The cry ‘Women and children first!’ is hallowed in both maritime history and moral tradition. There are many incidents similar to the Zeebrugge disaster in which folk have died attempting to save young children and those weaker than themselves. But the deep-rooted intuition this cry expresses is suspect in moral formulations where we attempt to justify assigning moral properties to various actions, states of affairs and beings of this or that kind. It soon emerges that the most obvious justifications available to us fail to give any especial weight to the claims of infants and children. This should prompt us to ask whether it is our moral intuitions or our moral formulations that need revision.

I will examine the basis for our special concern for the young and helpless and argue that it is basic to our nature as ethical beings. This suggests that many of our moral justifications fail to capture the essence of moral thought. I will argue that our moral reasoning about beings of various kinds is based on something close to ‘reactive attitudes’ rather than the objective properties of those subjects (although mental ascriptions play a pivotal role in the story).

(1) We intuitively believe that the ethical importance of a human being is greater than that of an animal, plant or computer. To justify this judgement as being more than just an irrational prejudice in favour of human beings, we usually invoke facts about the wishes and desires of the individuals concerned, their conscious appreciation of life and/or their preferences about what should happen to them.