Subjective experience and moral standing

Caring and Full Moral Standing*

A being has moral standing if it or its interests matter intrinsically, to at least some degree, in the moral assessment of actions and events. For instance, animals can be said to have moral standing if, other things being equal, it is morally bad to intentionally cause their suffering. This essay focuses on a special kind of moral standing, what I will call “full moral standing” (FMS), associ...

The Two Sources of Moral Standing

There are two primary traditions in philosophical theorizing about moral standing—one emphasizing Experience (the capacity to feel pain and pleasure) and one emphasizing Agency (complexity of cognition and lifestyle). In this article we offer an explanation for this divide: Lay judgments about moral standing depend importantly on two independent cues (Experience and Agency), and the two philoso...

Caregiving as moral experience.

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Subjective Experience Divided And Conquered

Moral standing, the value of lives, and speciesism.

The question of who or what has moral standing, of who or what is a member of the moral community, has received wide exposure in recent years. Various answers have been extensively canvassed; and though controversy still envelops claims for the inclusion of the inanimate environment within the moral community, such claims on behalf of animals (or, at least, the "higher" animals) are now widely ...