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Rethinking Moral Status

Rethinking Moral Status

Edited by
S T EV E C L A R K E , HA Z E M Z O H N Y,
A N D J U L IA N S AV U L E S C U
1
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Contents
Preface vii
Notes on Contributors xiii
1. Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 1
Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
PA RT I : T H E I D E A O F M O R A L STAT U S
2. Suffering and Moral Status 23
Jeff McMahan
3. An Interest-Based Model of Moral Status 40
David DeGrazia
4. The Moral Status of Conscious Subjects 57
Joshua Shepherd
5. Moral Status, Person-Affectingness, and Parfit’s
No Difference View 74
F. M. Kamm
6. The Ever Conscious View and the Contingency of Moral Status 90
Elizabeth Harman
7. Moral Status and Moral Significance 108
Ingmar Persson
8. Moral Recognition and the Limits of Impartialist Ethics: On
Androids, Sentience, and Personhood 123
Udo Schuklenk
9. Is Moral Status Good for You? 139
Thomas Douglas
vi Contents
PA RT I I : SP E C I F IC I S SU E S A B O U T M O R A L STAT U S
10. Toward a Theory of Moral Status Inclusive of Nonhuman
Animals: Pig Brains in a Vat, Cows versus Chickens, and
Human–Nonhuman Chimeras 159
Ruth R. Faden, Tom L. Beauchamp, Debra J. H. Mathews, and Alan
Regenberg
11. Revisiting Inexorable Moral Confusion About the Moral Status
of Human–Nonhuman Chimeras 179
Jason Scott Robert and Françoise Baylis
12. Chimeras, Superchimps, and Post-persons: Species Boundaries
and Moral Status Enhancements 197
Sarah Chan
13. Connecting Moral Status to Proper Legal Status 215
Benjamin Sachs
14. How the Moral Community Evolves 231
Rachell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan
15. Moral Status of Brain Organoids 250
Julian Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu
16. How Much Moral Status Could Artificial Intelligence
Ever Achieve? 269
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer
17. Monkeys, Moral Machines, and Persons 290
David R. Lawrence and John Harris
18. Sharing the World with Digital Minds 306
Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom
Index 327
Preface
What is it to possess moral status? It may seem problematic for a volume

about rethinking moral status to commence by assuming an answer to this
question. But discussion must start somewhere, so here is a minimally con-
tentious claim: A being or entity that possesses moral status is one that mat-
ters morally, for its own sake. Beyond this minimal claim lies controversy.
Common-sense morality implicitly assumes that reasonably clear distinctions
can be drawn between the ‘full’ moral status usually attributed to ordinary
adult humans, the partial moral status attributed to non-human animals, and
the absence of moral status, usually ascribed to machines and other artefacts.
These assumptions have long been subject to challenge, and are now under
renewed pressure because there are beings we have recently become able to
create, or may soon be able to create, that break down certain traditional cat-
egories: human, non-human animal, and non-biological beings. Such beings
include human non-human chimeras, cyborgs, human brain organoids, post-
humans, human minds that have been uploaded into computers and onto the
internet, and artificial intelligences. It is far from clear what moral status we
should attribute to any of these.
While challenges to commonsensical views of moral status have a long his-
tory, the aforementioned technological developments recast many of the chal-
lenges in a new light and raise additional questions. There are a number of
ways we could respond. We might revise our ordinary assumptions about
what is required for the possession of full moral status. We might reject the
assumption that a sharp distinction can be drawn between full and partial
moral status. We might accept that there are circumstances in which we will
be unable to determine whether and to what degree beings of a particular
type possess moral status. Also, we might avoid making any inferences
about the moral status of particular beings and try to get by without talk of
moral status. Our choice of response may have far-reaching implications.
Considerations of consistency may lead us to reappraise our handling of long-
standing problem cases for accounts of moral status, including disputes over
the moral status of foetuses and severely cognitively impaired humans. We
may also be prompted to rethink traditional assumptions about the moral
importance of humans relative to non-human animals.
viii Preface
This volume provides a forum for philosophical reflection about ordinary

presuppositions and intuitions concerning moral status, especially in light of
the aforementioned recent and emerging technologies. An initial chapter, by
Clarke and Savulescu, surveys some core assumptions about moral status that
may require rethinking. These include the common presuppositions that all
humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal moral status,
that the sophisticated cognitive capacities typical of human adults are neces-
sary for full moral status, that only humans can have full moral status, and
that there can be no beings with higher moral status than ordinary adult
humans. The seventeen chapters that follow are organized into two parts. In
Part I our authors attempt to rethink the very idea of moral status, while each
chapter in Part II grapples with more specific issues. Many of these are raised
by consideration of beings that we have recently acquired the capacity to cre-
ate, or may soon be able to create.
Part I, ‘The Idea of Moral Status’, commences with three chapters that
address the conceptual foundations and implications of moral status.
Differences in moral status reflect a form of moral inequality: individuals
with higher moral status matter more than those with lower moral status. But
do differences in moral status affect the strength of reasons not to cause, or to
prevent, suffering, and the strength of reasons to confer benefit? Jeff McMahan
considers this question in Chapter 2, exploring whether the significance of
individuals’ moral status may vary depending on the types of harm that might
be inflicted on them, or on the type of benefit that might be conferred
on them.
Chapter 3 by David DeGrazia presents an interest-based account of moral
status that aims to illuminate the moral status of ordinary, self-aware human
beings, but also non-paradigm humans, animals, brain organoids, artificial
intelligence (AI), and post-humans with superior self-awareness. Seven the-
ses are defended to qualify this interest-based account: (1) being human is
neither necessary nor sufficient for moral status; (2) the capacity for con-
sciousness is necessary but not sufficient; (3) sentience is necessary and suffi-
cient; (4) social relations are not a basis for moral status but may ground
special obligations to those with moral status; (5) the concept of personhood
is unhelpful in modelling moral status, unless a non-vague conception is
identified and its moral relevance clarified; (6) sentient beings are entitled to
equal consequentialist consideration; and (7) sentient beings with substantial
temporal self-awareness have special interests that justify the added protec-
tion of rights.
Preface ix
Chapter 4 by Josh Shepherd homes in on three difficulties facing any regi-

