Self-regarding responsibilities

Earlier I introduced the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative moral reasons. This distinction was first introduced by Thomas Nagel, but later reformulated and refined by Derek Parfit (see Reasons for Action). Nagel's version of the distinction is 'principle-based' in the sense that one must first look to the principle corresponding to a given reason to determine whether it is agent-relative or agent-neutral. In The View From Nowhere he says that,

If a reason can be given a general form which does not include an essential reference to the person who has it, it is an agent-neutral reason…If on the other hand, the general form of a reason does include an essential reference to the person who has it then it is an agent-relative reason. (Nagel 1986: 152-153)

As Michael Ridge points out,

It is easy enough to see that on this conception, ethical egoism is an agent-relative theory (and hence concerns agent-relative reasons) while objective utilitarianism is an agent-neutral theory (and hence concerns agent-neutral reasons). For egoism holds that there is reason for a given agent to do something just in case his doing it would promote his welfare. Whereas objective utilitarianism, (on at least one version) holds that someone ought to do something just insofar as it promotes welfare, period (no matter whose it is).

What I am calling special moral responsibilities are one source of agent-relative reasons for moral agents to see to it that certain states of affairs are brought about. But special moral responsibilities can also be divided into those which are self-regarding and those which are other-regarding, and also between those which concern near term or present ends or interests, and those which concern long term or future interests. In the first case they can be said to be "object neutral" or "object relative"; and in the second they can be said to be "temporally neutral" or "temporally relative." The class of special moral responsibilities that provide prudential reasons for acting in one's own long term interests can be seen as "fully relative" in that they are agent relative, object relative, and temporally relative. The duty to exercise prudence is a kind of special, agent relative, self-regard­ing, temporally relative moral responsibility. It arises because temporally earlier life stages, or selves at t, are in a position to exercise power over later life stages, selves at time t + n (where n is suitably large so as not be regarded as a present aim in one's present life stage), which cannot be reciprocated. One's later selves are then vulnerable to the actions and decisions of one's earlier selves, and are depending on one's earlier selves to care for and protect their interests. The interests of one's own later life stage are in many ways dependent on the choices and actions taken by earlier selves, and because later selves cannot causally influence these choices and actions, and in some cases, cannot remove, prevent, or compensate for their effects, they are placed at the mercy of earlier selves. To put it simply: I can, by my present decisions and actions influence the well being and happi­ness of my future incarnations, however, future incarnations of me cannot influence my earlier decisions and actions. This temporal asymmetry of power makes later life stages of oneself dependent upon and vulnerable to the choices and actions of earlier ones, and thereby creates a spe­cial responsibility on the part of earlier selves to protect certain interests of later ones. This fundamental asymmetry of power is created by the tyranny of time and cannot be removed. The nature of time creates this basic prospective re­sponsibili­ty the responsibility each person has to themselves to protect their future selves' from foreseeable and preventable harms.

I have spoken of earlier and later periods in the existence of a self, but I could also speak of earlier and later selves. Whether we regard successive temporal person stages as tem­poral parts of identical individuals who persist over time, or as a series of distinct individuals who bear some similarities to other members of the set, our account of the origin of special responsi­bilities still applies. For, in either case, an indiv­idual at t is still in a position to exer­cise unequal power over some of the interests of later selves in the temporal series which those later selves cannot reciprocate. The vulnerability model thus predicts that earlier selves have moral responsibili­ties towards later selves no matter which cri­terion of personal identity we choose, just as it predicts that moral agents have special responsibilities to others, no matter which theory of personal identity we choose. However, I favor a somatic theory of personal identity in which persons are identical with their physical bodies. Individual human beings are four-dimensional objects in space-time who have both spatial and temporal parts as well as spatial and temporal coordinates at any time T, or place P. A living moral agent, A, is capable of acting at (T, P) so as to affect the causal structure of the universe. In particular, at any time a living moral agent is capable to acting in ways that will causally affect the interests and or well-being of his or her own later life stages, that is, of his or her own later temporal parts. This can perhaps be made clearer by some examples.

