What Does it Mean for Non-Human Beings to Have Moral Value? Building Bridges Between Capabilitarian Theories

In this article, I present a formal and relational definition of moral value, which is not based on any specific intrinsic or extrinsic property or relational criteria in particular. With this definition, human agents can recognise moral value in a particular non-human being for different reasons and acknowledge that different beings have moral value even if they do not share the same properties. I thus seek to demonstrate that my proposal is not only compatible with the reasons proposed by Capability scholars for recognising moral value in non-human beings but also allows us to build bridges between them. To that end, I will invert theorists’ previous reasoning on an entity’s moral value. Typically, scholars first propose that something has a moral value (based on a specific property) and then ask what kind of responsibilities or attitudes we should have towards this entity in response to this value. My approach instead establishes that the moral value of an entity is derived from the reasons an agent has for certain kinds of attitudes toward that being.