Moral Borders

Under traditional Closed Individualism to accord to something or someone, x, the status of person is, in addition to other things, to make a certain sort of moral claim on behalf of x. Why? Because it is to claim, in addition to whatever else is being claimed, that x has certain rights. We might not agree as to what these rights are or whether they apply in some particular instance, but nevertheless the implication is that to be a person is to be accorded, among other things, freedom from interference by others when such interference is in opposition to one’s well being, interests, needs, and so on, provided that these are themselves conscripted within accepted moral bounds. Thus, for instance, you are not infringing upon my rights if you interfere with my nap as I float in a canoe toward Niagara Falls. Nor are you infringing upon my rights if you stop me from driving drunk in a speeding car through a school zone. You are however infringing upon my rights if because you want my seat on the park bench you kill me. Whereas if you interfere in this same ultimate way not with a man but with a fly by killing it with a flick of a newspaper so you can sit undisturbed on the bench, you have not infringed upon anyone’s rights1 because the fly is not a person.