The more I perceive the torturer to be “like me”, the more seeing this undermines my confidence in my own moral intuitions—my sense of a shared identity.
The fly case is particularly puzzling, as I regard flies as not morally relevant.
I’d regard a kid pulling wings off a fly as worrying not because I particularly care about flies, but more because it indicates a propensity to do similar things to morally relevant agents. Not much chance of that becoming a problem for a cat.
The more I perceive the torturer to be “like me”, the more seeing this undermines my confidence in my own moral intuitions—my sense of a shared identity.
The fly case is particularly puzzling, as I regard flies as not morally relevant.
I’d regard a kid pulling wings off a fly as worrying not because I particularly care about flies, but more because it indicates a propensity to do similar things to morally relevant agents. Not much chance of that becoming a problem for a cat.