Consider, for instance, the claim that individuals have a special responsibility to themselves (or their future selves) to promote their own health, which, among other things, places them under a moral obligation not to develop habits or engage in activities which would be likely to significantly increase their risk of disease, injury, and early death. Such a claim can be defended on the vulnerability model of responsibility by noting that many diseases and injuries which lead to diminished capaci­ties and decreased life expectancy result from "lifestyle" deci­sions by individuals. Generally speaking, we normally accord individuals autonomy concerning such decisions, so that others are normally prevented from making these choices for us.

This implies that with respect to such causes of disease and dimin­ished longevity as, smoking, eating poorly, being obese, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, abusing drugs, and a variety of other lifestyle choices, individuals are, generally, in a better position to promote their own health and protect their longevity than are others. Since, for the most part, the effects of poor diet, smoking, etc. are cumula­tive over the long term and the harms of disease and early death are statistical not nomological consequences of lifestyles, individual selves at earlier life stages are in a position to prevent or diminish the vulnerability of selves at later life stages from the risks of disease and early death by now making lifestyle decisions which will tend to diminish these risks for their later selves.

This same power cannot be exercised by one's later selves, and later selves cannot exercise similar and reciprocal power over any of the interests, let alone important interests, of one's own earlier selves. Therefore, according to the VCP, because later selves are vulnerable to harms which earlier selves have the capacity to reasonably foresee and pre­vent, earlier selves acquire a special responsibility to protect later selves from the risks of disease, diminished capacity, and early death to the extent they are able to do so. In most cases, this will mean that earlier selves will have duties to refrain from participating in lifestyles or behaviors which are known to have significant, likely, and serious adverse consequences for their later selves. To fail to take these steps would be irrespon­sible, and therefore immoral.

Self regarding responsibilities are like other special re­sponsibilities in licensing the agent to show partiality towards certain interests, namely certain of one's own long term interests. Under the conception of these responsibilities given above, I have more reason to save money for my own health care in retirement than I have to save money for your health care in your retirement, because, under the conventional division of moral labor accepted in my society, I have a special responsibility to provide for my own health care in old age.

This is not to say that we cannot question or criticize the existing division of moral labor for allocating special responsibili­ties. Goodin, writes that, "Whether or not the existing alloca­tion of responsibility has any moral warrant, it has made some people vulnerable to others; and that fact, if no other, pro­vides a moral warrant for discharging those responsibilities" [p.121]. Thus, given current social arrangements in American society, since I cannot depend upon national health insurance nor social security to provide for all of my needs, I must, perforce, depend upon myself.

In some cases, self regarding responsibilities may override other re­sponsibili­ties to others. For instance, I may have a general social responsi­bility to contribute to the care of the needy and sick, or to provide funds for famine relief, or to combat injus­tice. But such general responsibilities are generally weaker than special re­sponsibilities borne by myself uniquely. Thus, it would follow, that I should not use money needed, say, for my own health care, to care for others who are also in need. While others may indeed be as vulnerable to sickness as I am, it is my responsibility, under the division of moral labor currently ac­cepted in American society, to provide for my own health care insofar as I am able to do so.I would thus violate this self regarding responsibility if I failed to adequ­ately provide for myself by impoverishing myself through charitable contribu­tions. As in the case of the two children needing a life saving opera­tion, I do not commit a moral wrong if I decide to arrange for such an operation for myself, but not for another with the same medical condition, and would commit a moral wrong if I did the converse, for doing so would violate a special responsibility which I owe to myself.