mentation of moral status claims: how to account for the grounds of moral
status; how to map these grounds to the moral reasons for action associated
with the possession of a given level of moral status; and how to navigate these
grounds and map difficulties without clashing with strong intuitions about a
range of problem cases. To resolve these three difficulties, Shepherd argues
that we ought to base our account of moral status in aspects of a subject’s
conscious mental life, by mapping the grounds to moral reasons in terms of
respect for conscious subjects.
The next two chapters, while focused on articulating implications of moral
status, consider challenges raised by human embryos, foetuses, and the non-
identity problem. In Chapter 5 F. M. Kamm considers the idea of an entity’s
moral status as what it is permissible or impermissible to do to it, and exam-
ines how its status relates to whether it is sentient, conscious, capable of
agency, a subject, or rational. She then considers ways in which the moral
status of embryos that will definitely develop into persons differs from the
status of those persons, as well as the implications of this for the non-identity
problem and Parfit’s ‘No Difference View’.
Elizabeth Harman defends the ‘Ever Conscious View’ in Chapter 6, which
holds that a living being has moral status throughout its life just in case it is
ever conscious, at any point in its life. This is a contingent view of moral sta-
tus: some beings that have moral status might have lacked it, and some beings
that lack moral status might have had it. The chapter addresses the ‘Objection
to Contingency’, which holds that if the Ever Conscious View is correct, then
whether abortion is permissible depends on whether one actually aborts.
The two subsequent chapters in Part I argue for abandoning the very con-
cept of moral status. Ingmar Persson (Chapter 7) distinguishes moral status
from moral significance, arguing that something has moral significance just
in case it morally counts for its own sake, or is something that must be taken
into consideration in itself when moral judgements about what ought or
ought not to be done are made. Nothing can have moral status if there is not
anything morally significant about it, but something can be morally signifi-
cant even though it does not have moral status. Similarly, in Chapter 8, Udo
Schuklenk argues that ‘moral status’ is no more than a convenient label for ‘is
owed moral consideration of a kind’; and so, he suggests, we dispense with
the concept and instead focus on uncovering the ethically defensible criteria
that give rise to particular kinds of moral obligations. Understood this way,
chimeras, human brain organoids, and artificial intelligence do not pose new
x Preface
challenges, since existing conceptual frameworks, and the criteria for moral
consideration they trigger, are still defensible and applicable.
Regardless of the specific characterization of moral status, an often-
neglected question is whether having it—and possibly having more of it—is
good for you. If it is, does losing it harm you? Rounding off the first part of
the volume, this question of the prudential value of moral status is precisely
what Thomas Douglas tackles in Chapter 9. Answering it is important in
helping us to decide whether or not we should enhance, or disenhance, the
cognitive and moral capacities of non-human animals. Doing either may
affect their moral status.
Part II, ‘Specific Issues about Moral Status’, begins with three chapters
focusing in particular on the prospect of interspecies chimeras. In Chapter 10,
Ruth Faden, Tom Beauchamp, Debra Mathews, and Alan Regenberg argue for
a theory of moral status that helps provide solutions to practical problems in
public policy, taking account of the interests of non-human animals. To illus-
trate this need, their chapter describes two contemporary problems, one in
science policy and one in food and climate policy. They sketch a way to think
about a tiered or hierarchical theory of moral status that could be fit for such
work, and then consider in some depth the problem of human non-human
chimeras.
In Chapter 11, Jason Roberts and Françoise Baylis revisit their earlier work
on the history, ethics, and future of stem cell research involving chimeras
made, in part, from human cells. In particular, they focus on the notion of
inexorable moral confusion: objections to the creation of chimeras are likely
motivated by a strong desire to avoid inexorable moral confusion about these
beings’ moral status. Here, they further specify and elaborate on the original
concept in light of recent scientific and technical developments as well as eth
ical insights. In Chapter 12, Sarah Chan explores the normative and concep-
tual challenges raised by the prospect of crossing both biological and moral
‘species boundaries’, including the implications of species transitions in rela-
tion to identity, obligations toward existing beings, and beings that might be
created via the species transition process. She reflects on how all of this might
advance our thinking about moral status.
In Chapter 13, Ben Sachs considers three proposals regarding the connec-
tion between an animal’s moral status and the legal status it ought to have.
The first proposal is this strong claim: if an act wrongs an animal then crimin
alizing it is justified. The second proposal is more moderate: if an act consti-
tutes an injustice to an animal then criminalizing it is justified. The third
proposal is the one Sachs defends: it is obligatory for legislators to eliminate
Preface xi
any aspect of the law that facilitates the wronging of animals. The chapter
considers, in particular, the radical implications of this third proposal for ani-
mal ownership and state funding of medical research on animal subjects.
The chapter by Rachell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan
(Chapter 14) considers several evolved biases that distort our tendency to ascribe
moral status, focusing in particular on the example of invertebrates. These biases
include tendencies to deny moral standing, or to attribute lower moral status to
beings that elicit feelings of disgust or fear, as well as to those that are perceived
as less similar to us, less attractive, less individualized, and less disposed toward
reciprocal cooperation. These adaptive mechanisms may have served human
groups well in the evolutionary past, but in the modern world they pose an
obstacle to moral progress and play a key role in moral regression.
Chapter 15 examines brain organoids, which recapitulate the development
of the brain. Might these have moral status, or the potential for it? Julian
Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu tackle this question head on. It is
plausible, they argue, that brain organoids could one day attain consciousness
and perhaps even higher cognitive abilities. Research on brain organoids
therefore raises difficult questions about their moral status—questions that
currently fall outside the scope of existing regulations and guidelines. The
chapter offers a novel moral framework for such research and outlines the
conditions under which brain organoids might attain moral status.
The final three chapters focus in particular on AI and the prospect of digi-
tal minds. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Vincent Conitzer ask, in Chapter 16,
just how much moral status artificial intelligence could ever achieve. They
suggest that different entities have different degrees of moral status with
respect to different moral reasons in different circumstances for different pur-
poses. Recognizing this variability will help resolve some debates about the
potential moral status of AI.
In Chapter 17 David Lawrence and John Harris argue that debates over
moral machines often make wide assumptions about the nature of future
autonomous entities, and frequently bypass the distinction between ‘agents’
and ‘actors’. The scope and limits of moral status, they suggest, are fundamen-
tally linked to this distinction, and position non-Homo sapiens great apes as
members of a particular moral status clade, which are treated in a similar
fashion to that proposed for so-called ‘moral machines’. They suggest that the
principles by which we ultimately decide how to treat great apes, and whether
or not we decide to act upon our responsibilities to them as moral agents, are
likely to be the same principles we use to determine our responsibilities to
moral AI in the future.
xii Preface
Finally, Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom (Chapter 18) conclude the volume
by investigating the moral status of digital minds. The minds of biological
creatures occupy a small corner of a much larger space of possible minds that
could be created. Their chapter focuses on one set of issues which are pro-
voked by the prospect of digital minds with superhumanly strong claims to
resources and influence. These could arise from the vast collective benefits
that mass-produced digital minds might derive from relatively small amounts
of resources. Alternatively, they could arise from individual digital minds
with superhuman moral status or ability to benefit from resources. Such
beings may contribute immense value to the world. Failing to respect their
interests could produce a moral catastrophe, but a naive way of respecting
them could be disastrous for humanity.
Work leading to this volume was supported by the Wellcome Trust under
Grant WT203132/Z/16/Z and the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and
Education. Most of the chapters in the volume are revised versions of papers
that were originally presented at a conference on ‘Rethinking Moral Status’,
held at St Cross College, in Oxford, on 13 and 14 June 2019, organized by the
Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Oxford Uehiro Centre
for Practical Ethics, both at the University of Oxford. The chapter by Steve
Clarke and Julian Savulescu began life as a background paper, circulated to
participants before the event. We were fortunate enough to be able to add
chapters by Jeff McMahan, by Carl Schulman and Nick Bostrom, by Julian
Koplin, Olivia Carter, and Julian Savulescu, and by Rachell Powell, Irina
Mikhalevich, and Allen Buchanan to the collection.
As well as thanking the Wellcome Trust and Uehiro Foundation for their
generous support, the editorial team would like to thank Daniel Cohen, Alan
Crosier, Rachel Gaminiratne, Christa Henrichs, Guy Kahane, Neil Levy,
Morgan Luck, Mike Parker, Steven Tudor, Suzanne Uniacke, and Miriam
Wood, for helping us, in different ways, to put together the volume. We would
also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff for his expert editorial guidance. We
thank all of our contributors, as well as the various people who helped us with
the volume, for their forbearance during the COVID-19 global pandemic,
which led to the production of the volume taking somewhat longer than
originally anticipated.
Steve Clarke
Hazem Zohny
Julian Savulescu
Notes on Contributors
Françoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a

member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia, as well as a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is a
philosopher whose innovative work in bioethics, at the intersection of policy and
practice, challenges us to think broadly and deeply about the direction of health, sci-
ence, and biotechnology.
Tom L. Beauchamp is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar Emeritus,
Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Dr Beauchamp’s primary inter-
ests are in the ethics of human- subjects research, the ethics of animal- subjects
research and human uses of animals, the place of universal principles and rights in
biomedical ethics, and methods of bioethics. His Principles of Biomedical Ethics (with
co-author James Childress) is widely considered a classic of bioethics.
Nick Bostrom is a Professor at Oxford University, where he leads the Future of
Humanity Institute as its founding director. Bostrom is the author of some 200 publi-
cations, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human
Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014). Bostrom
is also a recipient of a Eugene R. Gannon Award, and has been listed on Foreign
Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice. Bostrom’s writings have been translated
into 28 languages.
Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is
the author of over 150 articles and book chapters, and eleven books. His recent books
include The Evolution of Moral Progress (OUP 2018, with R. Powell), Institutionalizing
the Just War (OUP 2018), The Heart of Human Rights (OUP 2013), and Beyond
Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement (OUP 2011). Buchanan has served
as a staff member or consultant with four Presidential Bioethics Commissions.
Olivia Carter is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne in the School
of Psychological Science. After completing a PhD in Neuroscience, Carter worked as a
research fellow for three years at Harvard University. She researches the neurobio
logical mechanisms involved in consciousness and cognition. From 2008 to 2014
Carter served as the Executive Director of the International Association of the
Scientific Study of Consciousness.
Sarah Chan is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Usher Institute for Population Health
Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She graduated from the University
of Melbourne with the degrees of LLB and BSc (Hons). She received an MA in Health
xiv Notes on Contributors
Care Ethics and Law and a PhD in Bioethics from the University of Manchester, where
she was a Research Fellow in Bioethics from 2005 to 2015.
Steve Clarke is a Senior Research Fellow in Ethics and Humanities, in the Wellcome
Centre for Ethics and Humanities, the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the
Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is also Associate Professor of
Philosophy in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt
University. He has broad research interests in philosophy and bioethics.
Vincent Conitzer is the Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of New Technologies
and Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Economics, and Professor of
Philosophy at Duke University. He is also the Head of Technical AI Engagement at the
Institute for Ethics in AI and Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy at the
University of Oxford. He received his PhD (2006) and MS (2003) degrees in Computer
Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an AB (2001) degree in Applied
Mathematics from Harvard University. Conitzer works on artificial intelligence (AI).
More recently, he has started to work on AI and ethics.
David DeGrazia is Elton Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University.
DeGrazia’s nine books include Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral
Status (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and, with Tom Beauchamp, Principles of
Animal Research Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Thomas Douglas is Professor of Applied Philosophy and Director of Research and
Development in the Oxford Uehiro Centre of Practical Ethics, University of Oxford.
He is also Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and Editor of the Journal
of Practical Ethics, and Principal Investigator on the project ‘Protecting Minds’, funded
by the European Research Council. He trained in clinical medicine and philosophy
and works chiefly on the ethics of behaviour modification and neuroenhancement.
Ruth R. Faden is the founder of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. She
was the Berman Institute’s Director from 1995 until 2016, and the inaugural
Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director (2014–16). Dr Faden is the inaugural Philip Franklin
Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics. In the twenty years in which Dr Faden led the
Berman Institute, she transformed what was an informal interest group of faculty
across Johns Hopkins into one of the world’s premier bioethics programmes.
Elizabeth Harman is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human
Values at Princeton University. Her publications include ‘Creation Ethics’ (Philosophy
and Public Affairs), ‘“I’ll Be Glad I Did It” Reasoning and the Significance of Future
Desires’ (Philosophical Perspectives), ‘The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty’ (Oxford
Studies in Metaethics), ‘Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes’ (Ethics), and ‘Ethics is
Hard! What Follows?’ (forthcoming). She is co- editor of Norton Introduction to
Philosophy, Second Edition (2018), and Norton Introduction to Ethics (forthcoming).
John Harris is Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester, Visiting Professor
in Bioethics, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Kings
Notes on Contributors xv
College London, and Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre

