----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 6:52 PM Subject: Re: Singer's latest
> You are fair-minded and temperate in response, as always, even when your
> interlocutors don't necessarily deserve it, Marta; thanks.
>
> If you are a consent theorist, how do you account for the basis of the
> obligations of those of us who are capable to consent to those that are
not?
> I mean, the rights of children, animals, the severly cognitively
> disabled--those who can't consent--are better handled by Singer's
> utilitarianism than by any Kantian theory that makes rationality and free
> will the basis of their rights and our obligations. A perfectly natural
> Kantain response is that them as can't consent, got no rights. Singer at
> least would have to say, well, consent may be important insofar as its
lack
> affects the welfare we are supposed to maximize, but it's not the main
> thing; welfare is. So we have to consider the welfare of the less
sentient.
************
Couldn't a Kantian also argue that a lack of a consent capacity in a non-rights bearing agent does not entail the lack of a duty to refrain from harming that agent?
Ian