The Objective Prescriptive Core of Morality

How could the fundamental demands of morality be objectively prescriptive, i.e. function as weighty reasons in a fashion not grounded in our subjective responses? The chapter distinguishes moral status and the moral significance of the interests of beings with a moral status. Following Kant, I take it that being a moral subject, equivalently having a moral status-being such that moral agents are obliged to respect one's real and legitimate interests on pain of wronging one-turns on an objective worth found in beings with a moral status. Contra Kant that worth lies not in reason-directed agency, which many animals with a moral status lack. Contra Bentham, it is not the capacity to suffer, which is an infirmity and thus not itself a ground of worth. That infirmity is at most a reliable sign of the presence of the ground of worth, namely being a conscious valuer of (species-relative) value that can act to secure those values, as they are presented via one's evolved affectivity. Conscious wills thus exhibit the higher order value of valuing what is valuable. There is accordingly only one kind of moral status, not admitting of degrees but only of differing determinate forms. The distinctive moral significance of human beings lies in the range and import of their real and legitimate interests. The argument for the objectivity of the moral protections owed to beings with a moral status turns on the shamefully belated character of our appreciation of the interests of non-human animal wills.