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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    Equal moral status cannot be grounded in reflective capac... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Equal moral status cannot be grounded in reflective capacity alone, because people vary in their degree of reflective capacity.

    Moral ResponsibilityRights & Liberty
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Rawls argues that moral status requires only a 'range property': once a threshold of moral capacity is met, all above it are equal regardless of degree.
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    • 2.Treating supra-threshold variations in reflective capacity as morally decisive would license aristocratic hierarchies that virtually all considered moral judgments condemn.
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    • 3.A threshold account preserves equal status while acknowledging variation, showing Korsgaard's grounding can survive without entailing proportional moral worth.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Kant's Formula of Humanity grounds dignity in the mere possession of rational agency as a kind, not in its quantitative exercise or developmental degree.
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    • 2.Capacities that admit of degrees in their exercise—like strength or memory—do not thereby ground proportional moral claims, so reflective capacity need not either.
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    • 3.Anderson's relational egalitarianism holds that equal moral status is a normative commitment about how persons must treat one another, not a descriptive report of cognitive measurement.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Korsgaard argues that reflective capacities ground our obligations to others and others' obligations to regard us as moral equals.
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    • 2.People vary in their capacity to reflectively consider options and choose sensibly from among them.
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    • 3.If moral status is grounded in a capacity that varies among individuals, then moral status should vary accordingly.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityRights & Liberty

    Connections

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    Virtue Ethics1 linked

    Related

    A threshold account preserves equal status while acknowledging variation, showin...Anderson's relational egalitarianism holds that equal moral status is a normativ...Capacities that admit of degrees in their exercise—like strength or memory—do no...If moral status is grounded in a capacity that varies among individuals, then mo...
    +5 moreShow less
    Kant's Formula of Humanity grounds dignity in the mere possession of rational ag...Korsgaard argues that reflective capacities ground our obligations to others and...People vary in their capacity to reflectively consider options and choose sensib...Rawls argues that moral status requires only a 'range property': once a threshol...Treating supra-threshold variations in reflective capacity as morally decisive w...

    Similar

    Equal moral status can be grounded in the all-or-nothing capacity for ...89%Any being with certain reflective capacities necessarily has moral rig...88%If moral status is grounded in a capacity that varies among individual...87%If the self-reflection grounding moral obligation is idealized, then e...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: autonomy-moral
    View source passageHide passage
    The move that must be made here, I think, picks up on Korsgaard’s gloss on Kantianism and the argument that our reflective capacities ultimately ground our obligations to others and, in turn, others’ obligations to regard us as moral equals. Arneson argues, however, that people surely vary in this capacity as well — the ability to reflectively consider options and choose sensibly from among them. Recall what we said above concerning the ambiguities of Korsgaard’s account concerning the degree to
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit