Abstract

I give an account of moral considerability, the notion that characterizes those particular things that matter morally. My concern is to develop this account within normative moral theory. Some philosophers have simply defined the concept of morality in such a way that fixes the scope of moral considerability, while others have developed their accounts of moral considerability from pretheoretic intuitions. I show that these approaches are mistaken, and that independently of a substantive moral theory, one can give a formal but not a determinate account of moral considerability. I give a formal account that specifies the function that moral considerability performs within any moral theory. This account is intended to be neutral among all moral theories, but it is not neutral regarding the importance of moral theory for moral philosophy. So I defend the place of moral theory within moral philosophy and within moral practice against recent critics of the theoretical approach to ethics. I then develop the outline of a determinate account of moral considerability within a contractualist normative moral theory, which is based upon T. M. Scanlon's account of contractualism. I argue that the scope of moral considerability within this contractualist theory is broader than those beings who are properly represented within the ideal agreement situation that is central to contractualism. As an example of this, I show how Paul Taylor's theory of environmental ethics can be adapted to fit within my version of contractualism; the resulting contractualist theory would have a scope of moral considerability at least as broad as that of Taylor's own theory, which treats all natural organisms as morally considerable