This paper offers several criticisms of the account of rightholding laid out in S. Matthew Liao’s recent paper “The Basis of Human Moral Status.” I argue that Liao’s account both does too much and too little: it grants rightholder status to those who may not deserve it, and it does not provide grounds for offering such status to those who arguably do deserve it. Given these troubling aspects of his approach, I encourage Liao to abandon his “physical basis of moral (...) agency” account of moral status and instead adopt a position closer to a traditional “speciesist” view. (shrink)

Common sense tells us that in certain circumstances, helping someone is morally obligatory. That intuition appears incompatible with Kant’s account of beneficence as a wide imperfect duty, and its implication that agents may exercise latitude over which beneficent actions to perform. In this paper, I offer a resolution to the problem from which it follows that some opportunities to help admit of latitude and others do not. I argue that beneficence has two components: the familiar wide duty to help others (...) achieve their ends and a narrow duty to avoid indifference to others as positive ends. Although we are not always required to help, we are always required not to be indifferent. When helping someone is the only way not to be indifferent to her, helping her is obligatory. My account avoids certain difficulties with other proposed solutions and can also meet an important concern about proximity. (shrink)