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Moral agency is an individual's ability to make
moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...
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
philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
s suggest only
rational Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ...
beings, who can
reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...
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.
Determinist Determinism is the metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping mot ...
s argue all of our actions are the product of antecedent causes, and some believe this is incompatible with
free will Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choice, choose between different possible courses of Action (philosophy), action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral respon ...
and thus claim that we have no real control over our actions.
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
argued that whether or not our
real self The true self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self) and the false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are a psychological dualism conceptualized by English psycho ...
, the
noumenal In philosophy, a noumenon (, ; from ; : noumena) is knowledge posited as an object that exists independently of human sense. The term ''noumenon'' is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term ''phenomenon'', which refers to a ...
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 would argue we have no free will either. If, with respect to human behavior, a so-called 'cause' results in an indeterminate number of possible, so-called 'effects', that does not mean the person had the free-thinking independent will to choose that 'effect'. More likely, it was the indeterminate consequence of his chance genetics, chance experiences and chance circumstances relevant at the time of the 'cause'. In Kant's philosophy, this calls for an act of faith, the faith free agent is based on something ''a priori'', yet to be known, or immaterial. Otherwise, without free agent's ''a priori'' fundamental source, socially essential concepts created from human mind, such as justice, would be undermined (responsibility implies freedom of choice) and, in short, civilization and human values would crumble. It is useful to compare the idea of moral agency with the
legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a Socia ...
doctrine of ''
mens rea In criminal law, (; Law Latin for "guilty mind") is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof both of ''mens rea'' and '' actus reus'' ("guilty act") before th ...
'', which means guilty mind, and states that a person is legally responsible for what he does as long as he ''should'' know what he is doing, and his choices are deliberate. Some theorists discard any attempts to evaluate mental states and, instead, adopt the doctrine of ''
strict liability In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant. Und ...
'', whereby one is liable under the law without regard to capacity, and that the only thing is to determine the degree of
punishment Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or beh ...
, if any. Moral determinists would most likely adopt a similar point of view. Psychologist
Albert Bandura Albert Bandura (4 December 1925 – 26 July 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist and professor of social science in psychology at Stanford University, who contributed to the fields of education and to the fields of psychology, e.g. social ...
has observed that moral agents engage in selective
moral disengagement Moral disengagement is a term from developmental psychology, educational psychology and social psychology for the process of convincing the self that ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context. This is done by separating mor ...
in regards to their own inhumane conduct.


Distinction between moral agents and moral patients

Moral agents are entities whose actions are eligible for moral consideration. An example of this would be a young child old enough to understand right from wrong, yet they hit their siblings on an occasion when they get angry. The action of hitting is up for moral consideration because the child is old enough to consider whether or not it is the correct action to take and the morality of their behavior. Moral patients are entities that themselves are eligible for moral consideration. An example of this would be a child who does not know how to determine right from wrong. A child in this situation is up for moral consideration by others because those around them understand they are incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions and are therefore unable to understand the morality of a situation due to developmental barriers. Many philosophers, such as
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
, view morality as a transaction among rational parties, i.e., among moral agents. In Richard Dean’s article on Kant’s moral theory he discusses how agents who are able to control their tendencies or drives, are able to remain unbiased as they determine the path of moral action. The ability to be able to control this is called moral commitment. Agents need to become experts in this control in order to be able to declare something as moral or immoral and retain reputability. For this reason, they would exclude other animals from moral consideration.
Utilitarian In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
philosophers
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham (; 4 February Dual dating, 1747/8 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. 5 February 1748 Old Style and New Style dates, N.S.– 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of mo ...
and
Peter Singer Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secu ...
have argued that the key to inclusion in the
moral community Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
is not rationality — for if it were, we might have to exclude some disabled people and infants, and might also have to distinguish between the degrees of rationality of healthy adults — but the real object of moral action is the avoidance of suffering. An example of this is the
abortion debate The abortion debate is a longstanding and contentious discourse that touches on the moral, legal, medical, and religious aspects of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the debate has two major sides, commonly referred to as the "pro- ...
. Further examples can be taken from the
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, t ...
.


Artificial moral agents

Discussions of artificial moral agency center around a few main ideas. The first discussion is on whether it is possible for an artificial system to be a moral agent - see artificial systems and moral responsibility. The second discussion concerns efforts to construct machines with ethically-significant behaviors - see
machine ethics Machine ethics (or machine morality, computational morality, or computational ethics) is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence concerned with adding or ensuring moral behaviors of man-made machines that use artificial intelligence, otherw ...
. Finally, there is debate about whether robots ''should'' be constructed as moral agents. Research has shown that humans do perceive robots as having varying degrees of moral agency. These perceptions can manifest in two distinct ways: 1. ideas about a robot’s moral capacity (the ability to be/do good or bad) and 2. ideas about its dependence or independence on programming (where high dependency equates to low agency). Research suggests that the moral judgment of an action may not depend on whether the agent is a human or a robot. However, robots are rarely given credit for acting well, and must behave more consistently well to be trusted. Creating a robot or "social machine" capable of understanding moral judgments as moral judgments and not through proxies (which is how AI systems are trained to align with human values/moral/ethical codes) does not seem likely soon. However, a machine with those capabilities could be potentially created in the future.


Non-human animals

Discussion of moral agency in non-human animals involves both debate about the nature of morality and about the capacities and behavior of human and non-human animals. Thinkers who agree about the nature, behavior and abilities of different species may still disagree about which capacities are important for moral agency or about the significance of particular behaviors in determining moral agency. Since moral agents are often thought to warrant particular moral consideration, this discussion is sometimes linked to debates in animal rights about practices involving non-human animals. Studies of animal biology and behavior have provided strong evidence of complex social structures and behavioral norms in non-human species. There is also evidence that some non-human species, especially other primates, can demonstrate empathy and emotions such as guilt or grief, though some thinkers dispute this. However, humans display distinctive capacities related to intelligence and rationality such as the ability to engage in abstract and symbolic thought and to employ complex language. Philosophers and biologists who claim that non-human animals are moral agents typically argue that moral agency is dependent on empathy or social relations, and stress the evidence for these in non-human animals. They may also point out behaviors which in humans are described as moral activities, such as the punishment of individuals who break social norms. Some thinkers suggest that there are a variety of types or levels of moral agency which vary by species, or that animals may act morally without being full moral agents. Thinkers who hold that only humans can be moral agents typically argue that moral agency depends on rationality. They highlight distinctive human abilities and the unique complexity of human behavior. They argue that shared behaviors such as the punishment of wrongdoers are nevertheless underpinned by very different internal processes, meaning that these behaviors qualify as moral activity for humans but not for non-humans.


See also


Notes


References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Moral agency Intention Morality Personhood Concepts in ethics