Timothy J. Nulty, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA

Abstract: Belief in universal moral equality—that all people have equal moral status—has wide cultural and political acceptance and holds favor with many philosophers. I argue against status-parity by offering a novel account of the temporal integration of persons. Some persons have much more robust temporally extended selves which are partially constituted by a special class of future-directed interests. In addition, empirical research indicates persons vary significantly in the degree of affective connection to their futures selves. While some persons have a cognitively complex and affectively strong connection to their future selves, other persons’ future selves are analogous to strangers. Differences in temporal integration directly affect recognized morally relevant properties such as rationality, autonomy and moral agency and entail differing degrees of personhood. Crucially, some differences in degrees of personhood will also involve differences in kind. The paper then critically engages with attempts to provide a basis for moral equality.

Keywords: Moral equality; temporal integration; degrees of personhood; future-directed interests.