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Moral Patient
Moral patienthood (also called moral patience, moral patiency, and moral status) is the state of being eligible for moral consideration by a moral agent. In other words, the morality of an action can depend on how it affects or relates to moral patients. Notions of moral patienthood in non-human animals and artificial entities have been academically explored. Definition Most authors define moral patients as "beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern". This category may include moral agents, and usually does include them. For instance, Charles Taliaferro says: "A moral agent is someone who can bring about events in ways that are praiseworthy or subject to blame. A moral patient is someone who can be morally mistreated. All moral agents are moral patients, but not all moral patients (human babies, some nonhuman animals) are moral agents." Narrow usage Some authors use the term in a more narrow sense, according to which moral patients are "beings who are approp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Moral Agent
Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral choices based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong." Development and analysis Most philosophers suggest only rational beings, who can reason and form self-interested judgments, are capable of being moral agents. Some suggest those with limited rationality (for example, people who are mildly mentally disabled or infants) also have some basic moral capabilities. Determinists argue all of our actions are the product of antecedent causes, and some believe this is incompatible with free will and thus claim that we have no real control over our actions. Immanuel Kant argued that whether or not our real self, the noumenal self, can choose, we have no choice but to believe that we choose freely when we make a choice. This does not mean that we can ''control'' the effects of our actions. Some Indeterminists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy is an American philanthropic advising and funding organization focused on cost-effective, high-impact giving. Its current CEO is Alexander Berger. As of June 2025, Open Philanthropy has directed more than $4 billion in grants across a variety of focus areas, including global health, scientific research, pandemic preparedness, potential risks from advanced AI, and farm animal welfare. It chooses focus areas through a process of "strategic cause selection" — looking for problems that are large, tractable, and neglected relative to their size. History While Open Philanthropy works with a range of donors, its founding and most significant ongoing partnership is with Good Ventures, the foundation of Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin Moskovitz co-founded Facebook and later Asana, becoming a billionaire in the process. He and Tuna, his wife, were inspired by Peter Singer's '' The Life You Can Save'', and became the youngest couple to sign Bill Gates and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Moral Circle Expansion
Moral circle expansion is an increase over time in the number and type of entities given moral consideration. The general idea of moral inclusion was discussed by ancient philosophers and since the 19th century has inspired social movements related to human rights and animal rights. Especially in relation to animal rights, the philosopher Peter Singer has written about the subject since the 1970s, and since 2017 so has the think tank Sentience Institute, part of the 21st-century effective altruism movement. There is significant debate on whether humanity actually has an expanding moral circle, considering topics such as the lack of a uniform border of growing moral consideration and the disconnect between people's moral attitudes and their behavior. Research into the phenomenon is ongoing. History Early discussions of the moral circle The moral circle was discussed as early as the 2nd century by Stoic philosopher Hierocles, who described in ''On Appropriate Acts'' the conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Ethics Of Uncertain Sentience
The ethics of uncertain sentience is an area of applied ethics concerned with how to treat individuals whose capacity for sentience—the ability to subjectively feel, perceive, or experience—remains scientifically or philosophically uncertain. The topic is particularly significant in animal ethics, where questions have arisen regarding the moral status of animals such as crustaceans, insects, and fish, and whether they can experience pain. It also applies to debates in neuroethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence. A common approach to these issues involves invoking the precautionary principle, which holds that in cases of uncertainty, it is morally preferable to assume sentience rather than risk causing harm to potentially sentient beings. Views Animal ethics David Foster Wallace in his 2005 essay " Consider the Lobster" investigated the potential sentience and capacity of crustaceans to experience pain and the resulting ethical implications of eating them. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Artificial Sentience
Artificiality (the state of being artificial, anthropogenic, or man-made) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality often carries with it the implication of being false, counterfeit, or deceptive. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his ''Rhetoric'': However, artificiality does not necessarily have a negative connotation, as it may also reflect the ability of humans to replicate forms or functions arising in nature, as with an artificial heart or artificial intelligence. Political scientist and artificial intelligence expert Herbert A. Simon observes that "some artificial things are imitations of things in nature, and the imitation may use either the same basic materials as those in the natural object or quite different materials.Herbert A. Simon, ''The Sciences of the Artificial'' (1996), p. 4. Simon distinguishes between the artific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Argument From Marginal Cases
