Who Matters Morally, and Why?

 

Ryan Kulesa is reading for the DPhil in Philosophy at St. Cross College, specializing in moral philosophy. His current research focuses on questions concerning moral statusWhose interests matter, morally?  Why do they matter? To what extent do they matter? His other research interests include issues at the intersection of philosophy of religion and metaphysics (e.g., divine action and arguments for the existence of God).  He's published work in leading specialist philosophy journals, including UtilitasReligious Studies, and Bioethics. Ryan holds MAs in Philosophy from the University of Missouri, Columbia and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Who Matters Morally, and Why?

Some Problems

Current views of moral status - the degree to which one's interests matter, morally - either include or exclude far too many individual's as having a high moral status.  Some views, for instance, entail that human embryos, anencephalic fetuses, and the permanently comatose have, counterintuitively, a very high moral status.  Other views entail that newborns, the temporarily comatose, some human persons, and cognitively impaired humans have, counterintuitively, a lower or very low moral status.  I think these views have strayed too far from common sense.

What Makes you Matter, Morally?

In my DPhil thesis, I propose a novel view of moral status that attempts to avoid these seriously counterintuitive implications.  To develop an alternative view, let’s start with two intuitive observations.  First, I think it’s safe to say that one’s moral status is (at least in part) determined by how badly one’s life can go – in other words, one’s capacity for misfortune.  This is, roughly, a plausible justification for why healthy humans have a higher moral status than animals.  Unlike many animals, humans lose out on the chance for great achievement, knowledge, and intimate relationships when their lives are going poorly.  At least, this seems like a plausible first step.

But – and here’s the second important observation – one’s capacity for misfortune doesn’t seem to be the only factor relevant to one’s moral status.  The fact that an individual can reflect and act on reasons to satisfy her preferences – that is, one’s degree of agency – also seems relevant.  Why?  Well, there might be some human persons that have a lower capacity for misfortune, but we shouldn’t say that they therefore have a lower moral status.  Maybe it’s true that, for instance, it is less of a misfortune to die at a very old age than a younger age.  Supposing this is plausible, we wouldn’t then go on to say that younger people have a higher moral status than the extremely elderly!  But why?  Probably, I think, because all human persons have a very high degree of agency.

Where does this leave us?  Both one’s capacity for misfortune and degree of agency seem relevant for status, so now we need to explain how these two factors are related to each other.  And the relationship between them needs to avoid the seriously counterintuitive implications I mentioned above.  Since one’s capacity for misfortune takes the front seat, I’ll refer to my view as the Misfortune-Adjusted Account of moral status.  Here’s the way I intend the set up the view that, I believe, fits much better with common sense:

(1) one’s present degree of agency becomes increasingly relevant to one’s moral status as her capacity for misfortune decreases and

(2) changes in both variables yield diminishing marginal effects in moral status when either approaches its maximum value.

 

I Think I Fixed the Problems…

There’s a lot to unpack here, but, at least for now, I just want to show how this view avoids the problems of inclusion and exclusion that we started out with.  I mentioned that some views of moral status claim that embryos, anencephalic fetuses, and the permanently comatose all have a very high moral status on some views.  How does my view avoid these conclusions?  Well, anencephalic fetuses and the permanently comatose have no capacity for misfortune.  So, according to (1), their moral status is determined entirely by their present degree of agency.  Since they don’t have agency, they do not have moral status.  What about embryos?  That’s a bit trickier, but the gist is that, although they have some capacity for misfortune, it’s not very large. (Although I can’t defend it here, I actually think that most fetuses, unlike embryos, have a very high capacity for misfortune and will, as a result, have a very high moral status.  That’s why all my pro-choice and pro-life friends hate the arguments I present in my paper “The Counterfactual Argument Against Abortion”!). And, since they also do not have any agency, their moral status will be, according to (1) quite low.

What about the other extreme?  How does the Misfortune-Adjusted Account avoid the conclusion that newborns, the temporarily comatose, some human persons, and cognitively impaired humans have, counterintuitively, a lower or very low moral status?  Let’s start with newborns and the temporarily comatose.  Since they have a very large capacity for misfortune, the fact that they have a very minimal degree of agency is largely irrelevant to their moral status.  So, they have a high moral status because they have a high capacity for misfortune.  And we don’t have to worry about difference in moral status among human persons either since, according to (2), changes in either one’s capacity for misfortune or agency don’t really matter for moral status when one of the two variables is near its maximum (i.e., near the greatest capacity for persons).  This means that even human person with moderate cognitive impairments, such as those with down syndrome, have the same moral status as those without those impairments.  That’s certainly the right result!

…But Maybe not All of them

At this point, you might be asking yourself: “what can’t the Misfortune-Adjusted Account do?  It’s clearly correct!”  If that’s what you’re thinking, you might be right.  But here’s an outstanding worry to cast some doubt on your confidence: my proposal entails that severely congenitally cognitively impaired humans have a low moral status.  Why?  Because these individuals, by definition, have a very low capacity for misfortune and agency.  So, my view can’t actually avoid one of the counterintuitive implications we want to avoid!

There are at least two responses here: on the one hand, this is sort of everyone’s problem.  I don’t know of a view that avoids this implication and doesn’t appeal to one’s having a “rational nature” or claim that species membership is seriously relevant to one’s moral status.  I guess I could say that, whatever solution we have to the problem, we might be able to plug it into the Misfortune-Adjusted Account as well.

But if, like me, this consequence leaves a sour taste in your mouth, you may want to go another route.  Maybe you want to go full on speciesist (i.e., the view that being a member of the species homo sapiens is sufficient for having a high moral status).  Or maybe you want to ground the moral status of humans in some thesistic principles.  I think there’s a good case to be made that the Misfortune-Adjusted account is the best account on offer that isn’t committed to speciesism or theism (it solves all the problems with other views that I mentioned above).  But, if it is, and you still find it underinclusive, you might have one more reason to be a speciesist or theist.

 

Find out more about the Medical Humanities Research Hub.

kulesa headshot