Would you say children don’t matter in themselves (only indirectly through others, like their parents or society more generally), when they’re too young to “uphold their end of the bargain if allowed to make notes for themselves that they would see before every conversation”?
I considered chickens under different contractualist views here:
Should our actions be justifiable to chickens, real or hypothetical trustees for them (Scanlon, 1998, p.183), or idealized rational versions of them? If yes, then chickens could be covered by contractualism, and what’s at stake for them seems reasonably large, given points 1 and 2 and their severe suffering on factory farms. See also the last two sections, on contractualist protections for animals and future people, in Ashford and Mulgan, 2018.
Could the capacity to mount reasonable complaints be enough to be covered under contractualism? Can chickens actually mount reasonable complaints? If yes to both, then chickens could be covered by contractualism. Chickens can and do complain about their situations and mistreatment in their own ways (vocalizations i.e. gakel-calls, feelings of unpleasantness and aversion, attempts to avoid, etc.), and what makes a complaint reasonable could just be whether the reasons for the complaint are strong enough relative to other reasons (e.g. under the Parfit’s Complaint Model or Scanlon’s modified version, described in Scanlon, 1998, p.229), which does not require (much) rationality on the part of the complainant. Severe suffering, like what factory farmed chickens endure, seems like a relatively strong reason for complaint.
Would you say children don’t matter in themselves (only indirectly through others, like their parents or society more generally), when they’re too young to “uphold their end of the bargain if allowed to make notes for themselves that they would see before every conversation”?
I considered chickens under different contractualist views here:
Also see this article.