Human dignity is unconditional. It is the standing that makes rights and fair process owed at all, and ORIA texts may never condition it on capacity, worth, or belief.
Unconditional, and why that matters
Dignity does not depend on age, disability, intelligence, awareness, illness, coma, dementia, dependency, citizenship, social role, economic productivity, criminal conviction, popularity, belief, or behaviour. There is no consciousness test, ever. This is a commitment ORIA makes, not a theorem it claims to have proved.
What can and cannot be forfeited
Conduct, with due process, can cost a person trust, authority, liberty, and access to particular roles and relationships. What it cannot cost is the basic standing that makes due process owed in the first place. A convicted abuser retains dignity — which is precisely why their punishment has limits.
Layered regard beyond the human floor
Beyond unconditional human dignity, moral regard is layered rather than flattened — toward beings that may be sentient, toward the living world, and through relationship, culture, and law. This prevents two errors at once: collapsing everything into identical standing, and admitting only human beings into moral concern. How far dignity extends beyond humans is genuine open inquiry (oq-0025), as is why dignity binds at all (q-0016).