for Practical Ethics. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He is the author of,
inter alia, How to be Good, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, On
Cloning, Routledge, London. 2008, Enhancing Evolution, Princeton University Press,
Princeton and Oxford 2007. Violence & Responsibility, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, Boston & Henley, 1980 and 2021.
F. M. Kamm is the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers
University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the Department of
Philosophy there. Her work focuses on normative ethical theory and practical ethics.
She is the author of numerous articles and nine books, including Morality, Mortality
vols. 1 and 2, Intricate Ethics, Bioethical Prescriptions, The Trolley Problem Mysteries,
and Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead.
Julian Koplin is a Research Fellow with the Biomedical Ethics Research Group,
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Melbourne Law School, the University of
Melbourne. He has a broad range of interests across the field of philosophical bioeth-
ics, including stem cell ethics, transplant ethics, and the methods of bioethics. Julian
holds a PhD in bioethics from the Monash Bioethics Centre.
David R. Lawrence is a Research Fellow in the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for
Biomedicine, Self, and Society, with a background in neuroscience and biotechnologi-
cal law and ethics. Since his doctoral studies at the Institute for Science Ethics and
Innovation at the University of Manchester, his work focuses on enhancement tech-
nologies and their possible effects on moral status.
Jeff McMahan is White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
He is the author of The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life and
Killing in War.
Debra J. H. Mathews is an Assistant Director for Science Programs at Johns Hopkins
Berman Institute of Bioethics and an Associate Professor in the Department of
Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr Mathews has
also spent time outside academia at the US Department of Health and Human
Services, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and else-
where, working in various capacities on science policy. Her academic work focuses on
ethics and policy issues raised by emerging biotechnologies.
Irina Mikhalevich is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of
Technology. Her work lies at the intersection of the philosophy of science, cognitive
science, and bioethics. Before coming to RIT, Irina held the McDonnell Postdoctoral
Fellowship at the Philosophy- Neuroscience- Psychology (PNP) Program
at Washington University in St Louis and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Berlin
School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt University.
Ingmar Persson is Emeritus Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of
Gothenburg, and Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical
xvi Notes on Contributors
Ethics. His main publications are: The Retreat of Reason (OUP, 2005), From Morality
to the End of Reason (OUP, 2013), Inclusive Ethics (OUP, 2017), Reasons in Action
(OUP, 2019), Morality from Compassion (OUP, 2021), and with Julian Savulescu, Unfit
for the Future (OUP, 2012).
Rachell Powell is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. Her research
focuses on the philosophy of biological and biomedical science. Her books include
Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind (MIT
2019), and The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory (OUP 2018, with
Allen Buchanan). She has published in such journals as Philosophy of Science, British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, and Journal of
Medicine and Philosophy.
Alan Regenberg is the Director of Outreach and Research Support and an associate
faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is engaged in
a broad range of research projects and programs, including the Berman Institute’s sci-
ence programs: The Stem Cell Policy and Ethics Program (SCOPE); the Program in
Ethics and Brain Sciences; and the Hinxton Group, an international consortium on
stem cells, ethics, and law.
Jason Scott Robert holds the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and a Dean’s Distinguished
(Associate) Professorship in the Life Sciences at Arizona State University. His work is
at the nexus of philosophy of biology and bioethics, focusing primarily on the justifi-
cation of good science in controversial areas of research in developmental biology and
the neurosciences.
Benjamin Sachs is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
His main interests are in applied ethics, coercion, political philosophy, and philoso-
phy of law. His first book, Explaining Right and Wrong, was published by Routledge in
2018. His second book, Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality, is
forthcoming with Routledge. He is currently co-directing, with Alex Douglas, a
research network called The Future of Work and Income.
Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre
for Practical Ethics, and Co-Director, Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at
the University of Oxford. He is Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch
Children’s Research Institute, where he directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group,
and Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, Melbourne University.
Udo Schuklenk has taught at universities in Germany, Australia, the UK, and South
Africa before taking up the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics at Queen’s University.
He has written or co-edited ten books and authored or co-authored more than 150
peer reviewed publications in journals and anthologies. His main research interests
are in the areas of end-of-life issues, public health, and medical professionalism.
Joshua Shepherd is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Carleton University, Research
Professor at the Universitat de Barcelona (where he directs the ERC funded project
Notes on Contributors xvii
Rethinking Conscious Agency), and Senior Fellow of the LOGOS Research Group.
He is the author of the book Consciousness and Moral Status.
Carl Shulman is a Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford
Martin School, Oxford University, where his work focuses on the long-run impacts of
artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the
Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He attended New York University School of
Law and holds a degree in philosophy from Harvard University.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at
Duke University in the Philosophy Department, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the
Duke Institute for Brain Science, and the Law School. He publishes widely in ethics,
moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of
religion, and argument analysis.
Hazem Zohny is Research Fellow in Bioethics and Bioprediction at the Uehiro Centre
for Practical Ethics at Oxford University. He has a PhD in Bioethics from the
University of Otago and has published a number of academic papers related to
enhancement, disability, well-being. His current work focuses on the bioprediction of
behaviour and the ethics of using neurointerventions for crime prevention.
1
Rethinking our Assumptions about
Moral Status
Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
1. The Idea of Moral Status
When a being or entity has moral status its interests matter morally, for its
own sake (Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2018). If a being or entity has moral
status, then an act that is morally bad, in at least one respect, is committed
when an agent harms that being or entity. Any all-things-considered moral
justification for such an act must take into account the harm committed by
the agent against that being or entity. Ordinary adult humans are usually sup-
posed to have a specific and equal level of moral status—often referred to as
‘full moral status’ (FMS). Non-human animals are usually accorded some
moral status, but this is typically understood to be a lesser level or degree of
moral status than FMS.1
Statuses are often organized in hierarchies. In the peerage of Great Britain,
for example, an Earl has higher status than a Viscount, a Viscount ranks
higher than a Baron, and a Baron is the lowest-status British peer, ranking
only above commoners. Standard attributions of moral status form a partial
hierarchy. It is usually agreed that humans have a higher level of moral status
than non-human animals. However, there is no widely accepted ordering of
non-human animal moral status.2 Opinions vary about the relative levels of
moral status of different non-human animals, and about which species of ani-
mals have moral status. Most of us ascribe some moral status to non-human
primates. Many of us ascribe some moral status to other mammals. Some of
us ascribe some moral status to birds, reptiles, and fish and a few of us ascribe
some moral status to arachnids, insects, and crustaceans.3 Further disagree-
ment about the presence of moral status, or about the extent to which it is
possessed, becomes apparent when we consider humans other than ordinary
Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu, Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status In: Rethinking Moral Status. Edited by:
Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and Julian Savulescu, Oxford University Press. © Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894076.003.0001
2 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu
adult humans. Do human foetuses and embryos have FMS, some lesser moral
status, or no moral status? What about infants? What about severely cogni-
tively impaired or unconscious adults?
Technological developments are throwing up new and controversial cases,
which will require our consideration. What are we to say about human non-
human chimeras,4 human brain organoids,5 or artificial intelligence?6 What
should we say about the moral status of a cyborg,7 a post-human,8 or a human
mind that has been uploaded into a computer, or onto the internet?9 To pro-
vide sensible answers to these questions we need to be able to think clearly
about what it is to have moral status, and about when and why we should
