Moral Status and the Margins of Human Life

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Life

scholarly journals Making Sense of What We Are: A Mythological Approach to Human Nature

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hauskeller
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Human Animal

AbstractThe question what makes us human is often treated as a question of fact. However, the term ‘human’ is not primarily used to refer to a particular kind of entity, but as a ‘nomen dignitatis’ – a dignity-conferring name. It implies a particular moral status. That is what spawns endless debates about such issues as when human life begins and ends and whether human-animal chimeras are “partly human”. Definitions of the human are inevitably “persuasive”. They tell us about what is important and how we should live our lives as humans, and thus help us to make sense of what we are.

Limiting the Killing in War: Military Necessity and the St. Petersburg Assumption

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janina Dill ◽  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Main Principle ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
Military Necessity

This article suggests that the best available normative framework for guiding conduct in war rests on categories that do not echo the terms of an individual rights-based morality, but acknowledge the impossibility of rendering warfare fully morally justified. Avoiding the undue moralization of conduct in war is an imperative for a normative framework that strives to actually give behavioral guidance to combatants, most of whom will inevitably be ignorant of the moral status of the individuals they encounter on the battlefield and will often be uncertain or mistaken about the justice of their own cause. We identify the requirement of military necessity, applied on the basis of what we refer to as the “St. Petersburg assumption”, as the main principle according to which a combatant should act, regardless of which side or in which battlefield encounter she finds herself. This pragmatic normative framework enjoys moral traction for three reasons: first, in the circumstances of war it protects human life to a certain extent; second, it makes no false claims about the moral justification of individual conduct in combat operations; and, third, it fulfills morally important functions of law. However, the criterion of military necessity interpreted on the basis of the St. Petersburg assumption does not directly replicate fundamental moral prescriptions about the preservation of individual rights.

scholarly journals Should We Ascribe Capabilities to Sentient Animals? A Critical Analysis of the Extension of Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Melin ◽  
David Kronlid
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Normal Adult ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
Moral Relationship

Originally, the Capabilities Approach had a strong anthropocentric orientation because of its focus on the entitlements of individual humans. However, as a part of the interest to employ it within animal and environmental ethics, it has been discussed whether the Capabilities Approach should consider also non-human life forms for their own sake. The most influential and elaborated contribution to this debate is Martha Nussbaum’s extension of the Capabilities Approach to include sentient animals. In this article, we argue that Nussbaum’s ascription of capabilities to animals is problematic, since the concept of a capability normally denotes an opportunity to choose between different functionings. When Nussbaum ascribes capabilities to animals, the concept seems to simply denote specific abilities. Such a use is problematic since it waters down the concept and makes it less meaningful, and it may obscure the fact that normal, adult humans, in contrast to sentient animals, can act as conscious moral agents. The aim of granting moral status to sentient animals can be achieved more convincingly by describing our moral relationship to animals in terms of the functionings we should promote, instead of ascribing capabilities to them. Originally, the Capabilities Approach had a strong anthropocentric orientation because of its focus on the entitlements of individual humans. However, as a part of the interest to employ it within animal and environmental ethics, it has been discussed whether the Capabilities Approach should consider also non-human life forms for their own sake. The most influential and elaborated contribution to this debate is Martha Nussbaum’s extension of the Capabilities Approach to include sentient animals. In this article, we argue that Nussbaum’s ascription of capabilities to animals is problematic, since the concept of a capability normally denotes an opportunity to choose between different functionings. When Nussbaum ascribes capabilities to animals, the concept seems to simply denote specific abilities. Such a use is problematic since it waters down the concept and makes it less meaningful, and it may obscure the fact that normal, adult humans, in contrast to sentient animals, can act as conscious moral agents. The aim of granting moral status to sentient animals can be achieved more convincingly by describing our moral relationship to animals in terms of the functionings we should promote, instead of ascribing capabilities to them.

scholarly journals “We are Human Beings, and We Value Human Life”: Glock and Diamond on Mental Capacities and Animal Ethics

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikel Burley
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Cognitively Impaired ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Face ◽  
Natural Sense ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Primary Focus

How should a philosophical inquiry into the moral status of (nonhuman) animals proceed? Many philosophers maintain that by examining the “morally relevant” psychological or physiological capacities possessed by the members of different species, and comparing them with similar capacities possessed by human beings, the moral status of the animals in question can be established. Others contend that such an approach runs into serious moral and conceptual problems, a crucial one being that of how to give a coherent account of the natural sense of concern for profoundly cognitively impaired human beings if moral status is assumed to depend on features that centrally include cognitive capacities. The present article discusses this debate with reference to Wittgenstein-influenced philosophers whose respective approaches, on the face of it, diverge dramatically. With a primary focus on Hans-Johann Glock and Cora Diamond, and a secondary focus on recent work by Alice Crary, I argue that, despite an overt disavowal of the kind of approach favoured by Diamond and Crary, Glock’s affirmation that we simply do “value human life” brings him closer to that approach than he acknowledges.

scholarly journals Moral uncertainty and the moral status of early human life

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Selgelid
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Moral Uncertainty ◽  
Early Human

scholarly journals "Lives Worth Living:" Theorizing Moral Status and Expressions of Human Life

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Cognitive Disability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Philosophy Of Disability ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility

<p>A growing body of work in feminist philosophy of disability, in particular, and philosophy of cognitive disability, more generally, demonstrates the discursive constitution of norms of intelligence and cognitive ability in order to undermine both the false assumptions about human ability and the gendered and racialized norms of rationality, independence, and competence that inform philosophical and bioethical theories about moral status. Many of these philosophical accounts of disability seem designed to&mdash;implicitly or explicitly&mdash;prove that, given some newly-valued norms, &nbsp;certain persons do indeed have these capabilities, rather than to transform the social conditions that create such demarcations in the first place. In this paper, I argue that feminist philosophy of disability and moral philosophy more broadly would benefit if they were to consider the social conditions of possibility in which these qualifications for moral status arise, rather than continue to focus on the qualifications themselves. In order to argue in this way, I consider how assessments of moral status and human life simultaneously foreclose possible expressions of "lives worth living." I suggest, furthermore, that feminist philosophers of disability in particular and feminist philosophers in general would benefit if they were to consider the risks that this normative theorizing involves. In turn, I propose a way in which feminist philosophers ought to orient themselves in order to create the conditions of possibility for the emergence of divergent expressions of human well-being and moral potential.&nbsp;</p><p>Keywords: personhood; intellectual disability; social justice; normative violence; feminist philosophy</p>

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