While I believe that the vulnerability theory of responsibi­lity would predict that a person's earlier selves have special moral respon­sibilities to protect some of the interests of their later selves or life stages, this claim must be clarified and qualified in several ways. First, we have to clarify what is meant by later selves or later life stages. These notions have been the subject of extensive discussion by Derek Parfit and John Broome. My own view of the matter is close to Broome's view which sees a person's life as divided up into temporally extended parts that he calls life stages. Each life stage is defined by a certain finite interval of time, n, which is usually a matter of years, rather than days or weeks. While the number we choose for n is somewhat arbitrary, it does matter whether it is very large or very small for the following reason: if n is very small, say a matter of hours, then an agent at t may usually presume that the agent he will be at t + n will consent to participating in actions whose consequences may not be realized until t + n, that is, ones whose causal initiation and whose causal fruition occur within the same life-stage.

For instance, suppose I decide to get drunk on Saturday night knowing that on Sunday morning I will awake with a hangover. In deciding to get drunk at t, I presume consent on the part of my later self to being involved in this plan, and so, while I harm my later self, I do so on the assumption that I will later agree to being harmed in this way. On the other hand, when n is large, say on the order to 20 or 30 years, we cannot presume at t that ones later selves at t + n consent to, say, having lung cancer, and so, by smoking in our youth we would in effect be treating our later selves as means only. Because we cannot presume that our later selves will consent, the long-term self-regarding case is similar to other-regarding cases in which one cannot morally do things which will potentially harm others without their knowledge or consent. One's later life stages relation to one's will at earlier life stages is similar to that of an alien will. On the other hand, when n is very large it becomes more difficult to accurately predict the effects of one's actions and choices, and consequently one's present responsibilities are limited. In keeping with the principle that "ought" implies "can" earlier selves can only be held to acquire long term self ­regarding responsibilities to the extent that they are, in fact, able to prevent, remove, or diminish harms or provide benefits to their later selves. If I cannot by my present actions prevent some one of my later selves from, say, contracting Alzheimer's disease, then I cannot be held morally culpable by my later selves for failing to have done so.

Earlier selves can only be held responsible to prevent, remove, or diminish harms which they can reasonably foresee. It may be that I shall one day be blinded by a freak accident in which the video monitor which is attached to my computer unex­pectedly blows up in my face. This sort of occur­rence is, so far as I know, extremely improbable, and I have no reason at present to foresee such an eventuality. I, therefore, have no responsi­bility to protect my later selves from such an accident.

Similarly, my present self can now only be specially responsible for protecting those in­terests of my later selves which I can reasonably foresee my later life stages will not be able to protect themselves. In determining precisely the nature of the particular special responsibilities which one owes to one's future selves it is necessary to consider the particular sorts of power which earlier selves can exercise over later ones, and the particular sorts of vulnerabilities which these powers can pro­duce, prevent, compensate for, or otherwise address. Not all future interests involve vulnerabilities. Responsibilities to oneself, like some other kinds of special responsibilities, are thus also goal relative. Let me explore this claim by means of an example.

Consider the person, who at age 18, decides that it is prudent to buy enough shoes to last him for the rest of his life. He reasons that, what with inflation, the price of shoes will cer­tainly go up considerably during his lifetime, but that his foot size will remain pretty much what it is now. Since he has some spare money on hand, he decides to buy several dozen pairs of shoes of various kinds for himself so, in later life, he shall never have to go barefoot. Is this a prudent action? Would one be acting irresponsibly if one failed to follow his example?

I would say that this action is not (in most cases) prudent, but merely eccentric, and that one would not be acting irre­sponsibly if one failed to follow his example. The reason for this judgment is that, unless there is reason for him to believe that his later selves will be unable to afford to buy shoes for them­selves, there is no sense in which his later selves are "vulner­able" to having the presumed interest of their's to be shod harmed by the actions of earlier selves. If the person in this example has reason to believe that in later life he will be unable to afford to buy shoes, then such an action would be a prudent and responsible one, however, lacking this reason it is merely eccentric. The boy's action is eccentric not only because it is unusual, but because it runs counter to a policy which most of us would want to subscribe to, namely the policy which says that in mat­ters of taste one's present aims should override one's past tastes. When I was 18, I had a taste for high top construction boots, but would not be caught dead wearing such shoes today. Had I followed the boy's example, I would have laid up a life time supply of such boots. From the point of view of my present aims with regard to footwear, had I followed his example, my past desire would now tyrannize over my present tastes in a way that I would now re­gret. Assuming that tastes in shoes tend to change, a better policy would be to leave such decisions to later selves. I earlier suggested that the general reason for there being special moral responsibilities arises from a moral "division of labor" which we participate in as members of socie­ty.