attribute moral status to beings and entities.
One way to help clarify our thinking is to try to define moral status.
However, when we attempt this, it can start to look like talk of moral status
doesn’t add anything to other, more familiar forms of moral discourse.
DeGrazia offers the following characterization of moral status:
To say that X has moral status is to say that (1) moral agents have obligations
regarding X, (2) X has interests, and (3) the obligations are based (at least
partly) on X’s interests. (DeGrazia 2008, p. 183)
We are already familiar with the language of interests and obligations, so why
not restrict ourselves to this terminology and forgo talk of moral status? An
answer to this question, defended by DeGrazia, is that reference to moral sta-
tus is a convenient form of shorthand, which is especially useful to us when
we want to generalize about moral obligations and interests (2008, p. 184).
Another answer is that moral status talk is well suited to play a specific
explanatory role that talk of moral interests and obligations is not well suited
to play. This is to relate the moral properties of beings to whom we have moral
obligations to the non-moral properties and capacities of those beings.10
If we are pushed to rethink our assumptions about moral status to accom-
modate artificial intelligence, cyborgs, human brain organoids, human non-
human chimeras, post- humans, and uploaded minds, then we should
consider the possibility that some of these beings and entities have a level of
moral status below FMS. We should also be open to the possibility that some
of these beings and entities might have a higher moral status than do ordinary
adult humans. The phrase ‘full moral status’ (FMS) suggests a threshold level
above which moral status cannot rise. However, as we will go on to discuss, it
seems possible that a being or entity could have a higher moral status than the
moral status of ordinary adult humans.
Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 3
In this chapter we consider some of the key philosophical issues that arise
when attempts are made to rethink our usual assumptions about moral status
to handle such new and controversial cases. In section 2 we critically examine
the widespread assumption that all ordinary adult humans have equal moral
status. In section 3 we subject to scrutiny the assumption that membership of
the species Homo sapiens somehow confers FMS. In section 4 we consider
some revisionary approaches to thinking about moral status that involve
rejecting the presupposition that there is a sharp distinction between the FMS
of ordinary adult humans and the partial moral status of non-human animals.
In section 5 we consider proposals to reject an almost universally accepted
assumption—that no beings or entities could have higher moral status than
the FMS usually attributed to ordinary adult humans. We also consider some
consequences that could follow from creating beings with higher moral status
than that of ordinary adult humans. In section 6 we turn our attention to a
practical concern: how to behave toward beings and entities when we find
ourselves uncertain about their moral status.
2. Human Moral Status
The assumption that all adult humans who are not severely cognitively
impaired have equal moral status is hardly ever challenged these days, at least
in Western liberal societies.11 It is a background assumption made by the
many of us who share liberal, democratic ideals. However, it would have been
rejected by most ordinary members of the various slave-owning societies that
flourished before the rise of modern liberal democracy.12 In slave-owning
societies, the enslaved were regarded as having fewer legal rights than the
free. The systematic difference between the expansive legal rights of the free
and the limited rights of the enslaved was provided with apparent justification
by the pervasive assumption made in many slave-owning societies that the
enslaved were of a lesser moral status than the free.13
Defenders of institutional slavery usually sought to justify the attribution
of different levels of moral status to different groups of people by appealing to
perceived natural differences between different types of humans. These differ-
ences were then invoked to try to justify the enslavement of humans of one
type by humans of another type. The best-known attempted philosophical
defence of slavery is from Aristotle, who argued that some humans lacked the
capacities for significant deliberation and foresight, and so were ‘natural
slaves’, in need of direction by natural masters who possessed the capacities
that natural slaves lacked.14 Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery was based on
an assumption of systematic underlying differences between different types of
humans. However, unlike more recent, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
defenders of slavery, Aristotle did not assume that these differences correlated
with racial differences. This should not be surprising. In Ancient Greece,
slaves were captured and traded from many different countries and had a
diverse range of ethnic origins. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
slavery in the West was, for the most part, restricted to specific ethnicities,
with blacks especially liable to be enslaved by whites. Eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century apologists for slavery often appealed to quasi-scientific
theories about racial differences, which lacked supporting evidence, in their
attempts to justify race-based slavery.15
The fact that institutional slavery was still practised in the US (and else-
where), as recently as 160 years ago is very disturbing to defenders of the view
that all adult humans who are not severely cognitively impaired have equal
moral status, including the authors of this chapter. It seems clear to us that
societies that fail to treat all ordinary adult humans as having equal moral
status ought to do so, because in fact all ordinary adult humans have equal
moral status. If all ordinary adult humans have equal moral status, as we are
convinced that they do, then this is presumably because of some or other
properties and capacities that they share, which may or may not be shared by
human infants, human foetuses and embryos, and severely cognitively
impaired humans. What properties or capacities might these be?
Almost all attempts to locate grounds for the moral status of ordinary adult
humans identify specific cognitive capacities as the basis for that moral status.
However, there is a lack of agreement in the literature regarding the cognitive
capacities necessary for FMS. Quinn suggests that the ability to will is neces-
sary for FMS (1984, p. 51), while Singer stresses the importance of future-
oriented planning (1993, pp. 116–17), McMahan suggests that self-awareness
is necessary for FMS (2002, p. 45). Baker (2000) argues that self-consciousness
is necessary,16 Metz (2012) suggests that the capacity to participate in com-
munal relationships is necessary,17 and Jaworska (2007) stresses the import
ance for FMS of having a capacity to care.
A different approach to grounding attributions of FMS is to argue that the
potential to go on to develop sophisticated cognitive capacities warrants the
attribution of FMS. Infants and severely cognitively impaired adults do not
possess sophisticated cognitive capacities, but many possess the potential to
develop—or recover—sophisticated cognitive capacities. Appeals to potential,
as a basis for the attribution of FMS, are popular among opponents of abor-
tion and unpopular among proponents of abortion. Just as infants have the
potential to acquire sophisticated cognitive capacities, so do human foetuses
and embryos. If we are to grant FMS to human foetuses and embryos, then it
looks like we should ban most instances of abortion, as abortion will involve
killing beings who are acknowledged to have FMS.18
A major concern with appeals to potential as a basis for attributions of FMS
is that it is far from obvious what constraints there are on such appeals. An
unfertilized human ovum together with a human sperm have the potential to
become a human adult. However, anti-abortion activists do not usually want
to argue that unfertilized ovum-sperm pairs have FMS, in virtue of having the
potential to become adult humans. In response to objections along these
lines, opponents of abortion, such as Watt (1996) and Camosy (2008), draw
conceptual distinctions between the type of potential the unfertilized ovum-
sperm pair has and the potential that a fertilized ovum has to become a
human adult. It is not clear that such attempts to distinguish between differ-
ent types of potential are successful. Nor is it entirely apparent how any spe-
cific type of potential could confer moral status.19
A common way of supplementing accounts of the grounds necessary for
FMS is to assert that personhood is necessary and sufficient for FMS.20
Persons are said to have FMS, while non-persons are said to have either less-
than-full or no moral status.21 There is significant disagreement in the litera-
ture about which beings and entities are persons. Human foetuses are not
usually regarded as persons, at least by secular philosophers, but they are
considered to be legal persons in some jurisdictions.22 Human infants are
usually regarded as persons, but some scholars, such as Tooley (1972), argue
otherwise. Cognitively impaired human adults are usually regarded as per-
sons; however, it has been argued that once humans have become severely
cognitively impaired and have fallen into a persistent non-responsive state
they may no longer be persons (Callahan 1993). Non-human apes may be
persons, or at least ‘border-line persons’ (DeGrazia 2007, p. 323). Now-extinct
Neanderthals may have been persons (Buchanan 2009, p. 372), and some
intelligent machines that we might create in the future could be persons
(Bostrom and Yudkowsky 2014). It is not easy to see how the stipulation that
personhood is a criterion for FMS could assist us in identifying who and what
has FMS. If we treat personhood as a criterion for FMS then we transform the
problem of identifying who and what has FMS into the equally challenging
problem of figuring out who and what is a person.
3. Species Membership and the Boundary between

