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    Kantian dignity admits of degrees grounded in rational na... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→The duty to respect mentally incapacitated humans or nonhuman animals is only an indirect duty

    Kantian dignity admits of degrees grounded in rational nature, but Christine Korsgaard argues that subjective valuation of one's own life suffices for direct moral standing.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Korsgaard's view avoids implausible hierarchies: it grants equal moral standing to all agents who value their own existence, regardless of cognitive capacity.
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    • 2.Subjective valuation is more empirically accessible than degrees of rationality, making moral status determinable without contested metaphysical claims about reason.
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    • 3.If dignity grounds duties to others, those duties must stem from something the duty-bearer recognizes as mattering—which subjective valuation directly captures.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Subjective valuation alone cannot ground obligations toward non-valuers (e.g., infants, severely cognitively impaired persons who cannot self-value).
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    • 2.Mere valuing of one's life seems too thin to ground the stringent, universal duties Korsgaard attributes to dignity; preference could be arbitrary or changeable.
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    • 3.Grounding dignity in subjective valuation risks making moral status contingent on psychological states rather than objective features, undermining dignity's normative force.
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    Virtue Ethics1 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    Grounding dignity in subjective valuation risks making moral status contingent o...If dignity grounds duties to others, those duties must stem from something the d...Korsgaard's view avoids implausible hierarchies: it grants equal moral standing ...Mere valuing of one's life seems too thin to ground the stringent, universal dut...
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    Subjective valuation alone cannot ground obligations toward non-valuers (e.g., i...Subjective valuation is more empirically accessible than degrees of rationality,...The duty to respect mentally incapacitated humans or nonhuman animals is only an...

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    2 (1 for, 1 against)
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