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1. Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status
Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
2. Suffering and Moral Status
Jeff McMahan
3.
4.
Joshua Shepherd
5. Moral Status, Person-Affectingness, and Parfit’s
F. M. Kamm
6.
7.
Conscious
8. Moral Recognition and the Limits of Impartialist Ethics: On Androids, Sentience, and Personhood
Udo Schuklenk
9. Is Moral Status Good for You?
Thomas Douglas
PART II: SPECIFIC ISSUES ABOUT MORAL STATUS
10. Toward a Theory of Moral Status Inclusive of Nonhuman Animals: Pig Brains in a Vat, Cows versus Chickens, and Human–Nonhuman Chimeras 159
Ruth R. Faden, Tom L. Beauchamp, Debra J. H. Mathews, and Alan Regenberg
11. Revisiting Inexorable Moral Confusion About the Moral Status of Human–Nonhuman Chimeras 179
Jason Scott Robert and Françoise Baylis
12. Chimeras, Superchimps, and Post-persons: Species Boundaries and Moral Status Enhancements
Sarah Chan
197
13. Connecting Moral Status to Proper Legal Status 215 Benjamin Sachs
14. How the Moral Community Evolves 231
Rachell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan
15. Moral Status of Brain Organoids
Julian Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu
16. How Much Moral Status Could Artificial Intelligence Ever Achieve?
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer
17. Monkeys, Moral Machines, and Persons
David R. Lawrence and John Harris
18. Sharing the World with Digital Minds
Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom
Preface
What is it to possess moral status? It may seem problematic for a volume about rethinking moral status to commence by assuming an answer to this question. But discussion must start somewhere, so here is a minimally contentious claim: A being or entity that possesses moral status is one that matters morally, for its own sake. Beyond this minimal claim lies controversy. Common-sense morality implicitly assumes that reasonably clear distinctions can be drawn between the ‘full’ moral status usually attributed to ordinary adult humans, the partial moral status attributed to non-human animals, and the absence of moral status, usually ascribed to machines and other artefacts. These assumptions have long been subject to challenge, and are now under renewed pressure because there are beings we have recently become able to create, or may soon be able to create, that break down certain traditional categories: human, non-human animal, and non-biological beings. Such beings include human non-human chimeras, cyborgs, human brain organoids, posthumans, human minds that have been uploaded into computers and onto the internet, and artificial intelligences. It is far from clear what moral status we should attribute to any of these.
While challenges to commonsensical views of moral status have a long history, the aforementioned technological developments recast many of the challenges in a new light and raise additional questions. There are a number of ways we could respond. We might revise our ordinary assumptions about what is required for the possession of full moral status. We might reject the assumption that a sharp distinction can be drawn between full and partial moral status. We might accept that there are circumstances in which we will be unable to determine whether and to what degree beings of a particular type possess moral status. Also, we might avoid making any inferences about the moral status of particular beings and try to get by without talk of moral status. Our choice of response may have far-reaching implications. Considerations of consistency may lead us to reappraise our handling of longstanding problem cases for accounts of moral status, including disputes over the moral status of foetuses and severely cognitively impaired humans. We may also be prompted to rethink traditional assumptions about the moral importance of humans relative to non-human animals.
This volume provides a forum for philosophical reflection about ordinary presuppositions and intuitions concerning moral status, especially in light of the aforementioned recent and emerging technologies. An initial chapter, by Clarke and Savulescu, surveys some core assumptions about moral status that may require rethinking. These include the common presuppositions that all humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal moral status, that the sophisticated cognitive capacities typical of human adults are necessary for full moral status, that only humans can have full moral status, and that there can be no beings with higher moral status than ordinary adult humans. The seventeen chapters that follow are organized into two parts. In Part I our authors attempt to rethink the very idea of moral status, while each chapter in Part II grapples with more specific issues. Many of these are raised by consideration of beings that we have recently acquired the capacity to create, or may soon be able to create.
Part I, ‘The Idea of Moral Status’, commences with three chapters that address the conceptual foundations and implications of moral status. Differences in moral status reflect a form of moral inequality: individuals with higher moral status matter more than those with lower moral status. But do differences in moral status affect the strength of reasons not to cause, or to prevent, suffering, and the strength of reasons to confer benefit? Jeff McMahan considers this question in Chapter 2, exploring whether the significance of individuals’ moral status may vary depending on the types of harm that might be inflicted on them, or on the type of benefit that might be conferred on them.