Full and Partial Moral Status
As well as identifying grounds for attributing FMS to ordinary adult humans

we need to consider where the conceptual boundary lies between beings that
possess FMS, including ordinary adult humans, and beings that are ordinarily
held to possess only partial moral status, such as non-human animals. Many
will want to say that this conceptual boundary maps on to the boundary
between membership of the species Homo sapiens and membership of other
species. However, most philosophers are wary of stipulating that membership
of a particular species is necessary for FMS, as making this assertion would
appear to leave them open to the charge of unfairly favouring one species over
others—the charge of speciesism, which is often depicted as akin to sexism
and racism. (Singer 2009; Liao 2010).23
A philosopher who defends a prejudice in favour of our fellow Homo sapi-
ens and who argues that it is not akin to racism and sexism is Bernard
Williams (2006). According to Williams, racism and sexism are unjustified
prejudices because defenders of racism and sexism are unable to answer the
question ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ (2006, p. 139). In contrast to the
answers ‘he’s white’ or ‘she’s a woman’, Williams thinks the answer ‘it’s a
human being’ provides a reason for us to favour humans, rather than a ration-
alization for prejudice. While ‘it’s a human being’ may seem compelling to us
human beings the most plausible explanation for it seeming this way is that
we are members of the club of human beings. ‘He’s white’ may seem similarly
compelling to white supremacists. It is hard to see that Williams has identified
a morally relevant consideration that operates as a reason for us to favour
humans over non-humans, as opposed to a rationalization for pro-human
prejudice (Savulescu 2009, p. 219).
Most philosophers who appeal to species membership as a basis for FMS
are likely to assert that membership of the species Homo sapiens is sufficient
for FMS, in virtue of underlying capacities that ordinary adult humans
possess—such as sophisticated cognitive capacities. In making this assertion
they allow for the possibility that membership of any species whose ordinary
adult members possess the required capacities would also be a sufficient basis
for FMS. The argumentative move of underwriting the case for species
membership as a basis for FMS by appealing to the underlying capacities that
ordinary adult members of that species possess avoids the charge of speciesism.
However, it raises other problems. If the moral status of the members of a
species turns out to be grounded in capacities that ordinary adult members of

that species happen to possess, then it is unclear why we should accept that
members of that species who lack the capacities in question should be
accorded FMS. Why think that infants and severely cognitively impaired
adults who lack sophisticated cognitive capacities should be considered to
possess FMS simply because they happen to be members of a species in which
other members possess sophisticated cognitive capacities? It seems arbitrary
to attribute FMS to human infants and severely cognitively impaired human
adults when we have reason to believe that members of other species, to
whom we are not attributing FMS, possess cognitive capacities that are as
sophisticated as those possessed by infants or severely cognitively impaired
adults.24 We could respond to this problem by relaxing our criteria for the
attribution of FMS and allowing that some non-human animals that are as
cognitively developed as human infants and severely cognitively impaired
humans also have FMS. However, if we were to do this then we would be
morally required to treat those non-human animals in far better ways than we
do now (Singer 2009). Many will baulk at this consequence.
Another problem for species-membership accounts of FMS is raised by
consideration of exceptional members of species whose ordinary members
lack the underlying capacities to warrant attributions of FMS. A widely dis-
cussed example is McMahan’s ‘superchimp’. The superchimp is a chimpanzee
that acquires cognitive capacities exceeding those expected of a chimpanzee.
After being administered a form of gene therapy as a newborn chimpanzee it
develops cognitive capacities as sophisticated as those of a 10- year-
old
human, when it is an adult (McMahan 2002, p. 147). Intuitively, it seems we
ought to attribute the same moral status that we attribute to 10-year-old
humans to the superchimp—FMS (McMahan 2002, p. 216). However, we will
be unable to justify doing so if we insist on membership of a cognitively
sophisticated species as a necessary condition for possession of FMS.
Yet more problems for appeals to species membership, as a necessary con-
dition for FMS, are raised by consideration of the concept species. It is notori-
ously difficult to give a philosophically satisfactory account of the concept
species.25 This difficulty should not be surprising given that acceptance of
Darwin’s theory of evolution commits us to the view that species evolve from
other species, via a process of mutation and natural selection. The boundaries
between species are porous and at times beings will exist that are not mem-
bers of any particular species.26 If there are beings that are not members of
particular species then we cannot determine their moral status by appeal to
species membership. The same can be said of hybrid animals, such as mules
and ligers, as well as chimeras created by blending genetic material from more
than one species, such as sheep–goat chimeras. Artificial intelligence also
raises problems for species-membership accounts of moral status. In the
future, we may be able to create beings and entities with very sophisticated
cognitive capacities and intuitively it seems that there is a compelling case for
attributing FMS to at least some of them. But they will not be members of
species. Acceptance of species membership as a necessary condition for attri-
butions of moral status would preclude us from attributing moral status to
these beings and entities.
4. Revisionary Approaches to Moral Status
If we want a theory of moral status to account for ordinary (contemporary)

intuitions about moral status then that theory will need to be consistent with
the conclusion that ordinary adult humans, small infants, and most, if not all,
cognitively impaired human adults, have FMS. It will also need to be consist-
ent with the conclusion that at least some non-human animals, including
most if not all mammals, have partial moral status. Additionally, such a the-
ory should be ‘species neutral’ rather than anthropocentric.27 Even though
most of us do not believe that we have met non-humans with FMS, there are
few who would deny that it is possible that cognitively sophisticated non-
humans might exist, or that it would be appropriate to attribute FMS to them.
It is not clear that any current unified theory of moral status manages to
achieve all of this.28 Given the difficulty of providing a coherent theory that
accounts for ordinary intuitions about moral status, it is not surprising that
some philosophers have advocated rejecting at least some of these ordinary
intuitions, and developing revisionary theories of moral status.
One influential group of revisionaries are those animal rights activists who
deny that non- human animals have lesser moral status than humans.
According to Tom Regan (2004), all ‘subjects-of-a-life’ have the same moral
status. For Regan, subjects-of-a-life are those beings that have a particular set
of properties and capacities. This set includes ‘ . . . beliefs and desires; percep-
tions, memory and a sense of the future . . . ’ (2004, p. 243). On his view, many
non-human animals and humans are subjects-of-a-life.29 The utilitarian Peter
Singer also argues that we should reject the ordinarily assumed division
between the moral status of humans and the moral status of non-human ani-
mals. According to him, we should adopt a principle of ‘equal consideration
of interests’, and apply it to both humans and non-human animals. The most
important interests that beings have, according to Singer, are interests in
enjoyment and the avoidance of suffering. Some non-human animals will
have a greater capacity for enjoyment and a greater capacity for suffering
than do some cognitively impaired humans. So, application of the principle
of equal consideration of interests will lead us to prioritize the interests of
these animals over the interests of severely cognitively impaired humans
(Singer 2009, pp. 574–6).
Another revisionary view is due to Jeff McMahan. McMahan (2002) raises
the possibility of ‘intermediate moral status’. This a level of moral status some-
where between that of most non-human animals and FMS. McMahan (2002)
suggests that we should attribute intermediate moral status to human infants
and cognitively advanced non-human animals, such as ‘higher primates’
(2002, p. 265). While McMahan (2002) allowed for three distinct levels of
moral status, McMahan (2008, pp. 97–100) contemplates two levels of moral
status with a rising series of degrees of moral status between the two levels.
These rises take place in response to increases in ‘psychological capacity’ up
to a threshold of FMS (McMahan 2008, p. 99). On McMahan’s later view,
intermediate moral status still exists, but some beings with intermediate
moral status have higher moral status than others.30 Another possibility is
that moral status comes in degrees and rises consistently, before levelling off
at the threshold where personhood is attained (DeGrazia 2008).31 There are
also many other possible combinations of levels, or thresholds, of moral status
and continuous rises by degrees that we could invoke to depict the relation-
ship between increases in possession of the relevant properties and capacities
we take to underpin moral status and increases in moral status.32
5. More-than-full Moral Status?
The phrase ‘Full Moral Status’ suggests that there is a maximum level of moral
status that might be obtained. However, it seems possible that there could be
beings with higher moral status than the full moral status normally attributed
to ordinary adult humans. It may be difficult for us to conceive of such beings,
but it does not follow from the limitations of our imaginative capacities that
they cannot exist.33 If we think that humans have a higher level of moral sta-
tus than non-human animals, in virtue of possessing cognitive capacities that
are superior to those of non-human animals, then it looks like we should be
open to the possibility that beings with superior cognitive capacities to ours
would have a higher level of moral status than us. Transhumanists, such as
Bostrom (2005), urge us to try to create ‘post-humans’ with superior cogni-
tive capacities to our own. If we manage to do so then we may also end up
creating beings with higher moral status than we possess (Agar 2013a;
Douglas 2013).
Suppose we could create beings with superior moral status to ours. Should
we do so? There are reasons that speak in favour of creating such beings. If
these beings have higher moral status than us, in virtue of having more devel-
oped cognitive capacities than we have, then, all things being equal, they will
be more capable of accurate and consistent moral reasoning than we are. If
they are more capable of accurate and consistent moral reasoning than us
then, all else being equal, they will be more likely to perform good acts and
less likely to perform bad acts than we are. From an impartial point of view, it
therefore seems that we should prefer the creation of post-humans with
superior moral status to the creation of mere humans. It is plausible to think
that the creation of post-humans will also be good for humans. All things
being equal, post-humans with more highly developed moral capacities than
humans possess will be more likely than humans to treat other beings, includ-
ing humans, in morally appropriate ways.
However, there are reasons to be concerned about the consequences for us
of creating post-humans with higher moral status than we possess. From the
point of view of post-humans with higher moral status than us, we humans
would be beings of lower moral status and morality could permit post-
humans to treat us in ways we would prefer not to be treated. To understand
this concern, it helps to start by thinking about the ways in which we regard it
as morally permissible to treat the non-human animals that we consider to
have lower moral status than us. Many of us regard it as morally permissible
to kill and eat non-human animals, sacrificing their lives for our nutrition
and our gustatory pleasure. Many also regard it as morally permissible to con-
duct harmful experiments on non-human animals if doing so leads to med
ical or cosmetic benefits to humans. Also, we generally regard it as morally
permissible, if not obligatory, to sacrifice non-human animals when human
lives are at stake.
Consider a ‘trolley case’ in which a runaway trolley is going to run over a
human unless we flick a switch, diverting the trolley down a side-track and
thereby killing five sheep that are stuck on the side-track. Most of us would
regard it as morally permissible, if not obligatory, to flick the switch and sacri-
fice the lives of several sheep to save one human life. If we are right about it
being morally acceptable for us to treat beings with lower moral status than
ourselves, in the various ways that have been listed, then we should worry
about the ways in which beings with higher levels of moral status might
regard themselves as being entitled to treat us. By parity of reasoning, we can
infer that they may well regard themselves as being entitled to kill and eat us,
to conduct harmful experiments on humans, and to sacrifice the lives of many
of us in order to save just one of them.34
Agar (2013a) argues that we are not under a moral obligation to create
‘post-persons’—his preferred term for post-humans with higher moral status
than ourselves. He further argues that when we think about the potential
harms to us that may result from the creation of such beings, it becomes clear
that we have good reason not to do so. Persson (2013) offers a contrary view.
He argues that Agar is biased in favour of mere humans and against post-
persons. On Persson’s (2013) view, while we are not under a moral obligation
to create post-persons, it would be good, all things being equal, for us to cre-
ate post-persons. As post-persons will only be treating humans as morality
requires them to treat humans when they sacrifice human lives for the sake of
their own lives, there can be no moral objection to them sacrificing humans
for the sake of their own lives. Agar (2013b) disputes that he is merely biased
in favour of humans and against post-persons. His ‘Rawlsian’ conception of
justice leads him to put the interests of the worse off ahead of those of the
better off, and in a world in which mere humans and post-persons both exist
humans can reasonably be expected to be worse off and post-humans the better
off. To avoid this state of affairs it is better for humans not to create post-humans
in the first place, or so Agar (2013b) argues.
6. Moral Uncertainty and Moral Confusion
Suppose we managed to create post-humans with significantly superior cog-

