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Solitaire comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - Less Wrong
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What about the way we treat others with whom we can't come to agreements? Is that a matter of morality? For example, consider young children. I suspect most people regard cruelty to a young child as a particular moral horror, precisely because the child cannot argue back or defend itself. Indeed, I would argue that our moral obligations are strongest to groups such as children.
To be completely honest, I agree with you but find it hard to come up for a good argument for why that should be. One way I've thought about it in the past is that the parents or caretakers of a child are sort of like stewards of a property that will be inherited one day. If I'm going to inherit a mansion from my grandfather on my 18th birthday, my parents can't arbitrarily decide to burn it down when I'm 17 & 364 days old. Harming children (physically or emotionally) is damaging the person they will be when they are an adult in a similar way.
What about a mentally disabled person, or other groups of humans who will never be capable of consciously entering into a 'moral agreement' with society? Should they also be considered 'outside the realm of morality'? What makes them different from an animal, other than anthropocentricism?
Yes, I consider them outside the realm of morality. If a mentally disabled person committed murder, for example, he or she could not be held morally liable for their actions -- instead the parent or guardian has the moral & legal responsibility for making sure that he or she doesn't steal, kill, etc.
So are you saying it should only be considered "wrong" to torture mentally disabled people because of agreements made between non-mentally-disabled people, and if non-mentally-disabled people made a different agreement, then it would be okay?
Say the only beings in existence are you and a mentally disabled person. Are you bound by any morality in how you treat them?