How historical kinds achieve a moral standing

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Marion Godman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Standing

The Animal Antinomy, Part 1

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Phase Out

Does a commitment to the moral standing of animals obligate us to try to end predation? “Creation ethicists,” who answer yes, believe that if we could, we ought to create new species of animals who would not need predation. The probable result would be that all animals are domestic. “Abolitionists,” who answer no, argue that the only way we can treat animals well is by leaving them alone. We should not interfere with predation, and should phase out domestic animals. The result would be that all animals are wild. This chapter raises some worries about the creationist position, although it grants that these worries are inconclusive. Since we would be substituting different kinds of animals for the ones that exist now, we need to understand the moral status of groups, including species, and to determine what is bad about extinction, before we can decide whether creating new species is a good solution to the problem of predation.

Kant, Marginal Cases, and Moral Standing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Life Stage ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Identity Problem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Moral Difference

According to the marginal cases argument, there is no property that might justify making a moral difference between human beings and the other animals that is both uniquely and universally human. It is therefore “speciesist” to treat human beings differently just because we are human beings. While not challenging the conclusion, this chapter argues that the marginal cases argument is metaphysically misguided. It ignores the differences between a life stage and a kind, and between lacking a property and having it in a defective form. The chapter then argues for a view of moral standing that attributes it to the subject of a life conceived as an atemporal being, and shows how this view can resolve some familiar puzzles such as how death can be a loss to the person who has died, how we can wrong the dead, the “procreation asymmetry,” and the “non-identity problem.”

Fellow Creatures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Good For ◽  
Treat All ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This book argues that we are obligated to treat all sentient animals as “ends in themselves.” Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, it offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings who have a good. Drawing on a revised version of Kant’s argument for the value of humanity, it argues that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends in ourselves in two senses. As autonomous beings, we claim to be ends in ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. As beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends in ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of reciprocal moral lawmaking. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient animal as something of absolute importance. The book also argues that human beings are not more important than, superior to, or better off than the other animals. It criticizes the “marginal cases” argument and advances a view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. It offers a non-utilitarian account of the relationship between the good and pleasure, and addresses questions about the badness of extinction and about whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us, and keep them as pets.

Literalism and Moral Status

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Figdor
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
Psychological Capacities

Chapter 9 presents the idea that Literalism undermines current social and moral boundaries for moral status. Possession of psychological capacities, moral standing, and respectful treatment are a standard package deal. So either many more beings enjoy moral status than we now think, or the relative superiority of human moral status over other beings is diminished. It introduces the role of psychological ascriptions in drawing social and moral boundaries by examining dehumanization and anthropomorphism. It argues that in the short term Literalism does not motivate us to do more than make minor adjustments to current moral boundaries. We can distinguish the kinds of psychological capacities that matter for moral status from the kinds that best divide nature at its joints. In the long run, however, Literalism prompts us to reconsider the anthropocentric standards that govern current moral boundaries.

The Anti-Inflammatory Basis of Equality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant J. Rozeboom
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Anti Inflammatory ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Do So

We are moral equals, but in virtue of what? The most plausible answers to this question have pointed to our higher agential capacities, but we vary in the degrees to which we possess those capacities. How could they ground our equal moral standing, then? This chapter argues that they do so only indirectly. Our moral equality is most directly grounded in a social practice of equality, a practice that serves the purpose of mitigating our tendencies toward control and domination that interpreters of Rousseau call “inflamed amour-propre.” We qualify as participants in this practice of equality by possessing certain agential capacities, but it is our participation in the practice, and not the capacities themselves, that makes us moral equals. Thus, in contrast with recent accounts that simply posit a threshold above which capacity-variations are ignored, this chapter proposes moving from a capacity-based to a practice-based view of moral equality.

scholarly journals Comparing mind perception in strategic exchanges: human-agent negotiation, dictator and ultimatum games

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minha Lee ◽  
Gale Lucas ◽  
Jonathan Gratch
Keyword(s):  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Ultimatum Games ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
Cognitive Aptitude ◽  
Negotiation Agents ◽  
Emotional Capacity

AbstractRecent research shows that how we respond to other social actors depends on what sort of mind we ascribe to them. In a comparative manner, we observed how perceived minds of agents shape people’s behavior in the dictator game, ultimatum game, and negotiation against artificial agents. To do so, we varied agents’ minds on two dimensions of the mind perception theory: agency (cognitive aptitude) and patiency (affective aptitude) via descriptions and dialogs. In our first study, agents with emotional capacity garnered more allocations in the dictator game, but in the ultimatum game, agents’ described agency and affective capacity, both led to greater offers. In the second study on negotiation, agents ascribed with low-agency traits earned more points than those with high-agency traits, though the negotiation tactic was the same for all agents. Although patiency did not impact game points, participants sent more happy and surprise emojis and emotionally valenced messages to agents that demonstrated emotional capacity during negotiations. Further, our exploratory analyses indicate that people related only to agents with perceived affective aptitude across all games. Both perceived agency and affective capacity contributed to moral standing after dictator and ultimatum games. But after negotiations, only agents with perceived affective capacity were granted moral standing. Manipulating mind dimensions of machines has differing effects on how people react to them in dictator and ultimatum games, compared to a more complex economic exchange like negotiation. We discuss these results, which show that agents are perceived not only as social actors, but as intentional actors through negotiations, in contrast with simple economic games.

scholarly journals Disability, Narrative, and Moral Status

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth B. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Cognitive Impairments ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Social Ability ◽  
Present Essay

<p>The present essay aims to respond to recent arguments which maintain that persons with severe cognitive impairments should not enjoy the full moral status or equal dignity as other "cognitively-able" humans. In the debate concerning moral standing and worth, philosophers Singer and McMahan have argued that individuals with certain impairments should not be granted full moral status and therefore, by extension, should not be awarded the same inviolability as humans without cognitive impairments. In response, I argue that an overlooked social ability – the capacity to narrate – provides grounds for the full moral status of individuals with severe cognitive impairments, and thus provides a defense and support for individuals with such "disabilities" to play a robust role in moral action and contribution to human living. </p>

scholarly journals Why Can´t We Regard Robots As People?

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61
Author(s):  
André Schmiljun
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Robots ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Artificial Moral Agents ◽  
Reductive Physicalism

With the development of autonomous robots, one day probably capable of speaking, thinking and learning, self-reflecting, sharing emotions, in fact, with the raise of robots becoming artificial moral agents (AMAs) robot scientists like Abney, Veruggio and Petersen are already optimistic that sooner or later we need to call those robots “people” or rather “Artificial People” (AP). The paper rejects this forecast, due to its argument based on three metaphysical conflicting assumptions. Firstly, it is the idea that it is possible to precisely define persons and apply the definition to robots or use it to differentiate human beings from robots. Further, the argument of APs favors a position of non-reductive physicalism (second assumption) and materialism (third assumption), finally producing weird convictions about future robotics. Therefore, I will suggest to follow Christine Korsgaard’s defence of animals as ends in themselves with moral standing. I will show that her argument can be transmitted to robots, too, at least to robots which are capable of pursuing their own good (even if they are not rational). Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant delivers an option that allows us to leave out complicated metaphysical notions like “person” or “subject” in the debate, without denying robots’ status as agents.

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