nitive capacities to our own. If we are unsure about the nature of the relation-
ship between cognitive capacity and moral status, as many of us are, we may
find ourselves uncertain about whether or not these post-humans have super
ior moral status to us. How should we treat such beings when we are uncer-
tain about their moral status? One approach would be to treat them as our
moral equals until such time as we are presented with compelling evidence
that they really do have higher moral status to us. But there is a strong case for
treating them differently from us, at least in some circumstances. To see why
consider a rescue situation in which a human and a cognitively superior post-
human will both die if we do nothing and we have the opportunity to rescue
one of them but not both. If we knew that the post-human was of higher
moral status than the human then, all else being equal, we would be morally
obliged to save the post-human and allow the human to die.35 However, all we
know is that the post-human might have higher moral status than the human
or might have the same moral status as the human.
We know that, all things being equal, it is wrong to rescue a being with
lesser moral status if doing so involves allowing a being with higher moral
status to die. So, we know that we might be acting wrongfully by rescuing the
human rather than the post-human. However, all else being equal, there is no
chance that we will act wrongfully if we rescue the post-human and allow the
human to die. Even if they both have the same moral status, it is not wrong to
rescue the post-human and allow the human to die. We might be acting
wrongfully if we rescue the human, but all else being equal, we cannot be act-
ing wrongfully if we rescue the post-human. Therefore, it seems clear that we
ought to rescue the post-human and allow the human to die, even though we
are uncertain as to whether the post-human has superior moral status to
the human.
Issues of uncertainty about moral status don’t only arise when we think
about post-humans. They also arise when we think about human non-human
chimeras. Most of us regard it as clear that ordinary adult humans have higher
moral status than non-human animals. However, beings that are part human
and part non-human animal pose a threat to our intuitive sense of moral
clarity. Admittedly, current examples of human non-human chimeras do not
seem to present much of a challenge to our intuitive sense of moral clarity. An
ordinary adult human who has a pig valve transplant in her heart is technic
ally a chimera, but she would be regarded by the vast majority of us as having
the moral status of any other ordinary adult human. Similarly, most would
consider Oncomice (mice that are genetically engineered to contain a human
cancer-causing gene) as having the moral status of ordinary mice (Bok 2003).
In the future, however, we may be able to create chimeras that involve a more
extensive blending of human and non-human animal components and we
may find ourselves unable to determine the moral status of these more exten-
sively blended beings.
If we are uncertain about the moral status of a particular type of being and
are unable to figure out how to go about alleviating our uncertainty then we
are in a state of moral confusion. Robert and Baylis argue that the future cre
ation of human non-human chimeras threatens to place us in a state of moral
confusion and that this is an important reason for us to avoid creating such
beings (2003, p. 9). Whether or not one is put off creating human non-human
chimeras by the threat of moral confusion depends, to a significant extent, on

one’s ability to tolerate moral confusion. It seems that many of us already
manage to tolerate a great deal of moral confusion. Many of us feel confused
about the moral status of human foetuses and embryos, adult humans in per-
sistent non-responsive states and non-human primates. It could be argued
that we have a demonstrated capacity to tolerate significant moral confusion,
and the mere presence of another potential source of moral confusion should
not be of any special concern to us. A contrary view is that the moral confu-
sion that would follow from the blurring of the boundaries between humans
and non-human animals would be more severe and more threatening than
forms of moral confusion that we currently have to deal with. Breaking down
the distinction between the less-than-full moral status of non-human animals
and human FMS could pose an existential threat to our current social order
(Robert and Baylis 2003, p. 10).
The creation of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, human brain organoids,
human non-human chimeras, post-humans and uploaded minds all have the
potential to cause new forms of moral confusion. It is possible that all human
societies will collectively agree to avoid creating any of these sorts of beings,
and thereby avoid adding to our moral confusion, but this seems unlikely. It
also seems unlikely that all of us would stick to such an agreement, were we to
make it. So, it looks like we will need to get better at either learning to toler-
ate, or learning to resolve, moral uncertainty and moral confusion.36
Notes
1. A few scholars appear to proceed on the assumption that there is no level of moral sta-
tus other than FMS. For discussion of such views, see Hursthouse (2013, pp. 3425–7).
2. For a recent proposal to develop a hierarchy of non-human animal moral status, see
Kagan (2018).
3. A small number of us are inclined to attribute moral status to plants and perhaps eco-
systems. See, for example, Goodpaster (1978).
4. A human non-human chimera is a being created by combining cells that have human
origins with cells that have non-human origins. For discussion of the moral status of
human non-human chimeras, see Robert and Baylis (2003), Streiffer (2005), DeGrazia
(2007) and Hübner (2018).
5. Human brain organoids are artificially grown miniature organs resembling human
brains. They are created by culturing human pluripotent stem cells, and are used as rel-
atively simple in vitro models to assist in neurological experimentation. For discussion
of the moral status of human brain organoids, see Cheshire (2014) and Lavazza and
Massimini (2018).
6. For discussion of the moral status of artificial intelligence, see Basl (2014) and
Søraker (2014).
7. For discussion of the moral status of cyborgs, see Gillett (2006) and Jotterand (2010).
8. Post-humans are humans who have radically enhanced capacities: for example, an IQ
above 200 or the power of telepathy or telekinesis. For discussion of the moral status
of post-humans, see Buchanan (2009), Agar (2013a; 2013b), and Douglas (2013).
9. For discussion of the moral status of uploaded minds, see Sandberg (2014).
10. Some authors worry that the apparent convenience and utility of talk of moral status
comes at a price and suggest that we should not pay that price. Sachs (2011) argues
that talk of moral status can be obfuscating. Horta argues that moral status talk can
distort our understanding of how we should behave toward some individuals in par-
ticular circumstances (2017, p. 909).
11. However, it is subject to the occasional sceptical challenge. For discussion of how
defenders of the assumption might try to respond to sceptical challenges, see

