Can the subject-of-a-life criterion help grant rights to non-persons?

n ethics we often implicitly correlate what an individual is entitled to from a moral point of view with the complexity of the mental life of that individual. This correlation gains center-stage in many attempts to answer the question whether we should accord rights or moral status to those individuals that lack the capacities required for personhood, such as the capacity for rational deliberation and self-consciousness.1 I use the term “capacity” here and in the rest of the chapter to refer to powers that individuals might have and that they exercise when they engage in reasoning and gain awareness of their mental life. This is the established usage in the discussion on the conditions for personhood and the possible rights of different kinds of beings.