Chapter 3 by David DeGrazia presents an interest-based account of moral status that aims to illuminate the moral status of ordinary, self-aware human beings, but also non-paradigm humans, animals, brain organoids, artificial intelligence (AI), and post-humans with superior self-awareness. Seven theses are defended to qualify this interest-based account: (1) being human is neither necessary nor sufficient for moral status; (2) the capacity for consciousness is necessary but not sufficient; (3) sentience is necessary and sufficient; (4) social relations are not a basis for moral status but may ground special obligations to those with moral status; (5) the concept of personhood is unhelpful in modelling moral status, unless a non-vague conception is identified and its moral relevance clarified; (6) sentient beings are entitled to equal consequentialist consideration; and (7) sentient beings with substantial temporal self-awareness have special interests that justify the added protection of rights.
Chapter 4 by Josh Shepherd homes in on three difficulties facing any regimentation of moral status claims: how to account for the grounds of moral status; how to map these grounds to the moral reasons for action associated with the possession of a given level of moral status; and how to navigate these grounds and map difficulties without clashing with strong intuitions about a range of problem cases. To resolve these three difficulties, Shepherd argues that we ought to base our account of moral status in aspects of a subject’s conscious mental life, by mapping the grounds to moral reasons in terms of respect for conscious subjects.
The next two chapters, while focused on articulating implications of moral status, consider challenges raised by human embryos, foetuses, and the nonidentity problem. In Chapter 5 F. M. Kamm considers the idea of an entity’s moral status as what it is permissible or impermissible to do to it, and examines how its status relates to whether it is sentient, conscious, capable of agency, a subject, or rational. She then considers ways in which the moral status of embryos that will definitely develop into persons differs from the status of those persons, as well as the implications of this for the non-identity problem and Parfit’s ‘No Difference View’.
Elizabeth Harman defends the ‘Ever Conscious View’ in Chapter 6, which holds that a living being has moral status throughout its life just in case it is ever conscious, at any point in its life. This is a contingent view of moral status: some beings that have moral status might have lacked it, and some beings that lack moral status might have had it. The chapter addresses the ‘Objection to Contingency’, which holds that if the Ever Conscious View is correct, then whether abortion is permissible depends on whether one actually aborts.
The two subsequent chapters in Part I argue for abandoning the very concept of moral status. Ingmar Persson (Chapter 7) distinguishes moral status from moral significance, arguing that something has moral significance just in case it morally counts for its own sake, or is something that must be taken into consideration in itself when moral judgements about what ought or ought not to be done are made. Nothing can have moral status if there is not anything morally significant about it, but something can be morally significant even though it does not have moral status. Similarly, in Chapter 8, Udo Schuklenk argues that ‘moral status’ is no more than a convenient label for ‘is owed moral consideration of a kind’; and so, he suggests, we dispense with the concept and instead focus on uncovering the ethically defensible criteria that give rise to particular kinds of moral obligations. Understood this way, chimeras, human brain organoids, and artificial intelligence do not pose new
challenges, since existing conceptual frameworks, and the criteria for moral consideration they trigger, are still defensible and applicable.
Regardless of the specific characterization of moral status, an oftenneglected question is whether having it—and possibly having more of it—is good for you. If it is, does losing it harm you? Rounding off the first part of the volume, this question of the prudential value of moral status is precisely what Thomas Douglas tackles in Chapter 9. Answering it is important in helping us to decide whether or not we should enhance, or disenhance, the cognitive and moral capacities of non-human animals. Doing either may affect their moral status.
Part II, ‘Specific Issues about Moral Status’, begins with three chapters focusing in particular on the prospect of interspecies chimeras. In Chapter 10, Ruth Faden, Tom Beauchamp, Debra Mathews, and Alan Regenberg argue for a theory of moral status that helps provide solutions to practical problems in public policy, taking account of the interests of non-human animals. To illustrate this need, their chapter describes two contemporary problems, one in science policy and one in food and climate policy. They sketch a way to think about a tiered or hierarchical theory of moral status that could be fit for such work, and then consider in some depth the problem of human non-human chimeras.