McMahan (2008).
12. There was a long delay between the initial rise of modern liberal democracy and the
end of institutional slavery. The US Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776,
and is surely one of the foundational documents of modern liberal society. It made the
unqualified assertion that it is self-evident that all men are created equal. However, it
would take 89 years and a hugely destructive civil war before institutional slavery was
abolished in all parts of the US.
13. For discussion of the challenge that slave-owning societies present, for those who
assume that humans have equal moral status, see Lindsay (2005).
14. Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery is much more complicated than this brief charac-
terization suggests. For further discussion, see Smith (1983).
15. An influential approach was to appeal to the now discredited theory of polygenesis,
which holds that different human races evolved separately, in different parts of the
world. The purportedly separate origins of different races was then appealed to, in an
attempt to explain why some races were better suited to freedom and others better
suited to slavery. For discussion of polygenetic defences of slavery amongst
eighteenth-century philosophers, see Watkins (2017). For a mid-nineteenth-century
polygenetic defence of slavery, see Nott and Gliddon (1854).
16. Shepherd (2017: 2018) has recently argued for the moral insignificance of
self-consciousness.
17. Metz’s (2012) appeal to the capacity to participate in communal relationships as
necessary for FMS is one component of a relational account of moral status he defends.
18. Not all arguments for abortion rely on appeals to the moral status of foetuses and
embryos. A famous argument for abortion that does not is due to Thomson (1971).
19. For arguments against the relevance of appeals to potential for moral status, see
McMahan (2002, pp. 308–29), Persson (2003), and Singer and Dawson (1988).
20. There are different senses of personhood discussed in the philosophical literature,
including metaphysical and legal personhood. The sense that is most relevant to dis-
cussions of moral status is ‘moral personhood’.
21. See, for example, Singer (1993), Baker (2000), Warren (1997, Chapter Four) and
McMahan (2002).
22. For further discussion, see Schroedel (2000).
23. Those who take membership of our species as necessary for FMS are more likely to
employ theological rather than philosophical arguments to support their case. One
influential Christian theological argument for the conclusion that humanity is neces-
sary for FMS appeals to the biblical doctrine that humans are the only beings made in
the image of God. See Genesis 1:27.
24. For extended discussion of this line of reasoning, see Singer (2009, pp. 568–70).
25. For discussion of various ways to define species, see Ereshefsky (2017). See also
Robert and Baylis (2003, pp. 2–4).
26. The phenomenon of ring species makes further trouble for appeals to species member-
ship as a necessary condition for FMS. For discussion, see Persson and Savulescu (2010).
27. For discussion of the ‘species neutrality requirement’, see Liao (2010, pp. 159–63).
28. Metz reasons similarly (2012, pp. 399–400).
29. Regan doesn’t say exactly where the line is to be drawn between beings that are and
are not subjects-of-a-life. He does, however, mention that ‘mentally normal mammals
of a year or more’ are above that line (2004, p. xvi).
30. For discussion of the development of McMahan’s views between 2002 and 2008, see
Ebert (2018, pp. 84–8).
31. DeGrazia describes this position approvingly but does not explicitly endorse it. He
speculates that moral status may vary according to the extent of a being’s interests and
these may depend on ‘cognitive, affective and social complexity’ (2008, p. 192).
32. Douglas depicts six different possible relationships between moral status and the
underlying property of mental capacity (2003, p. 478).
33. Buchanan allows that it is possible for beings with higher moral status than humans
possess to exist. He thinks, however, that our inability to conceive of such beings
means that any argument that might be mounted to try to persuade us that particular
beings actually have higher moral status than humans would fail to be convincing to
us (2009, p. 363).
34. If they were to reason this way then they would be treating moral status as having
relative value. An alternative possibility is that they might regard human moral status
as an absolute value and then reason that their relatively superior moral status should
not be relevant to the moral permissibility of treating humans in particular ways.
35. Note, though, that if reasons can be agent-centred or if some forms of partiality are
justified, then it may be morally permissible to give priority to members of one’s own
group, even if they have lower moral status (Savulescu 1998).
36. Thanks to Alan Crosier, Katrien Devolder, Tom Douglas, John-Stewart Gordon and
Suzanne Uniacke for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
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PART I
T HE IDE A OF MOR A L STAT U S
2
Suffering and Moral Status
Jeff McMahan
1. Introduction
In debates about certain moral issues, it is commonly assumed that an indi

vidual’s moral status makes a difference to how seriously objectionable, if at
all, it is to kill that individual. It has, for example, been a common argument
for the permissibility of abortion that the moral status of a foetus is lower
than that of a child or adult and that the reasons not to kill a foetus are there
fore weaker than those that oppose the killing of a person and that they can
thus be outweighed by a greater range of considerations that favour killing.
Similarly, most people believe that most or all animals have a lower moral
status than that of human persons and therefore that killing animals, even if
generally wrong, is less seriously wrong, other things being equal, than killing
persons. Yet even defenders of abortion accept that it must be constrained in
ways that prevent it from causing the foetus unnecessary pain. And there is an
increasing tendency among people who continue to eat animal products to
prefer those that have been produced without the extremes of suffering
inflicted on animals by factory farming. The practice of experimentation on
animals is similarly constrained. Although experimenters are permitted to
kill experimental animals when the experiments are concluded, the experi
ments are regulated to prevent the infliction of unnecessary or disproportion
ate suffering.
These facts suggest that most people believe, though perhaps without
articulating it in these terms, that the moral status of some individuals, such
as foetuses and animals, is lower than that of adult human persons and that
the reasons not to kill these individuals are weaker than the reasons not to kill
persons. Yet these same facts reveal a general ambivalence about the idea that
the reason not to cause an individual with lower moral status to suffer is also
weaker. In this chapter, I address the question whether differences in moral
status affect the strength of the reason not to cause, or to prevent, suffering. In
section 2, I present an example that provides intuitive support for the claim
Jeff McMahan, Suffering and Moral Status In: Rethinking Moral Status. Edited by: Steve Clarke, Hazem Zohny, and
Julian Savulescu, Oxford University Press. © Jeff McMahan 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894076.003.0002
24 Jeff M c Mahan
that reasons concerned with causing or preventing suffering vary in strength

with the moral status of the victim.
2. Unconnected Individuals
Suppose there are individuals with capacities for consciousness and