The argument from marginal cases (also known as the argument from species overlap) is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, senile people, the comatose, and cognitively disabled people have direct moral status, non-human animals must have a similar status, since there is no known morally relevant characteristic that those marginal-case humans have that animals lack. "Moral status" may refer to a right not to be killed or made to suffer, or to a general moral requirement to be treated in a certain way. Although various cases are made for it, Raymond Frey has described the argument from marginal cases collectively as 'one of the most common arguments in support of an equal value' of animals' lives. Overview The argument from marginal cases takes the form of a proof by contradiction. It attempts to show that you cannot coherently believe both that all humans have moral status, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Animal Welfare
Animal welfare is the quality of life and overall well-being of animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity, disease, immunosuppression, ethology, behavior, physiology, and reproduction, although there is debate about which of these best indicate animal welfare. Respect for animal welfare is often based on the belief that nonhuman animals are Sentience, sentient and that consideration should be given to their well-being or suffering, especially when they are under the care of humans. These concerns can include how animals are Animal slaughter, slaughtered for food, how they are used in Animal testing, scientific research, how they are kept (as pets, in zoos, farms, circuses, etc.), and how human activities affect the welfare and survival of wild species. There are two forms of criticism of the concept of animal welfare, comin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Animal Rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have Moral patienthood, moral worth independent of their Utilitarianism, utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. The argument from marginal cases is often used to reach this conclusion. This argument holds that if marginal human beings such as infants, senile people, and the Cognition, cognitively disabled are granted moral status and negative rights, then nonhuman animals must be granted the same moral consideration, since animals do not lack any known morally relevant characteristic that marginal-case humans have. Broadly speaking, and particularly in popular discourse, the term "animal rights" is often used synonymously with "animal protection" or "animal liberation". More narrowly, "animal rights" refers to the idea that many animals have fundamen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. It may not necessarily imply higher cognitive functions such as awareness, reasoning, or complex thought processes. Some writers define sentience exclusively as the capacity for ''valenced'' (positive or negative) mental experiences, such as pain or pleasure. Sentience is an important concept in ethics, as the ability to experience happiness or suffering often forms a basis for determining which entities deserve Moral patienthood, moral consideration, particularly in utilitarianism. In Asian religions, the word "sentience" has been used to translate a variety of concepts. In science fiction, "sentience" is sometimes used interchangeably with "sapience", "self-awareness", or "consciousness". Sentience in philosophy "Sentience" was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '':wikt:sentiens, sentiens'' (feeling). In philosophy, different authors draw differen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Morality
Morality () is the categorization of intentions, Decision-making, decisions and Social actions, actions into those that are ''proper'', or ''right'', and those that are ''improper'', or ''wrong''. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that is Universal morality, understood to be universal. Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness", "appropriateness" or "rightness". Moral philosophy includes meta-ethics, which studies abstract issues such as moral ontology and moral epistemology, and normative ethics, which studies more concrete systems of moral decision-making such as deontological ethics and consequentialism. An example of normative Ethics, ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule, which states: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e., opposition to that w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mireille Hildebrandt
Mireille Hildebrandt (born 1958) is a Dutch lawyer and philosopher who works at the intersection of law and computer science. She is the Research Professor on 'Interfacing Law and Technology' at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and holds the Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University Nijmegen. She is also the principal investigator of the 'Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law' project that runs from 2019–2024 and is funded by the European Research Council. The research targets two forms of computational law: machine learning and blockchain technology. She has published four scientific monographs, 21 edited volumes or special issues, and over 100 chapters and articles in scientific journals and volumes. In 2015, she delivered the Chorley Lecture at the London School of Economics. In 2020, she was a General Co-Chair of the ACM FAccT Conference (formerly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Moral Agency
Moral agency is an individual's ability to make morality, moral choices based on some notion of ethics, right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong." Development and analysis Most philosophers suggest only rationality, rational beings, who can reason and form self-interested judgments, are capable of being moral agents. Some suggest those with limited rationality (for example, people who are mildly mentally disabled or infants) also have some basic moral capabilities. Determinists argue all of our actions are the product of antecedent causes, and some believe this is Compatibilism, incompatible with free will and thus claim that we have no real control over our actions. Immanuel Kant argued that whether or not our real self, the noumenon, noumenal self, can choose, we have no choice but to believe that we choose freely when we make a choice. This does not mean that we can ''contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