In Chapter 11, Jason Roberts and Françoise Baylis revisit their earlier work on the history, ethics, and future of stem cell research involving chimeras made, in part, from human cells. In particular, they focus on the notion of inexorable moral confusion: objections to the creation of chimeras are likely motivated by a strong desire to avoid inexorable moral confusion about these beings’ moral status. Here, they further specify and elaborate on the original concept in light of recent scientific and technical developments as well as ethical insights. In Chapter 12, Sarah Chan explores the normative and conceptual challenges raised by the prospect of crossing both biological and moral ‘species boundaries’, including the implications of species transitions in relation to identity, obligations toward existing beings, and beings that might be created via the species transition process. She reflects on how all of this might advance our thinking about moral status.
In Chapter 13, Ben Sachs considers three proposals regarding the connection between an animal’s moral status and the legal status it ought to have. The first proposal is this strong claim: if an act wrongs an animal then criminalizing it is justified. The second proposal is more moderate: if an act constitutes an injustice to an animal then criminalizing it is justified. The third proposal is the one Sachs defends: it is obligatory for legislators to eliminate
any aspect of the law that facilitates the wronging of animals. The chapter considers, in particular, the radical implications of this third proposal for animal ownership and state funding of medical research on animal subjects.
The chapter by Rachell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan (Chapter 14) considers several evolved biases that distort our tendency to ascribe moral status, focusing in particular on the example of invertebrates. These biases include tendencies to deny moral standing, or to attribute lower moral status to beings that elicit feelings of disgust or fear, as well as to those that are perceived as less similar to us, less attractive, less individualized, and less disposed toward reciprocal cooperation. These adaptive mechanisms may have served human groups well in the evolutionary past, but in the modern world they pose an obstacle to moral progress and play a key role in moral regression.
Chapter 15 examines brain organoids, which recapitulate the development of the brain. Might these have moral status, or the potential for it? Julian Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu tackle this question head on. It is plausible, they argue, that brain organoids could one day attain consciousness and perhaps even higher cognitive abilities. Research on brain organoids therefore raises difficult questions about their moral status—questions that currently fall outside the scope of existing regulations and guidelines. The chapter offers a novel moral framework for such research and outlines the conditions under which brain organoids might attain moral status.
The final three chapters focus in particular on AI and the prospect of digital minds. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer ask, in Chapter 16, just how much moral status artificial intelligence could ever achieve. They suggest that different entities have different degrees of moral status with respect to different moral reasons in different circumstances for different purposes. Recognizing this variability will help resolve some debates about the potential moral status of AI.
In Chapter 17 David Lawrence and John Harris argue that debates over moral machines often make wide assumptions about the nature of future autonomous entities, and frequently bypass the distinction between ‘agents’ and ‘actors’. The scope and limits of moral status, they suggest, are fundamentally linked to this distinction, and position non-Homo sapiens great apes as members of a particular moral status clade, which are treated in a similar fashion to that proposed for so-called ‘moral machines’. They suggest that the principles by which we ultimately decide how to treat great apes, and whether or not we decide to act upon our responsibilities to them as moral agents, are likely to be the same principles we use to determine our responsibilities to moral AI in the future.
Finally, Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom (Chapter 18) conclude the volume by investigating the moral status of digital minds. The minds of biological creatures occupy a small corner of a much larger space of possible minds that could be created. Their chapter focuses on one set of issues which are provoked by the prospect of digital minds with superhumanly strong claims to resources and influence. These could arise from the vast collective benefits that mass-produced digital minds might derive from relatively small amounts of resources. Alternatively, they could arise from individual digital minds with superhuman moral status or ability to benefit from resources. Such beings may contribute immense value to the world. Failing to respect their interests could produce a moral catastrophe, but a naive way of respecting them could be disastrous for humanity.
Work leading to this volume was supported by the Wellcome Trust under Grant WT203132/Z/16/Z and the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education. Most of the chapters in the volume are revised versions of papers that were originally presented at a conference on ‘Rethinking Moral Status’, held at St Cross College, in Oxford, on 13 and 14 June 2019, organized by the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, both at the University of Oxford. The chapter by Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu began life as a background paper, circulated to participants before the event. We were fortunate enough to be able to add chapters by Jeff McMahan, by Carl Schulman and Nick Bostrom, by Julian Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu, and by Rachell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan to the collection.