Under the scheme for dividing moral labor accepted in most modern Western societies, individual persons are granted autonomy concerning the management of their own lives, in the sense that we have the right to determine how we shall live our own lives. The right of self-management include the right to resist outside interference in ones self regarding decisions and actions. Personal auto­nomy is a kind of "moral power" which we grant to competent moral agents. But, as I have argued, personal autonomy, even in purely self regarding cases, is limited by a kind of special responsi­bility. Autonomous individuals have special responsibilities to protect the interests of their later selves to the extent that these later selves interests are vulnerable and dependent on the choices and actions of earlier selves. In keeping with the doc­trine that rights entail responsibilities, if individuals have the right to determine how they shall manage their lives, then have a coordinate responsibility to manage them prudently by taking account of the special vulnerabilities of their later selves to their present choices and actions. It follows, then, on this view, that failure to act respon­sibly with respect to one's later selves is a kind of moral wrong.

If we accept to general proposition that society as a whole, through the state and its laws, has a duty to help to prevent or discourage immorality of various kinds, then there is no reason why it should not also have a responsibility to prevent individuals from harming their own future selves. Merely saying that paternal­istic legislation violates our notion of personal autonomy is no argument here, since the responsibilities in question arise because we are given autonomy over self regarding decisions, and this autonomy gives us rights which entail corresponding responsi­bilities. Just as the state may sometimes legitimately challenge and interfere with parental autonomy, for instance, in cases of child abuse or neglect, it may also intervene in certain self­ regarding decisions in order to prevent persons from doing harm to their later selves. The fact that others may share or come to share some of the responsibility for protecting our later selves interests does not remove my own present responsibilities towards my later selves. If, at some later time, I become incompetent to care for myself, then (I hope) others who are in a position to do so, will accept the responsibility for caring for me. While under our present scheme of dividing moral labor, I have the primary responsibility for caring for my own long term self interests, others may share in this responsibility because of their power to assist me, or my dependence on them created by my later vulner­abilities. But, this does not remove my responsibility. As Robert Nozick has said, "responsibility is not a bucket in which less remains when some is apportioned out." (Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. (Oxford: Black­well, 1974), p. 130. Quoted by Goodin, 1985, p. 135).

The vulnerability-care model thus predicts that earlier selves have special responsibili­ties to protect at least some of the interests of later selves. Because, in many ways I am now uniquely in a posi­tion to influ­ence the happi­ness and well being of my own future selves, my later life stages, and my later selves are in many ways vulnerable and dependent on my present choices and actions, under the VCP I now have a special moral responsibility to exercise prudence in the management of my own long term interests.

Moral Partiality and Impartiality

We are now in a position to give an account of the notions of moral partiality and impartiality which links these notions to the concepts of moral stature and moral weight. The account I will offer allows for some kinds of morally permissible partiality based on a moral patient's observer-relative moral stature in the eyes of particular moral agents. The moral stature of a moral patient consists of both its moral standing based on its intrinsic or observer-independent properties, e.g., whether or not it is alive, sentient, or a moral agent, together with whatever additional increase or decrease in its moral stature that is due to the imputation of value or status to it by particular observers.

