Although I have been focusing, up to now, on what I identified as peculiarity (1) of Kant’s view (namely, that unconditional worth seems to lie in abstract features of creatures, and in no clear sense in the creatures themselves), a little more needs to be said about peculiarity (2) of the view (namely, that unconditional worth is to be found only in very specific types of creatures). This, of course, is a natural result of peculiarity (1), and one might reasonably say that this is not so much a peculiarity of the view, as it is just a natural consequence of any view that attempts to delineate a moral sphere. However, the reason this is troubling in the Kantian case is that on such a view (and because of
peculiarity 1), creatures are left out of the moral sphere that we intuitively consider ourselves to have responsibilities towards. If rationality is the thing that qualifies a creature for moral consideration, and if respect is only properly owed to rationality, what is to be said about people who are severely brain-damaged, people who are in persistent vegetative states, or about non-human animals? They don’t seem to have the requisite feature (rationality), and so on this view they don’t have the status necessary for them to be “above price”.
Consider the case of a person who has lost most of her mental faculties to senile dementia. In a very real sense, such a person is no longer fully rational. One might argue
that such a person was, formerly, fully rational, and so our sense of responsibility is to this “former self”. But if this is true (and I will discuss later why this is not a satisfactory answer), what are we to do about an infant born with severe brain damage? Such a child was never fully rational, and will never be fully rational; how can we ground our intuitive responsibilities to such children? Or consider the (more controversial) case of non- human animals. It is plausible that we have some responsibilities to such creatures (we must not torture them for no reason, etc.); however, on a Kantian view, such animals (since they are not rational) are not ends-in-themselves and do not have a worth beyond price. They are merely instrumentally valuable; their worth derives solely from use that can be made of them by others, and such worth is not worth as an end. Given this fact, it seems that any responsibility we feel towards such creatures is not responsibility to them (since they are not the sorts of things that are morally considerable as ends), but
derivative responsibility in some way. This puzzle, ultimately, is related to the first puzzle/peculiarity that was discussed above – if the Kantian is going to explain
responsibilities/duties/requirements of respect to creatures that are not fully rational, she will have to do so in a roundabout way. The responsibilities cannot be cashed out in terms of a requisite feature (for they do not have it), but in reference to those who do have the requisite feature.
When trying to ground respect/moral consideration, then, the reasons that we give don’t seem to match what it is we take ourselves to be doing in the practical realm. When attempting to explain what sorts of responsibilities we have to non-human animals, severely brain-damaged children, and adults in the grips of senile dementia, the Kantian must give a grounding that recognizes the value of such creatures in relation to creatures
that have value as ends-in-themselves. Thus, the grounding will have to be indirect, and so our responsibilities, too, will be indirect. Just as it seems that respect is directed towards one’s abstract rationality when one is a rational creature (and not towards oneself), explaining responsibilities towards this other class of creatures is also not properly directed at them as an object. The story that the Kantian gives about why we must behave towards them in certain ways will ultimately be a story about rational creatures, and will only indirectly be a story about this other class of creatures.
Why should this second peculiarity bother us? It seems that the utilitarian, who had a parallel problem in the case of peculiarity (1), has less of a problem with peculiarity (2). Because the utilitarian has set the bar reasonably low for what matters morally (she wishes only to maximize/promote pleasure over pain), anything that is the source of this value is going to be considerable as a source of value. Almost every sentient creature is going to be a source of what matters to the utilitarian, and so almost every sentient creature is going to matter to the utilitarian (at least, is going to matter in the way described above). Whatever problems will arise for the utilitarian from peculiarity (1), the general low-bar egalitarianism of the utilitarian will protect her reasonably well from the bothersome outcomes connected with peculiarity (2).
However, the Kantian view seems unable to escape it, and this new sort of problem is again symptomatic of the disconnect that occurs at the theoretical level. Because the Kantian view is not a maximization/promotion view, but rather is a status- recognizing/respecting view, the moral sphere will indisputably leave those lacking certain robust features right out of the sphere. There are thus two problems lurking in the sort of view that the Kantian puts forth – the problem of respect being aimed at features
and not creatures, and the problem of restricting that feature to something as high-bar as rationality. Can an alternative view, that avoids both of these problems, be found? Is any attempt to ground our moral responsibilities inevitably going to run into one or the other of these problems?