As well as thanking the Wellcome Trust and Uehiro Foundation for their generous support, the editorial team would like to thank Daniel Cohen, Alan Crosier, Rachel Gaminiratne, Christa Henrichs, Guy Kahane, Neil Levy, Morgan Luck, Mike Parker, Steven Tudor, Suzanne Uniacke, and Miriam Wood, for helping us, in different ways, to put together the volume. We would also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff for his expert editorial guidance. We thank all of our contributors, as well as the various people who helped us with the volume, for their forbearance during the COVID-19 global pandemic, which led to the production of the volume taking somewhat longer than originally anticipated.
Steve Clarke Hazem Zohny
Julian Savulescu
Notes on Contributors
Françoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is a philosopher whose innovative work in bioethics, at the intersection of policy and practice, challenges us to think broadly and deeply about the direction of health, science, and biotechnology.
Tom L. Beauchamp is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar Emeritus, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr Beauchamp’s primary interests are in the ethics of human-subjects research, the ethics of animal-subjects research and human uses of animals, the place of universal principles and rights in biomedical ethics, and methods of bioethics. His Principles of Biomedical Ethics (with co-author James Childress) is widely considered a classic of bioethics.
Nick Bostrom is a Professor at Oxford University, where he leads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. Bostrom is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014). Bostrom is also a recipient of a Eugene R. Gannon Award, and has been listed on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice. Bostrom’s writings have been translated into 28 languages.
Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is the author of over 150 articles and book chapters, and eleven books. His recent books include The Evolution of Moral Progress (OUP 2018, with R. Powell), Institutionalizing the Just War (OUP 2018), The Heart of Human Rights (OUP 2013), and Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement (OUP 2011). Buchanan has served as a staff member or consultant with four Presidential Bioethics Commissions.
Olivia Carter is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne in the School of Psychological Science. After completing a PhD in Neuroscience, Carter worked as a research fellow for three years at Harvard University. She researches the neurobiological mechanisms involved in consciousness and cognition. From 2008 to 2014 Carter served as the Executive Director of the International Association of the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
Sarah Chan is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Usher Institute for Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with the degrees of LLB and BSc (Hons). She received an MA in Health
Care Ethics and Law and a PhD in Bioethics from the University of Manchester, where she was a Research Fellow in Bioethics from 2005 to 2015.
Steve Clarke is a Senior Research Fellow in Ethics and Humanities, in the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is also Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University. He has broad research interests in philosophy and bioethics.
Vincent Conitzer is the Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of New Technologies and Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is also the Head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI and Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD (2006) and MS (2003) degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an AB (2001) degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Conitzer works on artificial intelligence (AI). More recently, he has started to work on AI and ethics.
David DeGrazia is Elton Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University. DeGrazia’s nine books include Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and, with Tom Beauchamp, Principles of Animal Research Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Thomas Douglas is Professor of Applied Philosophy and Director of Research and Development in the Oxford Uehiro Centre of Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. He is also Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and Editor of the Journal of Practical Ethics, and Principal Investigator on the project ‘Protecting Minds’, funded by the European Research Council. He trained in clinical medicine and philosophy and works chiefly on the ethics of behaviour modification and neuroenhancement.
Ruth R. Faden is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. She was the Berman Institute’s Director from 1995 until 2016, and the inaugural Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director (2014–16). Dr Faden is the inaugural Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. In the twenty years in which Dr Faden led the Berman Institute, she transformed what was an informal interest group of faculty across Johns Hopkins into one of the world’s premier bioethics programmes.
Elizabeth Harman is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values at Princeton University. Her publications include ‘Creation Ethics’ (Philosophy and Public Affairs), ‘“I’ll Be Glad I Did It” Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires’ (Philosophical Perspectives), ‘The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty’ (Oxford Studies in Metaethics), ‘Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes’ (Ethics), and ‘Ethics is Hard! What Follows?’ (forthcoming). She is co-editor of Norton Introduction to Philosophy, Second Edition (2018), and Norton Introduction to Ethics (forthcoming).
John Harris is Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester, Visiting Professor in Bioethics, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Kings
College London, and Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He is the author of, inter alia, How to be Good, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, On Cloning, Routledge, London. 2008, Enhancing Evolution, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford 2007. Violence & Responsibility, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston & Henley, 1980 and 2021.
F. M. Kamm is the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy there. Her work focuses on normative ethical theory and practical ethics. She is the author of numerous articles and nine books, including Morality, Mortality vols. 1 and 2, Intricate Ethics, Bioethical Prescriptions, The Trolley Problem Mysteries, and Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead.
