Yup. The constitution of the democratic community is inherently value laden. Even prioritizing conscious beings or beings with preferences is a value judgment. I don’t think there’s any option here but to debate and argue over who gets a seat at the table in a realpolitik kind of way, and then use deep democracy to extend standing to other beings. If, for example, only adult humans vote, you and I can still use our votes to extend political standing to animals, and if there is no tyranny of the majority and democracy does justice to the cardinality in people’s preferences, then people who care a lot about animals can give them a correspondingly large amount of status.
Yup. The constitution of the democratic community is inherently value laden. Even prioritizing conscious beings or beings with preferences is a value judgment. I don’t think there’s any option here but to debate and argue over who gets a seat at the table in a realpolitik kind of way, and then use deep democracy to extend standing to other beings. If, for example, only adult humans vote, you and I can still use our votes to extend political standing to animals, and if there is no tyranny of the majority and democracy does justice to the cardinality in people’s preferences, then people who care a lot about animals can give them a correspondingly large amount of status.