conceptual analysis, comparative engagement with recent philosophy of artificial intelligence, and dialogue with biblical anthropology, the article develops a four-dimensional relational ontology of the human person, built from embodied selfhood, constitutive relationality, responsible agency, and oriented dignity. It compares this ontology with functionalist, computationalist, capacity-based, relational, and embodied-cognition accounts, and defends the four dimensions as jointly addressing four distinct reductionist tendencies in existing theories. The contribution is this integrated ontology, together with the conclusion that artificial intelligence ethics requires a defensible account of the human person, not an expanding catalogue of machine capability.