Julian Koplin is a Research Fellow with the Biomedical Ethics Research Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne. He has a broad range of interests across the field of philosophical bioethics, including stem cell ethics, transplant ethics, and the methods of bioethics. Julian holds a PhD in bioethics from the Monash Bioethics Centre.
David R. Lawrence is a Research Fellow in the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society, with a background in neuroscience and biotechnological law and ethics. Since his doctoral studies at the Institute for Science Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, his work focuses on enhancement technologies and their possible effects on moral status.
Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life and Killing in War.
Debra J. H. Mathews is an Assistant Director for Science Programs at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr Mathews has also spent time outside academia at the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and elsewhere, working in various capacities on science policy. Her academic work focuses on ethics and policy issues raised by emerging biotechnologies.
Irina Mikhalevich is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work lies at the intersection of the philosophy of science, cognitive science, and bioethics. Before coming to RIT, Irina held the McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program at Washington University in St Louis and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt University.
Ingmar Persson is Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of Gothenburg, and Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical
Ethics. His main publications are: The Retreat of Reason (OUP, 2005), From Morality to the End of Reason (OUP, 2013), Inclusive Ethics (OUP, 2017), Reasons in Action (OUP, 2019), Morality from Compassion (OUP, 2021), and with Julian Savulescu, Unfit for the Future (OUP, 2012).
Rachell Powell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. Her research focuses on the philosophy of biological and biomedical science. Her books include Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind (MIT 2019), and The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (OUP 2018, with Allen Buchanan). She has published in such journals as Philosophy of Science, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, and Journal of Medicine and Philosophy.
Alan Regenberg is the Director of Outreach and Research Support and an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is engaged in a broad range of research projects and programs, including the Berman Institute’s science programs: The Stem Cell Policy and Ethics Program (SCOPE); the Program in Ethics and Brain Sciences; and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells, ethics, and law.
Jason Scott Robert holds the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and a Dean’s Distinguished (Associate) Professorship in the Life Sciences at Arizona State University. His work is at the nexus of philosophy of biology and bioethics, focusing primarily on the justification of good science in controversial areas of research in developmental biology and the neurosciences.
Benjamin Sachs is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. His main interests are in applied ethics, coercion, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His first book, Explaining Right and Wrong, was published by Routledge in 2018. His second book, Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality, is forthcoming with Routledge. He is currently co-directing, with Alex Douglas, a research network called The Future of Work and Income
Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and Co-Director, Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford. He is Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, where he directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, Melbourne University.
Udo Schuklenk has taught at universities in Germany, Australia, the UK, and South Africa before taking up the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics at Queen’s University. He has written or co-edited ten books and authored or co-authored more than 150 peer reviewed publications in journals and anthologies. His main research interests are in the areas of end-of-life issues, public health, and medical professionalism.
Joshua Shepherd is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Carleton University, Research Professor at the Universitat de Barcelona (where he directs the ERC funded project
Rethinking Conscious Agency), and Senior Fellow of the LOGOS Research Group. He is the author of the book Consciousness and Moral Status
Carl Shulman is a Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, where his work focuses on the long-run impacts of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He attended New York University School of Law and holds a degree in philosophy from Harvard University.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University in the Philosophy Department, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Duke Institute for Brain Science, and the Law School. He publishes widely in ethics, moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and argument analysis.
Hazem Zohny is Research Fellow in Bioethics and Bioprediction at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University. He has a PhD in Bioethics from the University of Otago and has published a number of academic papers related to enhancement, disability, well-being. His current work focuses on the bioprediction of behaviour and the ethics of using neurointerventions for crime prevention.
