It seems to me that the properties possessed by the would-be torturer or killer are also relevant.
Why?
It seems to me like the only (consequentialist) justification is that they will then go on to torture others who have the ability to feel pain, and so it’s still only the victims’ properties which are relevant.
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.
Why?
It seems to me like the only (consequentialist) justification is that they will then go on to torture others who have the ability to feel pain, and so it’s still only the victims’ properties which are relevant.
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.