 This proposal does not claim that such treatment could never be effective if directed toward a dolphin or chimpanzee. But we have stronger reasons to treat our fellow human beings this way, however significant their cognitive disabilities. Our shared embodiment and genetic endowment facilitate our treating them as having the capacity or potential for typical human interaction and activity, and make it likely that they will be more responsive to our treatment than a non-human animal with similar cognitive abilities. Other intelligent beings, differently embodied than we are, would have the same reasons to treat their fellow beings this way. In recognizing such a limited partiality, we do not treat species as having a moral significance akin to that of families or even nations. Nor, clearly, do we assume that human beings in particular have special moral status.