moral status the suitability of a being to be viewed as an appropriate object of direct moral concern; the nature or degree of a being’s ability to count as a ground of claims against moral agents; the moral standing, rank, or importance of a (kind of) being; the condition of being a moral patient; moral considerability.
Ordinary moral reflection involves considering others. But which others ought to be considered? And how are the various objects of moral consideration to be weighed against one another? Anything might be the topic of moral discussion, but not everything is thought to be an appropriate object of direct moral concern. If there are any ethical constraints on how we may treat a ceramic plate, these seem to derive from considerations about other beings, not from the interests or good or nature of the plate. The same applies, presumably, to a clod of earth. Many philosophers view a living but insentient being, such as a dandelion, in the same way; others have doubts. According to some, even sentient animal life is little more deserving of moral consideration than the clod or the dandelion. This tradition, which restricts significant moral status to humans, has come under vigorous and varied attack by defenders of animal liberation. This attack criticizes speciesism, and argues that ‘humanism’ is analogous to theories that illegitimately base moral status on race, gender, or social class.
Some philosophers have referred to beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern as ‘moral patients.’ Moral agents are those beings whose actions are subject to moral evaluation; analogously, moral patients would be those beings whose suffering (in the sense of being the objects of the actions of moral agents) permits or demands moral evaluation. Others apply the label ‘moral patients’ more narrowly, just to those beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern but are not (also) moral agents. The issue of moral status concerns not only whether beings count at all morally, but also to what degree they count. After all, beings who are moral patients might still have their claims outweighed by the preferred claims of other beings who possess some special moral status. We might, with Nozick, propose ‘utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people.’ Similarly, the bodily autonomy argument in defense of abortion, made famous by Thomson, does not deny that the fetus is a moral patient, but insists that her/his/its claims are limited by the pregnant woman’s prior claim to control her bodily destiny. It has often been thought that moral status should be tied to the condition of ‘personhood.’ The idea has been either that only persons are moral patients, or that persons possess a special moral status that makes them (morally) more important than nonpersons. Personhood, on such theories, is a minimal condition for moral patiency. Why? Moral patiency is said to be ‘correlative’ with moral agency: a creature has both or neither. Alternatively, persons have been viewed not as the only moral patients, but as a specially privileged elite among moral patients, possessing rights as well as interests. See also ETHICS, KANT, PERSONAL IDEN- TITY, PERSONHOOD , RIGHT. E.J.