Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu

The first volume of its kind to consider how scientific and technological advancements impact our thinking about moral status
Explores how both current and future developments — from human brain organoids and artificial intelligence, to cyborgs and post-humans — may challenge ideas about moral status
Presents original ideas and discussion from leading philosophers and bioethicists

Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu

Description

Common-sense morality implicitly assumes that reasonably clear distinctions can be drawn between the "full" moral status that is usually attributed to ordinary adult humans, the partial moral status attributed to non-human animals, and the absence of moral status, which is usually ascribed to machines and other artifacts. These implicit assumptions have long been challenged, and are now coming under further scrutiny as there are beings we have recently become able to create, as well as beings that we may soon be able to create, which blur the distinctions between human, non-human animal, and non-biological beings. These beings include non-human chimeras, cyborgs, human brain organoids, post-humans, and human minds that have been uploaded into computers and onto the internet and artificial intelligence. It is far from clear what moral status we should attribute to any of these beings.

There are a number of ways we could respond to the new challenges these technological developments raise: we might revise our ordinary assumptions about what is needed for a being to possess full moral status, or reject the assumption that there is a sharp distinction between full and partial moral status. This volume explores such responses, and provides a forum for philosophical reflection about ordinary presuppositions and intuitions about moral status.

Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu

1:Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status, Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
Section I. The Idea of Moral Status
2:Suffering and Moral Status, Jeff McMahan
3:An Interest-Based Model of Moral Status, David DeGrazia
4:The Moral Status of Conscious Subjects, Josh Shepherd
5:Moral Status, Person-Affectingness, and Parfit's No-Difference View, F.M. Kamm
6:The Ever Conscious View and The Contingency of Moral Status, Elizabeth Harman
7:Moral Status and Moral Significance, Ingmar Persson
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
Section 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, Ruth Faden, Tom Beauchamp, Alan Regenberg, and Debra Mathews
11:Revisiting Inexorable Moral Confusion About the Moral Status of Human-Nonhuman Chimeras, Jason Robert and Françoise Baylis
12:Chimeras, Superchimps and Post-persons: Species Boundaries and Moral Status Enhancements, Sarah Chan
13:The Weak Connection between Moral Status and Legal Status, Ben Sachs
14:How the Moral Community Evolves, Russell 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 and Moral Machines, David R. Lawrence and John Harris
18:Sharing the World with Digital Minds, Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom

Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu

Author Information

Edited by Steve Clarke, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Charles Sturt University, Hazem Zohny, Research Fellow in Bioethics, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Steve Clarke is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia. He is also a Senior Research Associate in Ethics and Humanities Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has broad research interests in philosophy and bioethics.

Hazem Zohny is Research Fellow in Bioethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the goals of medicine and the ethical implications of human enhancement technologies, as well as the bioprediction of behaviour and the use of neurointerventions for crime prevention.

Julian Savulescu has held the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford since 2002. He directs the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and co-directs the interdisciplinary Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is Visiting Professorial Fellow in Biomedical Ethics at Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, Melbourne University, where he directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group.

Contributors:

Françoise Baylis, Dalhousie University
Tom Beauchamp, Georgetown University
Nick Bostrom, University of Oxford
Allen Buchanan, Duke University
Olivia Carter, University of Melbourne
Sarah Chan, University of Edinburgh
Steve Clarke, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Vincent Conitzer, Duke University
David DeGrazia, George Washington University
Thomas Douglas, Oxford Uehiro Centre of Practical Ethics
Ruth Faden, Johns Hopkins University
Elizabeth Harman, Princeton University
John Harris, University of Manchester
F.M. Kamm, Rutgers University
Julian Koplin, University of Melbourne
David R. Lawrence, University of Edinburgh
Debra Mathews, Johns Hopkins University
Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford
Irina Mikhalevich, Rochester Institute of Technology
Ingmar Persson, University of Gothenburg
Russell Powell, Boston University
Alan Regenberg, Johns Hopkins University
Jason Robert, Arizona State University
Ben Sachs, University of St. Andrews
Julian Savulescu, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Udo Schuklenk, Queen's University
Josh Shepherd, Carleton University
Carl Shulman, University of Oxford
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Duke University
Hazem Zohny, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu

Reviews and Awards

"This book does not simply leave open ended philosophical questions but offers a rich array of argued answers to address real problems of the immediate future relevant not only to those specifically concerned with the problem of moral status, but to moral and political philosophers and in general to anyone who wants to investigate more profoundly the relationship between technology and society." - Jacopo Morelli, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics