This fits with part of a larger thing I have where I think that utility doesn't need to be "noticed" to be real 

This is one of the reasons I object to utilitarianism.  There's no actual measure of utility.  This isn't just that it's inconsistent in whether I notice it, or even that it's inconsistent in which things I prefer at a given moment (though both are true).  It's that it's so inconsistent across time and across individuals that it's very hard to believe that it's actually quantifiable at all.

Utility as an instantaneous ordinal preference, revealed by choice, is extremely well-supported.  Utility as a quantity is far more useful for calculations, but far less justifiable by observation.  Heck, most utilitarians can't even tell me whether it's a stock or a flow - do you save/spend utility, or just maximize each second's utility value?

I'm fairly confident in some of my predictions for future experience.  Never 100%, of course.

But that's not my point.  My point is that searching for truth is only very lightly correlated with convincing idiots that they're wrong.  Good conversations among epistemically-sane (or even intelligent but brainwashed) people are very good for discovering better models and refining your beliefs.  Trying to convert the median or worse is not helpful (for knowledge/understanding; it may be helpful for actual power or outcomes).

it feels absurd to deny something without really understanding what exactly it is you’re denying.

Hypothesis space is so large that it's absurd to give anything more than a passing glance if it doesn't make sense and nobody can convince you in a fairly short period that it's at least worth exploring.

I guess you can fall on radical agnosticism, but it's hard to recommend any policy or decision based on not knowing anything.

if you pick some and manage to persuade all those who actually have the time for a discussion, at the very least it would give you personally the confidence that you’re right.

How does that update work?  I already suspect (say, 95% that creationism is wrong, 92% that evolution and luck explains most of current biological existence) I'm right, and they're quite wrong.  If I convince them, that's more about them being uncertain and wishy-washy than them being able to provide evidence that I am, in fact, right?  

It's surprising that they can be convinced, so I guess I update a bit against creationists being unwilling to discuss, but that tells me nothing about the underlying question. 

Social proof only goes so far, and for most topics between large groups of humans it's not terribly precise.
 

what if you have enough time and they know how to discuss correctly?

We don't know, because both of those conditions are false in almost every case.

Let’s assume they are all driven purely by the desire to help the country.

Let's not assume that, it seems to be incredibly false, and borderline incoherent.  They are all driven by different private and public beliefs about which subsets of "the country" are more important than the others.  Literally zero "leaders" live anywhere near the median of their populace in terms of wealth or luxury.  

There are some legitimate differences in beliefs of policy-contingent measurable outcomes.  But most of the power struggle is about power itself, and about how to help the favored/pivotal supporters in order to gain/keep power.

 

What you're cluing in on is testing an entity's "legal personality", which is different from "legal personhood".

Are they truly separable?  Do courts rule on personhood, before considering which personality the entity belongs to?   I'd think the opposite - determine whether they match any legal personality, and if so, that implies personhood.

Also, just to be clear, you're pretty much talking about the US Legal System here.  Are you making any claims beyond this (moral, cultural, or other systems of enforcement)?

What is needed is a single formalized system which

I suspect multiple systems, for different sets of rights and responsibilities, will always be necessary.  "can a described entity vote" is different from "can a described entity hold title to land" is different from "can a described entity enforce X contract clause against a different entity" (note: has different answers depending on the types of the entities AND the type of clause) is different from "can an entity use a bench in a public park for some amount of time".

All of them depend on identity and categorization of the entity, and on enumeration of the rights and responsibilities that apply to that category.

 

I don't understand what the venn diagram is trying to elucidate or exemplify.   Usually venn diagrams are chosen to show intersection or union of sets or categories, and I'm not sure that these sets are well-defined enough to be modeled very well in set theory, as opposed to more rule-based legal theory.

I really do like the starting point of "the technical legal meaning of a 'person' is a subject of legal rights and duties.".  I'd enjoy a discussion of the edge cases and applications of that, without overgeneralizing to other possible category descriptors.  Especially the rarely-stated requirements to be held responsible - continuity over time, and control of assets that can be taken being the two interesting ones (I think).

I was especially thrown by "fictional persons", which I don't believe can ever be legal persons.  Tom Sawyer nor John Wick have no rights, and can not be held responsible for their fictional actions.   Collective persons or organizational persons, of course can, which is what you may have meant by "fictional".