Warren's four relational criteria for assigning moral status: The Human Rigts Principle, the Interspecific Principle, the Ecological Principle and the Transitivity of Respect Principle can be used to add moral stature to patients who are otherwise on the same level of moral standing based on their intrinsic properties alone. The fact, for instance, that Fido is someone's beloved pet and is regarded as a "member of the family" gives Fido greater moral stature in her owner's eyes than another dog according to the Interspecific Principle. If we, as second-party observers, respect this attribution of additional moral stature, then we ought to also regard Fido as having somewhat greater moral stature than another unowned and unloved canine, Rex, even though, based on their intrinsic properties alone, Fido and Rex have the same moral standing.

These relational or derived principles for ascribing moral stature can also explain why certain other kinds of moral partiality are permissible, for instance, a partiality towards one's own interests, towards those of one's friends, family, and significant others, and perhaps some other kinds of special relationships among persons. However, in each of these kinds of cases the kinds of partiality are limited or restricted in various ways by the countervailing principle of moral impartiality. The impartiality principle is based on the idea of equality of moral standing. Looking only at the intrinsic moral properties places different moral patients with the same intrinsic properties on the same moral plateaus. So, the account of moral status aims to provide a basis for explaining both our intuitions about permissible moral partiality and about the basis for moral impartiality.

To begin we must get clear on what we mean by moral partiality and impartiality. There is a broad general sense of the terms partiality and impartiality that have little or nothing to do with moral obligations. Bernard Gert has proposed a definition of impartiality in the broad sense: “A is impartial in respect R with regard to group G if and only if A's actions in respect R are not influenced at all by which member(s) of G benefit or are harmed by these actions” (quoted by Troy Jollimore, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Jollimore's gloss on this definition is as follows: Impartiality is probably best characterized in a negative rather than positive manner: an impartial choice is simply one in which a certain sort of consideration (i.e. some property of the individuals being chosen between) has no influence.... Thus, for Gert, impartiality is a property of a set of decisions made by a particular agent, directed toward a particular group. Gert's analysis captures the important fact that one cannot simply ask of a given agent whether or not she is impartial. Rather, we must also specify with regard to whom she is impartial, and in what respect.

For instance, I have been watching the Beijing Olympics on TV for the past week or so. In Olympic events such as diving or gymnastics where the contestant's scores are determined by panels of judges, it is obviously important that the judges be impartial, in the sense that they should not allow their loyalty to their own countries of origin to determine how they rate an athlete's performance. Their judgments should be based entirely on the observed merits of their performance as assessed against some objective standard of "goodness" and "difficulty", and, specifically, they should not be influence by their liking or disliking for the particular nations the athletes represent. The IOC has devoted a good deal of thought to the question of how to reduce (if not entirely eliminate) various kinds of bias that might influence judge's scoring of these events. They have different judges from different countries; they throw out the highest and lowest scores; they allow appeals and videotape reviews, and so forth. The goal is to make these competitions as fair as possible by eliminating or reducing possible biases. This broad sense applies to all forms of impartial judgment.

What then characterizes moral impartiality? It is impartiality in which moral judgments about obligations we owe toward various kinds of moral patients are not permitted to be influenced by certain properties of the individuals concerned. For instance, if two children are in need of a life-saving operation but I can only afford to pay for one operation for one child, the impartial attitude would regard it as a matter of indifference which child one saves. In order to be impartial in cases likes this, one ought to use some fair decision-making procedure like flipping a coin to determine which child gets the operation.

But if one is the parent of one of the children, then we normally think that it is morally permissible to prefer her over the other child. Indeed, if a parent allowed his own child to die while using the resources available to rescue another child, one would normally think that he is either a saint or a callous fool. The special moral relationship between parents and their own children licenses a particular kind of permissible moral partiality in such cases. We are even inclined to say that parents have special moral responsibilities to protect their own children from harm which they do not have in the same way towards other children, or at least, that their special obligations to protect their own children are weightier than any general obligations they might have to protect vulnerable persons in general.

