Neil Sinhababu reviewed part of my book, and I responded to him. Here’s his latest comment. He raises two points. The first is that some passages of my book appear to exclude the possibility that intelligent aliens and hobbits could have a right to life. As I mentioned in my earlier response, the book alluded to that possibility in a footnote. But I did not believe that every statement in the book about the right to life had to include a qualifier mentioning that possibility. I was writing for the world we live in (which is perhaps not the same one philosophy grad students inhabit). I think I made the right call.

Second, Sinhababu disputes my argument that the right to life should attach to beings with the “radical capacity” to think, laugh, mourn, and so on, rather than only to beings who can immediately exercise that capacity. Here he misunderstands me: by “radical capacity” I don’t mean a capacity that might be exercisable in the future; even severely disabled human beings (or hobbits, or aliens, or whatever) who will never be able to exercise the capacity nevertheless have the radical capacity. That is, they are, in the relevant sense, the kind of beings who have the capacity.

He writes, “If radical capacities were at the foundations of rights, fetuses would have the right to vote, hold property, marry, and do all sorts of other things, since they have the radical capacities for the mental qualities on which these rights depend.” These analogies are, as I explained in the last go-round, quite weak. For example: We rightly restrict the right to vote for reasons that have nothing to do with mental capacities of any sort.