Standing and status : a dissertation on the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral standing and an analysis of moral status
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Moral standing is the property by which an entity is considered to be capable of being wronged or is morally considerable. For example, when I kick a rock, I do not do anything wrong, nor is the rock wronged. On the other hand, if I kicked an innocent child, I do something wrong, but more importantly I wrong the child. I argue that sentience (the capacity to feel pleasure and pain) and rational autonomy (the conscious capacity to self-govern) are both individually sufficient for moral standing and disjunctively necessary for moral standing. I argue against a variety of alternative positions such as consciousness (the capacity to have any experience such as the color blue), biological life, and dispositional agency, in order to strengthen my position. Moral status refers to the set of normative features governing the way we treat those with moral standing. When it comes to moral status regarding moral patients, I argue that they have at least two kinds of basic moral interests which are based on their wellbeing and their autonomy. I argue in favor of a hierarchical system of moral status whereby moral patients and agents possess higher, weaker, or equal moral status based on their capacities. I conclude by arguing that we may have impersonal obligations (moral obligations owed to no moral patient) towards the environment because the natural environment may be a possible source of beauty. Thus, our moral obligation would be to beauty rather than the environment itself.
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Ph. D.