How can we account for this kind of intuition? Most consequentialist theories in normative ethics hold that strict impartiality towards the interests of different persons is an essential feature of the moral point of view. On this kind of impartialist account, the person who flips the coin is doing the only moral thing. This, however, is often treated as an objection to impartialism, since it conflict with most people's ordinary moral intuitions about this and similar cases. One potent objection against utilitarianism is that it is too demanding of moral agents since it appears to leave no room for this kind of moral partiality. Deontologists can also be impartialists, but they can also defend the view that there can be limited partiality towards certain persons, e.g. oneself, one's family members, and other close associates. (See Jollimore, op.cit. for a good discussion of the differences between consequentialist and deontological theories of moral partiality). But a deontologist who wishes to make room for some kinds of permitted moral partiality must also account for the strong moral intuitions we have about the importance of impartiality in certain contexts of moral judgment.

My approach to normative ethical theory is deontological, but I want to give an account for both our intuitions about permitted moral partiality and for our intuitions about the importance of moral impartiality. My theory of moral stature and its relation to the moral weight of obligations allows me to do this. Recall that I as defined it, the moral weight of an obligation is a function of both the moral stature of the moral patient(s) to whom it is directed, and the moral gravity of the interest(s) of those patients that are at stake. Moral stature is determined by both an individual's intrinsic moral standing and by any observer-relative increments or decrements in their moral standing based upon the the values and preferences of the observer.

Given this account of moral weight we can explain the intuition that a parent should give greater moral weight to his responsibility to provide the operation to his own child than he should to provide it to another child who is equally in need of the operation. In this observer's eyes, his child has greater moral stature than another child does, although the interests that are at stake, staying alive, are equally grave. In deciding to give preference to his own child he is not deciding that the death of his child is a graver harm than the dealth of the other child, rather, he is imputing greater moral stature to his child, and this factor, not the gravity of the interest involved is what tips the moral scales in his child's favor and makes his responsibility to save his own child a weightier obligation than his responsibility to save the other child.

Philosophers who defend the impartialist view, however, might object that we should not allow such observer-relative judgments of moral stature to enter into moral deliberation. Rather, they argue, we should attempt to adopt the perspective of an "ideal observer" who is free of any bias or subjective preference that would ascribe greater moral stature to one child -- both children would be harmed by dying. The problem with this argument is that it is difficult to define what an ideal observer is in any non-circular fashion, and even if we could do so, it is not at all clear that any actual moral agents can or should try to function as ideal observers. As Thomas Nagel has argued, the ideal observer has a "view from nowhere". Ideal observers are imaginary moral agents who are not socially situated any place in the real world. Real moral agents, like you and me, are always socially situated in some network of interpersonal relationships, and in these relationships we attribute greater moral stature to some groups of moral patients based upon our observer-relative preferences and values. Like most other people, I sometimes prefer my own interests over those of other people. I paid a lot of money to educate my children, but not so much to help educate other people's. I like some people more than others. I like some animals more than others. I care more about my property than I do about yours, and so forth. These are not strange or shameful admissions. This is the way people are, and any ethical theory that ignores these facts is going to be difficult to universalize.

But even so, the degree of partiality that I am permitted is limited. In the case of my child needing a life-saving operation, I am not permitted to murder another child and harvest his organs to transplant into my child to save her life. The reason for this is the Human Rights Principle which requires that we treat all persons has entitled to equal dignity and rights, and murdering another child would obviously violate his human rights. Recall that in discussing Warren's multicriterial theory of moral status I noted that the seven principles she proposes are lexically ordered. Each later principle, it is stipulated, should be applied within the limits of the preceding principles. So given that the three principles based on a moral patient's intrinsic properties: life, sentience, and agency are the first principles listed, the four relational principles can only be applied within the limits imposed by these more basic principles. One cannot simply decide to prefer bacteria to human beings when we place them both on the trolley tracks. More importantly, the four relational or derived principles of moral status cannot be applied in contradiction to the three intrinsic principles. The four relational principles are also ordered, with the Transitivity of Respect principle being the most restricted because it is last, and the Human Rights Principle being the least restricted because it is the first of the relational criteria of moral status.