1 Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status
Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
1. The Idea of Moral Status
When a being or entity has moral status its interests matter morally, for its own sake (Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2018). If a being or entity has moral status, then an act that is morally bad, in at least one respect, is committed when an agent harms that being or entity. Any all-things-considered moral justification for such an act must take into account the harm committed by the agent against that being or entity. Ordinary adult humans are usually supposed to have a specific and equal level of moral status—often referred to as ‘full moral status’ (FMS). Non-human animals are usually accorded some moral status, but this is typically understood to be a lesser level or degree of moral status than FMS.1
Statuses are often organized in hierarchies. In the peerage of Great Britain, for example, an Earl has higher status than a Viscount, a Viscount ranks higher than a Baron, and a Baron is the lowest-status British peer, ranking only above commoners. Standard attributions of moral status form a partial hierarchy. It is usually agreed that humans have a higher level of moral status than non-human animals. However, there is no widely accepted ordering of non-human animal moral status.2 Opinions vary about the relative levels of moral status of different non-human animals, and about which species of animals have moral status. Most of us ascribe some moral status to non-human primates. Many of us ascribe some moral status to other mammals. Some of us ascribe some moral status to birds, reptiles, and fish and a few of us ascribe some moral status to arachnids, insects, and crustaceans.3 Further disagreement about the presence of moral status, or about the extent to which it is possessed, becomes apparent when we consider humans other than ordinary
adult humans. Do human foetuses and embryos have FMS, some lesser moral status, or no moral status? What about infants? What about severely cognitively impaired or unconscious adults?
Technological developments are throwing up new and controversial cases, which will require our consideration. What are we to say about human nonhuman chimeras,4 human brain organoids,5 or artificial intelligence?6 What should we say about the moral status of a cyborg,7 a post-human,8 or a human mind that has been uploaded into a computer, or onto the internet?9 To provide sensible answers to these questions we need to be able to think clearly about what it is to have moral status, and about when and why we should attribute moral status to beings and entities.
One way to help clarify our thinking is to try to define moral status. However, when we attempt this, it can start to look like talk of moral status doesn’t add anything to other, more familiar forms of moral discourse. DeGrazia offers the following characterization of moral status:
To say that X has moral status is to say that (1) moral agents have obligations regarding X, (2) X has interests, and (3) the obligations are based (at least partly) on X’s interests. (DeGrazia 2008, p. 183)
We are already familiar with the language of interests and obligations, so why not restrict ourselves to this terminology and forgo talk of moral status? An answer to this question, defended by DeGrazia, is that reference to moral status is a convenient form of shorthand, which is especially useful to us when we want to generalize about moral obligations and interests (2008, p. 184). Another answer is that moral status talk is well suited to play a specific explanatory role that talk of moral interests and obligations is not well suited to play. This is to relate the moral properties of beings to whom we have moral obligations to the non-moral properties and capacities of those beings.10
If we are pushed to rethink our assumptions about moral status to accommodate artificial intelligence, cyborgs, human brain organoids, human nonhuman chimeras, post-humans, and uploaded minds, then we should consider the possibility that some of these beings and entities have a level of moral status below FMS. We should also be open to the possibility that some of these beings and entities might have a higher moral status than do ordinary adult humans. The phrase ‘full moral status’ (FMS) suggests a threshold level above which moral status cannot rise. However, as we will go on to discuss, it seems possible that a being or entity could have a higher moral status than the moral status of ordinary adult humans.
In this chapter we consider some of the key philosophical issues that arise when attempts are made to rethink our usual assumptions about moral status to handle such new and controversial cases. In section 2 we critically examine the widespread assumption that all ordinary adult humans have equal moral status. In section 3 we subject to scrutiny the assumption that membership of the species Homo sapiens somehow confers FMS. In section 4 we consider some revisionary approaches to thinking about moral status that involve rejecting the presupposition that there is a sharp distinction between the FMS of ordinary adult humans and the partial moral status of non-human animals. In section 5 we consider proposals to reject an almost universally accepted assumption—that no beings or entities could have higher moral status than the FMS usually attributed to ordinary adult humans. We also consider some consequences that could follow from creating beings with higher moral status than that of ordinary adult humans. In section 6 we turn our attention to a practical concern: how to behave toward beings and entities when we find ourselves uncertain about their moral status.
