Who Has the Capacity to Participate as a Rearee in a Person-Rearing Relationship?

Abstract

We discuss applications of our account of moral status grounded in person-rearing relationships: which individuals have higher moral status or not, and why? We cover three classes of cases: (1) cases involving incomplete realization of the capacity to care, including whether infants or fetuses have this incomplete capacity; (2) cases in which higher moral status rests in part on what is required for the being to flourish; (3) hypothetical cases in which cognitive enhancements could, for example, help dogs achieve humanlike cognitive capacities. We thereby show that our account does not have the counterintuitive implications alleged by DeGrazia and other critics.