As I argued earlier, the Human Rights Principle is also an observer-relative criterion and the increment of moral stature it provides to human children who are not yet fully autonomous moral agents is a derived rather than an intrinsic form of moral status. We assign to all human persons the moral status "holder of human rights," and doing this places children on the same moral plateau as fully autonomous adult moral agents. The Principle of Transitivity of Respect, which confers added moral stature on your own child is restricted in its application so that it cannot overrule the Human Rights Principle. The Human Rights Principle is epistemically objective, while an individual's observer-relative partiality towards his children or his pets, or his property, is epistemologically subjective. That persons have equal human rights is a social or institutional fact that exists though our collective intentionality, while the individual's own attributions of moral stature are both ontologically and epistemically subjective. In cases in which a subjective attribute of moral stature conflicts with an objective one, based either on a moral patient's intrinsic moral standing or on their epistemically objective derived moral stature, the objective moral status principles should prevail. The notion of human rights, in particular, the core principle of equal dignity (equal moral stature) and the right of nondiscrimination are designed specifically to rule out certain kinds of partiality towards certain groups of moral patients who have been historically oppressed due to some features of their group identities.

Moral partiality can be either negative or positive so that relying on epistemically subjective observer-relative attributions of moral stature can either add or detract from the weight of an obligation owed to groups of moral patients. Historically, many people have accepted some version of the doctrine of human superiority/inferiority according to which some groups of human beings are inherently or "by nature" inferior to other groups. Members of groups deemed "inferior" have often been dehumanized, that is, their moral stature has been reduced in the eyes of particular moral agents, and this dimunition of moral stature has often been a prelude to human rights abuse.

The doctrine human inferiority has been the source of a great deal of suffering and injustice in human history, but because of the progress of the human rights paradigm we are finally succeeding in getting rid of it once and for all. But we do still need to be constantly reminded that all human persons have equal human rights and that it is not morally permissible to treat some groups differently because of their race, sex, religion, language, nationality, birth, property and other grounds of invidious discrimination. Everyone should be regarded as having the highest grade of moral stature, of standing on a moral plateau in which all human lives are of equal value. So when the other relational principles of moral status come into conflict with the Human Rights Principle, the Human Rights Principle outweighs them. By creating a moral plateau in which all human persons have the same moral stature, the Human Rights Principle enforces the principle of impartiality so that when personal partiality conflicts with the demands of human rights, human rights trump them.

But then what are we to day about our moral responsibilities towards other kinds of moral patients, such as sentient animals to whom the Human Rights Principle does not apply? Is it impermissible partiality to prefer to save a human being's life over that of a chimpanzee? Suppose that we have on the trolley tracks a rather severely mentally impaired human infant and a normal healthy chimpanzee. As noted earlier, Peter Singer stirred up a lot of controversy by claiming that as a utilitarian he might well choose to save the chimpanzee. But this is because he ignores or disregards the Human Rights Principle under which even mentally impaired infants are accorded the same moral stature as fully autonomous moral agents. Since this principle increases the moral stature of the human infant based on its intrinsic properties alone, it tips the moral scale in favor of saving her.

The preference for human lives is not based on an irrational preference for our own kind, but on hard won moral wisdom about what is necessary in order to prevent historically prevalent forms of oppression, suffering and injustice. While chimpanzees are indeed the kinds of creatures that can have rights, they do not at present have them. We can construct a rights regime for chimpanzees, and indeed, Singer and others are trying to do just that with new legislation in Spain (see news story). I have no objection to this at all; I am in fact strongly in favor of doing so for chimpanzees, cetaceans, whales, elephants, and some other cognitively complex animals. But, the point here is that no such rights regime presently exists. There is no set of institutional facts that support the claim that chimpanzees have rights. In this case we are thrown back onto using their intrinsic properties as the basis for ascriptions of moral standing and adding to it whatever observer-relative epistemically subjective increment of moral stature that animal lovers like Singer would want to attribute to these creatures. It is certainly morally permissible to rescue chimps from conditions of abusive captivity and protect those in the wild who are endangered, indeed, on my account we have strong moral responsibilities to do so. But at this time, we cannot say that chimpanzees have rights, only that they can have rights, and, perhaps, that they ought to have them, that is, that we humans ought to construct a rights regime to govern the ways in which we human treat these cognitive complex and vulnerable creatures.