2. Human Moral Status
The assumption that all adult humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal moral status is hardly ever challenged these days, at least in Western liberal societies.11 It is a background assumption made by the many of us who share liberal, democratic ideals. However, it would have been rejected by most ordinary members of the various slave-owning societies that flourished before the rise of modern liberal democracy.12 In slave-owning societies, the enslaved were regarded as having fewer legal rights than the free. The systematic difference between the expansive legal rights of the free and the limited rights of the enslaved was provided with apparent justification by the pervasive assumption made in many slave-owning societies that the enslaved were of a lesser moral status than the free.13
Defenders of institutional slavery usually sought to justify the attribution of different levels of moral status to different groups of people by appealing to perceived natural differences between different types of humans. These differences were then invoked to try to justify the enslavement of humans of one type by humans of another type. The best-known attempted philosophical defence of slavery is from Aristotle, who argued that some humans lacked the capacities for significant deliberation and foresight, and so were ‘natural slaves’, in need of direction by natural masters who possessed the capacities
that natural slaves lacked.14 Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery was based on an assumption of systematic underlying differences between different types of humans. However, unlike more recent, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century defenders of slavery, Aristotle did not assume that these differences correlated with racial differences. This should not be surprising. In Ancient Greece, slaves were captured and traded from many different countries and had a diverse range of ethnic origins. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, slavery in the West was, for the most part, restricted to specific ethnicities, with blacks especially liable to be enslaved by whites. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century apologists for slavery often appealed to quasi-scientific theories about racial differences, which lacked supporting evidence, in their attempts to justify race-based slavery.15
The fact that institutional slavery was still practised in the US (and elsewhere), as recently as 160 years ago is very disturbing to defenders of the view that all adult humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal moral status, including the authors of this chapter. It seems clear to us that societies that fail to treat all ordinary adult humans as having equal moral status ought to do so, because in fact all ordinary adult humans have equal moral status. If all ordinary adult humans have equal moral status, as we are convinced that they do, then this is presumably because of some or other properties and capacities that they share, which may or may not be shared by human infants, human foetuses and embryos, and severely cognitively impaired humans. What properties or capacities might these be?
Almost all attempts to locate grounds for the moral status of ordinary adult humans identify specific cognitive capacities as the basis for that moral status. However, there is a lack of agreement in the literature regarding the cognitive capacities necessary for FMS. Quinn suggests that the ability to will is necessary for FMS (1984, p. 51), while Singer stresses the importance of futureoriented planning (1993, pp. 116–17), McMahan suggests that self-awareness is necessary for FMS (2002, p. 45). Baker (2000) argues that self-consciousness is necessary,16 Metz (2012) suggests that the capacity to participate in communal relationships is necessary,17 and Jaworska (2007) stresses the importance for FMS of having a capacity to care.
A different approach to grounding attributions of FMS is to argue that the potential to go on to develop sophisticated cognitive capacities warrants the attribution of FMS. Infants and severely cognitively impaired adults do not possess sophisticated cognitive capacities, but many possess the potential to develop—or recover—sophisticated cognitive capacities. Appeals to potential,
as a basis for the attribution of FMS, are popular among opponents of abortion and unpopular among proponents of abortion. Just as infants have the potential to acquire sophisticated cognitive capacities, so do human foetuses and embryos. If we are to grant FMS to human foetuses and embryos, then it looks like we should ban most instances of abortion, as abortion will involve killing beings who are acknowledged to have FMS.18
A major concern with appeals to potential as a basis for attributions of FMS is that it is far from obvious what constraints there are on such appeals. An unfertilized human ovum together with a human sperm have the potential to become a human adult. However, anti-abortion activists do not usually want to argue that unfertilized ovum-sperm pairs have FMS, in virtue of having the potential to become adult humans. In response to objections along these lines, opponents of abortion, such as Watt (1996) and Camosy (2008), draw conceptual distinctions between the type of potential the unfertilized ovumsperm pair has and the potential that a fertilized ovum has to become a human adult. It is not clear that such attempts to distinguish between different types of potential are successful. Nor is it entirely apparent how any specific type of potential could confer moral status.19
A common way of supplementing accounts of the grounds necessary for FMS is to assert that personhood is necessary and sufficient for FMS.20 Persons are said to have FMS, while non-persons are said to have either lessthan-full or no moral status.21 There is significant disagreement in the literature about which beings and entities are persons. Human foetuses are not usually regarded as persons, at least by secular philosophers, but they are considered to be legal persons in some jurisdictions.22 Human infants are usually regarded as persons, but some scholars, such as Tooley (1972), argue otherwise. Cognitively impaired human adults are usually regarded as persons; however, it has been argued that once humans have become severely cognitively impaired and have fallen into a persistent non-responsive state they may no longer be persons (Callahan 1993). Non-human apes may be persons, or at least ‘border-line persons’ (DeGrazia 2007, p. 323). Now-extinct Neanderthals may have been persons (Buchanan 2009, p. 372), and some intelligent machines that we might create in the future could be persons (Bostrom and Yudkowsky 2014). It is not easy to see how the stipulation that personhood is a criterion for FMS could assist us in identifying who and what has FMS. If we treat personhood as a criterion for FMS then we transform the problem of identifying who and what has FMS into the equally challenging problem of figuring out who and what is a person.
