The Concept of Moral Status

Moral status is the property a being has when it matters morally in its own right, and the concept raises questions about what grounds status and whether it admits of degrees.

Definition

A being has moral status if it matters morally for its own sake, such that moral agents have direct reasons to take its interests or claims into account; full moral status is the high standing usually attributed to persons, which some hold all status-bearers share equally and others hold comes in degrees.

Scope

This topic covers the concept of moral status itself: what it is to have moral standing, the candidate grounds such as sentience, rationality, agency, and being a subject of a life, the contrast between full moral status and lesser degrees, and the special status traditionally accorded to persons. It abstracts from any particular practical application to examine the underlying notion.

Core questions

• What property or properties confer moral status?
• Does moral status come in degrees, or is it all-or-nothing?
• What distinguishes full moral status, attributed to persons, from lesser standing?
• Can a being have moral status without being capable of moral agency?

Key theories

Multi-criterial accounts of moral status

Warren's view that no single property grounds moral status; instead several principles, keyed to life, sentience, personhood, and social relationships, jointly determine the status of different kinds of beings.

Status as a matter of degree

DeGrazia's position that moral status can vary in degree with the cognitive and emotional capacities of a being, so that some beings count for more than others without any lacking status entirely.

History

Kant (1785) located full moral status in rational agency, grounding the special standing of persons as ends in themselves. Late twentieth-century work in bioethics and animal ethics broadened the question, with Warren (1997) defending a multi-criterial account and DeGrazia (2008) and others debating whether status is unitary or graded, a question now pressed by cases involving animals, fetuses, and artificial minds.

Debates

Capacities vs. relationships as grounds

Whether moral status is grounded in intrinsic capacities such as sentience and rationality, or partly in social and relational facts, divides individualist from relational accounts of standing.

The argument from marginal cases

If rationality grounds full status, infants and severely cognitively impaired humans seem to lack it, while some animals seem to qualify; this challenge presses accounts that tie status to advanced capacities.

Key figures

• Mary Anne Warren
• David DeGrazia
• Immanuel Kant
• Christine Korsgaard

Seminal works

• kant1785
• warren1997

Frequently asked questions

What does it mean to have moral status?

To have moral status is to matter morally for one's own sake, so that moral agents have direct reasons to consider one's interests or claims, rather than only treating one as instrumentally relevant to others.

Does moral status come in degrees?

This is contested. Some philosophers hold that all beings with moral status have it equally, while others argue that status varies in degree with capacities such as sentience, self-awareness, and rationality.