All You Need Is Love (for Full Moral Status)

The nature of full moral status remains one of the most hotly contested issues in normative ethics. At stake are fundamental issues about how we should treat non-human animals and individuals with severe or profound intellectual disability. Those accounts of full moral status that count out non-human animals also count out individuals with severe or profound intellectual disability. Relatedly, those accounts of full moral status that hold that those with severe or profound intellectual disability have full moral status generally also give full moral status to at least some non-human animals. Rather than attempting to provide an account of full moral status that navigates this dilemma, this manuscript aims to put substantive constraints on the desiderata for a theory of full moral status. In brief, there is a particular quality of love that is sufficient for its object to have full moral status. Individuals with severe or profound intellectual disability are loved in this way. It follows that individuals with severe or profound intellectual disability have full moral status and, concomitantly, that any theory that entails otherwise is false.