If there were such a regime, then it would enable people like Singer to make peremptory demands on other moral agents that could be enforced coercively. There are a few such laws in some jurisdictions, for instance, laws forbidding various kinds of cruelty to animals, but they do not yet constitute a global rights regime such as now exists for human rights. But if some animals ought to have rights I do not think we should call them "human rights". I think the term "human rights" ought to reserved for the rights of human beings. I have some problem with the term "animal rights" because humans are animals, and "nonhuman animal rights" sounds odd. I think we ought to be talking about "chimpanzee rights" "elephant rights" "whale rights" and so forth since in each case the sorts of threats to the grave or vital interests of these cognitively complex sentient organisms vary to some extent. Whales are threatened by pollution in the oceans, but bonobos aren't. It makes no sense to suppose that whales have a right to vote or to equal pay for equal work, or other things that we regard as human rights. It is better to construct a rights regime designed specially to thwart the particular threats that creatures of these kinds have been subjected to.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that Singer and others are successful in constructing these kinds of rights regimes for certain species of nonhuman animals. Suppose that there are now in existence institutional facts that allow us to state as an epistemically objective truth that chimpanzees have certain rights. In this case, I imagine that the Chimpanzee Rights Principle will work in more or less the same way as the Human Rights Principle does. So suppose I have a beloved chimpanzee as a pet, call her Cindy who needs a life-saving operation, but their is another chimp, call him Sam, who also needs this operation. Would it be morally permissible for me to give Cindy preference over Sam? I would say "yes" because of the Interspecific Principle gives Cindy greater moral stature as a member of a mixed communiity. But it would still be wrong for me to kill Sam to harvest his organs to save Cindy because of Sam's equal chimpanzee rights. When there is an epistemically-objective rights regime in place certain kinds of moral partiality are ruled out of bounds while other kinds of moral partiality are permitted.

We can account for a number of important moral intuitions we have about these matters by means of the notions of intrinsic and derived moral status leading to differences in the moral statures of different groups of moral patients. One interesting feature of this account is that it avoids the objection that in being morally partial to certain moral patients we are counting their interests as more valuable than the interests of comparable others. This is not so because we accord each individual's interests equal gravity when they are equally central to that individual's survival, well-being or freedom. What varies is their moral stature based on observer-relative criteria for assigning moral status. Some of these criteria are epistemically subjective and reflect the agent's own preferences, values, and indeed, biases, while others are epistemically objective and are derived from institutional facts that set limits on permitted forms of moral partiality. But these additional criteria are ordered so that the Human Rights Principle gets priority.

That human beings naturally exhibit various forms of partiality can be taken as a given. The task for normative ethics is to find ways to limit or control this tendency in order to keep it within morally acceptable limits. This is one reason why many moral philosophers want to insist that impartiality is essential to the moral point of view. It is because without it, and the institutional facts embodied in legal norms to enforce impartiality, humans would most likely revert to something like Locke's state of nature, in which there is no impartial judge and each man seeks only to advance his own interests. The mutual benefits obtained through the rule of law are far superior to those we could secure in such a condition, which is why civilized human societies construct ethical codes and enact laws to enforce compliance with them.

But there are also advantages to having a division of moral labor under which people are permitted and indeed required to care for the people and things that they are most motivated to care about. Some consequentialists have recognized this fact and have argued that the overall good of society is best promoted by permitting some forms of moral partiality. I think this is often the case but also that our intuitions about such matter are better explained by the theories of moral stature and moral weight I have developed here.