Are you seriously suggesting that the difference between someone you can understand and someone you can’t matters just as much as the difference between me and a rock? Do you think your own moral worth would vanish if you were unable to communicate with me?
Yes, I’m suggesting both, on a certain reading of ‘can’ and ‘unable’. If I were, in principle, incapable of communicating with anyone (in the way worms are) then my moral worth, or anyway the moral worth accorded to sapient beings on the basis of their being sapient on my view, would disappear. I might have moral worth for other reasons, though I suspect these will come back to my holding some important relationship to sapient beings (like formerly being one).
If you are asking whether my moral worth would disappear if I, a language user, were by some twist of fate made unable to communicate, then my moral worth would not disappear (since I am still a language user).
Are you seriously suggesting that the difference between someone you can understand and someone you can’t matters just as much as the difference between me and a rock? Do you think your own moral worth would vanish if you were unable to communicate with me?
Yes, I’m suggesting both, on a certain reading of ‘can’ and ‘unable’. If I were, in principle, incapable of communicating with anyone (in the way worms are) then my moral worth, or anyway the moral worth accorded to sapient beings on the basis of their being sapient on my view, would disappear. I might have moral worth for other reasons, though I suspect these will come back to my holding some important relationship to sapient beings (like formerly being one).
If you are asking whether my moral worth would disappear if I, a language user, were by some twist of fate made unable to communicate, then my moral worth would not disappear (since I am still a language user).