3. Species Membership and the Boundary between Full and Partial Moral Status
As well as identifying grounds for attributing FMS to ordinary adult humans we need to consider where the conceptual boundary lies between beings that possess FMS, including ordinary adult humans, and beings that are ordinarily held to possess only partial moral status, such as non-human animals. Many will want to say that this conceptual boundary maps on to the boundary between membership of the species Homo sapiens and membership of other species. However, most philosophers are wary of stipulating that membership of a particular species is necessary for FMS, as making this assertion would appear to leave them open to the charge of unfairly favouring one species over others—the charge of speciesism, which is often depicted as akin to sexism and racism. (Singer 2009; Liao 2010).23
A philosopher who defends a prejudice in favour of our fellow Homo sapiens and who argues that it is not akin to racism and sexism is Bernard Williams (2006). According to Williams, racism and sexism are unjustified prejudices because defenders of racism and sexism are unable to answer the question ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ (2006, p. 139). In contrast to the answers ‘he’s white’ or ‘she’s a woman’, Williams thinks the answer ‘it’s a human being’ provides a reason for us to favour humans, rather than a rationalization for prejudice. While ‘it’s a human being’ may seem compelling to us human beings the most plausible explanation for it seeming this way is that we are members of the club of human beings. ‘He’s white’ may seem similarly compelling to white supremacists. It is hard to see that Williams has identified a morally relevant consideration that operates as a reason for us to favour humans over non-humans, as opposed to a rationalization for pro-human prejudice (Savulescu 2009, p. 219).
Most philosophers who appeal to species membership as a basis for FMS are likely to assert that membership of the species Homo sapiens is sufficient for FMS, in virtue of underlying capacities that ordinary adult humans possess—such as sophisticated cognitive capacities. In making this assertion they allow for the possibility that membership of any species whose ordinary adult members possess the required capacities would also be a sufficient basis for FMS. The argumentative move of underwriting the case for species membership as a basis for FMS by appealing to the underlying capacities that ordinary adult members of that species possess avoids the charge of speciesism. However, it raises other problems. If the moral status of the members of a
species turns out to be grounded in capacities that ordinary adult members of that species happen to possess, then it is unclear why we should accept that members of that species who lack the capacities in question should be accorded FMS. Why think that infants and severely cognitively impaired adults who lack sophisticated cognitive capacities should be considered to possess FMS simply because they happen to be members of a species in which other members possess sophisticated cognitive capacities? It seems arbitrary to attribute FMS to human infants and severely cognitively impaired human adults when we have reason to believe that members of other species, to whom we are not attributing FMS, possess cognitive capacities that are as sophisticated as those possessed by infants or severely cognitively impaired adults.24 We could respond to this problem by relaxing our criteria for the attribution of FMS and allowing that some non-human animals that are as cognitively developed as human infants and severely cognitively impaired humans also have FMS. However, if we were to do this then we would be morally required to treat those non-human animals in far better ways than we do now (Singer 2009). Many will baulk at this consequence.
Another problem for species-membership accounts of FMS is raised by consideration of exceptional members of species whose ordinary members lack the underlying capacities to warrant attributions of FMS. A widely discussed example is McMahan’s ‘superchimp’. The superchimp is a chimpanzee that acquires cognitive capacities exceeding those expected of a chimpanzee. After being administered a form of gene therapy as a newborn chimpanzee it develops cognitive capacities as sophisticated as those of a 10-year-old human, when it is an adult (McMahan 2002, p. 147). Intuitively, it seems we ought to attribute the same moral status that we attribute to 10-year-old humans to the superchimp—FMS (McMahan 2002, p. 216). However, we will be unable to justify doing so if we insist on membership of a cognitively sophisticated species as a necessary condition for possession of FMS.
Yet more problems for appeals to species membership, as a necessary condition for FMS, are raised by consideration of the concept species. It is notoriously difficult to give a philosophically satisfactory account of the concept species. 25 This difficulty should not be surprising given that acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution commits us to the view that species evolve from other species, via a process of mutation and natural selection. The boundaries between species are porous and at times beings will exist that are not members of any particular species.26 If there are beings that are not members of particular species then we cannot determine their moral status by appeal to
