Being human: Why and in what sense it is morally relevant |
| |
Authors: | Roland Kipke |
| |
Institution: | Department of Philosophy, Bielefeld University, Germany |
| |
Abstract: | The debate on the question of the moral status of human beings and the boundaries of the moral community has long been dominated by the antagonism between personism and speciesism: either certain mental properties or membership of the human species is considered morally crucial. In this article, I argue that both schools of thought are equally implausible in major respects, and that these shortcomings arise from the same reason in both cases: a biological notion of being human. By contrast, I show to what extent being human is morally relevant in a non-biological sense. I establish the living human form as the essential criterion for belonging to the moral community, and defend it against a number of possible objections. This new morphological approach is capable of capturing essential elements of personism and speciesism without sharing their faults, and of reconstructing widespread moral intuitions. |
| |
Keywords: | embryo human being human form morphological approach personism speciesism |
|
|