Secular arguments for equal and exclusively human worth generally tend to follow one of two strategies. One, which has recently gained renewed attention because of a novel argument by S. Matthew Liao, aims to directly ground worth in an intrinsic property that all humans have in common, whereas the other concedes that there is no morally relevant intrinsic difference between all humans and all other animals, and instead appeals to the membership of all humans in a special kind. In this (...) article, I argue that both strategies necessitate drawing a line that is both arbitrary and implausibly opens a moral gulf between individuals whose difference from one another in terms of empirical reality is entirely unremarkable, providing reasons to reject them that go beyond the standard objections in the literature. I conclude that, if all humans are to be included in the community of equals, we must lay to rest the idea that we can do so without also including a wide range of non-human animals. (shrink)

Common‐sense morality seems to dictate that newborn babies strictly outrank non‐human animals on an ordered list of subjects of moral consideration. This is best described as the view that newborn babies have a higher moral status than any non‐human animal. In this article, I will argue that this common‐sense claim about the special moral status of newborn babies makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that fetuses, including pre‐conscious fetuses, also have a higher moral status than any non‐human animal—indeed, as (...) high as newborn babies. While this conclusion does not quite entail that abortion is generally seriously immoral, it does seem to follow that it would be no less difficult to justify (even relatively early) abortion than it would be to justify killing a newborn. (shrink)

According to a diverse and widely popular family of moral theories, there is a class of individuals – typically humans or persons – who have the very same, full moral status. Individuals not falling into that class count for less, or not at all, morally speaking. In this article, I identify two problems for such theories, the mapping problem and the problem of misgrounded value, and argue that they are serious enough to be decisive. I will then propose an alternative (...) account of full and equal moral status that avoids those problems. In grounding full moral status in phenomenal consciousness, it preserves the idea that you and I are equal, but at the same time radically expands the community of moral equals. I conclude by discussing some practical implications of my proposal. (shrink)