Reflections by leading Latin American and African American philosophers on their identity within the field of philosophy.

Conservative thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama have produced a battery of objections to the transhumanist project of fundamentally enhancing human capacities. This article examines one of these objections, namely that by allowing some to greatly extend their capacities, we will undermine the fundamental moral equality of human beings. I argue that this objection is groundless: once we understand the basis for human equality, it is clear that anyone who now has sufficient capacities to count as a person from the moral (...) point of view will continue to count as one even if others are fundamentally enhanced; and it is mistaken to think that a creature which had even far greater capacities than an unenhanced human being should count as more than an equal from the moral point of view. (shrink)

The philosophy of “ human dignity” remains a young, piecemeal endeavor with only a small, dedicated literature. And what dedicated literature exists makes for a rather slapdash mix of substantive and formal metatheory. Worse, ironically we seem compelled to treat this existing theory both charitably and casually. For how can we definitively assess any of it? Existing suggestions about the general features of dignity are necessarily contentious in virtue of being more or less blissfully uncritical of themselves. Because none of (...) the suggested features are conscientiously situated in their own right, their justification is taken to rest solely on whether each is borne out by some substantive account. But absent the sort of second-order considerations that would make for a proper metatheory, what can we do with their substantive suggestions? Of course, the concept of dignity has other forums. It figures prominently into insular analyses of either Kantian or Biblical ethics, and, to various degrees, an array of subsidiary fields of practical philosophy including human rights, bioethics, law, theories of respect, race theory, Judaic studies, feminism, care ethics, war, technology, and political philosophy. Each of these areas has an established literature. Each contributes interesting observations to the nature of dignity. But, again, ultimately, without a proper metatheory, it is unclear what to do with any of them. My goal is to remedy this, or at least reverse the trend. In doing so I will have in view one particular subfield, namely, the ever-pressing subject of human rights. (shrink)

Speciesism is the wrong of not acknowledging the moral qualities that non-human animals possess that are similar or equivalent or even superior to the moral qualities that human beings possess. However, since it is manifestly clear that no one thinks that apes are in any way obligated to human beings, it clearly cannot be a form of speciesism to be mindful of the differences on the basis of which that is so. In opposition to the advocates of the Great Ape (...) Project, my aim in this essay is to establish the quite minimal claim that apes should not have the same moral status as human beings because human beings have a far greater capacity for moral responsibility than do apes. The claim that I wish to establish is quite compatible with the claim that apes should be treated in a much more morally wholesome manner. (shrink)