ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the significance of special relations as a source of moral status for profoundly disabled people. It explores the significance of co-membership in the human species, and a related idea of humans as fellow creatures. Fellow creatureliness and co-membership of the human species are distinct ideas. Any tendency to identification with other humans might be thought of as an effect of the relation of species co-membership. The relation of 'fellow creatureliness' is not confined to human beings: Nonhuman animals are our fellow creatures in a different but related sense. The point about variable capacity for fellowship can be elaborated by considering reciprocity and the capacity to care. There is instrumental value for profoundly disabled people in the fact that other people take it to be significant that they are fellow human beings.