sentience—that is, individuals that can experience sensations of pleasure and
pain—that nevertheless lack memory as well as any conative states or pro
spective attitudes such as desire, intention, hope, fear, and so on. Such beings,
if they exist, exemplify the most extreme form of what is commonly referred
to as ‘living entirely in the present moment’. They have no psychological con
nections to themselves in the past or future. These are ‘unconnected individ
uals’ (McMahan 2002, pp. 75–7 and 475–6).
There are two main types of unconnected individual. There are, first, those
whose lack of psychological connections to themselves in the past and future
is temporary, as they will later develop such connections. Foetuses that have
just begun to be conscious, and have only the most rudimentary form of con
sciousness, are arguably unconnected individuals—but only for a certain
period, assuming that they will continue to live and develop psychologically.
But there are presumably unconnected individuals whose psychological isola
tion in the moment is permanent, such as certain comparatively simple forms
of animal life. It does not matter, however, for our purposes, whether there
actually are any permanently unconnected individuals. It is sufficient that
there could be. I will nevertheless write as if there are some unconnected indi
viduals. And I will be concerned only with permanently unconnected indi
viduals, so that, in the remainder of this chapter, all references to ‘unconnected
individuals’ are to permanently unconnected individuals. I believe that much
of what I will say about permanently unconnected individuals applies as well
to temporarily unconnected individuals. But that is contentious and I will not
try to defend it here. (I will also not consider the possibility that there are
permanently unconnected individuals that were once psychologically con
nected over time.)
Unconnected individuals are, I believe, ‘replaceable’ (Singer 2011, pp. 105–7).
Suppose that an existing unconnected individual that is having pleasant
experiences could continue to exist and have those experiences. Or this
individual could cease to exist and at the same time a different but qualita
tively identical unconnected individual could begin to exist and have exactly
the same experiences. The claim that the first unconnected individual is
Suffering and Moral Status 25
replaceable is just the claim that it makes no difference, or does not matter,
which of these two possibilities occurs.
An individual that is replaceable in this sense does not itself matter. It mat
ters, if at all, only insofar as it provides the physical basis for states of con
sciousness that may be intrinsically good or bad. Assuming that an
unconnected individual’s pleasurable and painful states of consciousness are
entirely constitutive of its well-being from moment to moment, it seems that
its well-being matters even though the individual does not in itself matter.
Some philosophers have argued, however, that an individual’s well-being mat
ters only because, and perhaps only to the extent that, the individual itself
matters. According to this view, if I am right that an unconnected individual
does not matter, it follows that its states of consciousness do not matter. It
does not matter, for example, whether its states of consciousness are pleasur
able or painful.
This cannot be right. Whether an unconnected individual’s experience is of
physical pleasure or physical pain—pain that is experienced as aversive—does
matter. If its experience is pleasurable, that is good in itself and arguably good
for the individual; and if its experience is painful, that is bad in itself and
arguably bad for the individual.
Does an individual that does not itself matter but whose states of con
sciousness do matter have moral status? That it does not matter in itself sug
gests that it does not have moral status. But that the character of its states of
consciousness does matter, and matter morally, suggests that it does have
moral status. There is, however, no substantive issue here, only a matter of
finding terms to draw these distinctions. It seems that while an unconnected
individual is experiencing suffering, it is bad for it to be in that state. There is
a moral reason to stop the suffering for the individual’s own sake. In this
respect, an unconnected individual is different from a plant, for there can be
no reason to do anything for the sake of a plant, even if there is a sense in
which plants can, as some philosophers claim, be benefited or harmed (for
example, by the provision or withholding of water or sunlight). Plants lack the
capacity for consciousness and therefore can have neither well-being nor ill-
being. But, like a plant, an unconnected individual does not matter in itself.
I suggest that we appropriate two terms from the philosophical literature
and assign them the following meanings. We can say that because there can
be reasons to act in certain ways for an unconnected individual’s own sake, it
has moral standing, which plants and all other non-conscious entities lack.
But because unconnected individuals are replaceable and thus do not matter
in themselves, but matter only as the experiencers of states of consciousness
26 Jeff M c Mahan
that matter, they do not have moral status. I propose, in other words, to use
the term ‘moral status’ in such a way that all, but only, those individuals who
themselves matter for their own sake have it. Whereas plants lack both moral
standing and moral status, unconnected individuals have moral standing but
lack moral status. (If, as seems likely, unconnected individuals are the only
individuals that have moral standing but lack moral status, the notion of
moral standing as I understand it is of limited significance.)
Part of the explanation of why an unconnected individual is replaceable is
that it is not harmed by ceasing to exist, or benefited by being enabled to con
tinue to live. Because of its lack of any psychological connections to itself in
the future, it has no interest in continuing to live (in the sense of ‘having no
personal stake in’, rather than ‘not being interested in’). More precisely, it has
no ‘time-relative interest’ in continuing to live which is a function not only of
the magnitude of a benefit or harm an individual might receive but also of the
degree to which the individual that has the interest would be psychologically
related to itself at the time at which the benefit or harm would occur.1 An
unconnected individual’s continuing to live is no different from a different
unconnected individual’s coming into existence. Killing an unconnected indi
vidual is thus relevantly like preventing an unconnected individual from
coming into existence.
All this is consistent with the claim that unconnected individuals lack
moral status. But the fact that an unconnected individual would not be
harmed by being painlessly killed does not by itself entail that the individual
lacks moral status and thus would not be wronged by being killed. Imagine a
person whose subsequent life would unavoidably contain much more that
would be intrinsically bad for her than would be intrinsically good for her.
Such a person might not be harmed, and might indeed be benefited, by being
painlessly killed. But if she understood what her future life would be like and
still wanted to continue to live, and thus refused to consent to be killed, she
would be wronged by being killed. For she has a moral status that grounds
reasons to act in certain ways for her own sake that are nevertheless independ-
ent of what might be in or against her interests. They are reasons of respect for
her, as an individual who matters because of her intrinsic nature.
Reasons of this sort could in principle apply to one’s treatment of an uncon
nected individual. In addition to the reason deriving solely from the intrinsic
badness of suffering, there might be a further reason not to cause an uncon
nected individual to suffer that is grounded in a requirement of respect for its
nature. Or there might be a reason deriving from its nature not to kill an
unconnected individual, despite its having no interest in continuing to live.
Another random document with
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are characteristic for each species. The Nematus larvae that inhabit
galls possess all the characteristics of those that feed externally. As
a rule the skin of the larva is naked and free from hair, but it is often
minutely tuberculate, and in a few species it is armed with
remarkable forked spines. These spines may exist during part of the
larval life, and completely disappear at one of the moults. The
creatures are as a rule very sluggish, and move about much less
than Lepidopterous larvae; many of them, when alarmed, have the
power of exuding a disagreeable liquid, either from the mouth or
from pores in the skin; in the latter case it may be sent as a sort of
spray to some little distance from the body. This operation is said to
be very efficacious as a means of protecting the larvae from the
attacks of parasitic flies that are desirous of laying eggs in their
bodies. One peculiarity as to their colour has attracted the attention
of Réaumur and subsequent naturalists, namely, that in the case of
many species a great change takes place in the colour during the life
of the larva, and more especially at the period of the last moult. The
change to the pupal state usually takes place in a cocoon, and some
species have the peculiar habit of forming a double cocoon, the
outer one being hard and coarse, while the inner is beautifully
delicate. The cocoon is sometimes formed in the earth, and in that
case it may be to a large extent composed of earthy matter. The
Insect frequently remains a long time in its cocoon before emerging
as a perfect Insect; however long this time may be, it is nearly all of it
passed in the larval state; when the Insect does change to a pupa it
speedily thereafter emerges as a perfect Insect. In the pupa the
parts of the imago may be seen enveloped in a very delicate,
transparent skin.
In Brazil Dielocerus ellisii, a sawfly allied to Hylotoma, constructs a

nest in which the cocoons of many specimens are crowded together,
being packed side by side like the cells in the comb of the bee, while
the whole mass is protected by a thick outer wall. It is not known in
what manner this communal work is carried out, but it is interesting
to note that the cocoons assume to a considerable extent the
hexagonal form of the cells in the comb of the bee. Some doubt was
expressed as to the interpretation put on this structure by Curtis, but
his observations have been confirmed by Smith and Peckholt.
Several species of sawflies are known to be very injurious to crops.

One of these—the sawfly of the turnip, Athalia spinarum (centifoliae
Panz.)—sometimes commits excessive depredations on the turnip
crops in this country as well as on the continent of Europe; its life-
history and anatomy were described by Newport in an essay
published by the Entomological Society in 1838. The eggs, it
appears, are laid singly at the edges of the leaves in the month of
May, as many as 200 or 300 being deposited by one female; as the
parent flies are usually gregarious, appearing in large numbers in
fields of turnips, it is not difficult to form an idea of the serious nature
of their depredations. The egg grows very considerably; the
development of the embryo is rapid, occupying, even in unfavourable
weather, only seven or eight days, while in quite congenial
circumstances it is probable that the eggs may hatch about the
fourth day after their deposition. The young grub immediately begins
to feed, and in about five days changes its skin for the first time; it
repeats this operation twice at similar or slightly longer intervals, the
third moult thus occurring when the larva is three or four weeks old; it
is then that the larva begins to be most destructive. Sunshine and
warm weather are very favourable to it, and under their influence it
grows so rapidly that in a few days a field may be almost completely
stripped of its foliage. This larva is of a sooty black colour, and will
live on other Cruciferous plants quite as well as on the turnip. When
full grown it buries itself to a slight depth under the surface of the
earth, and forms an oval cocoon of a firm texture, and with many
particles of earth closely adherent to it. The perfect fly emerges
towards the end of July, and a second brood will be produced in the
same season if circumstances are favourable; in that case the
resulting larvae enter the ground for the formation of their cocoons in
September or October, and pass the winter in their cocoons, but still
in the larval state; changing to pupae in the following spring, and
appearing as perfect Insects in May. From this account it appears
not improbable that the offspring of a single female existing in the
April of one year may amount by the following May—three
generations having been passed through in the interval—to as many
as 27,000,000 larvae. Fortunately the creatures are, as Frauenfeld
observed, destroyed in very large numbers by a parasitic fungus and
by a Nematode (Filaria).
We have, earlier in the chapter, alluded to the fact that the

phenomena of parthenogenesis prevail somewhat extensively
among sawflies. It is the rule in the family that males are very much
less numerous than females, and there are some species of which
no males have been discovered. This would not be of itself certain
evidence of the occurrence of parthenogenesis, but this has been
placed beyond doubt by taking females bred in confinement,
obtaining unfertilised eggs from them, and rearing the larvae
produced from the eggs. This has been done by numerous
observers with curious results. In many cases the parthenogenetic
progeny, or a portion of it, dies without attaining full maturity. This
may or may not be due to constitutional weakness arising from the
parthenogenetic state. Cameron, who has made extensive
observations on this subject, thinks that the parthenogenesis does
involve constitutional weakness, fewer of the parthenogenetic young
reaching maturity. This he suggests may be compensated for—when
the parthenogenetic progeny is all of the female sex—by the fact that
all those that grow up are producers of eggs. In many cases the
parthenogenetic young of Tenthredinidae are of the male sex, and
sometimes the abnormal progeny is of both sexes. In the case of
one species—the common currant sawfly, Nematus ribesii—the
parthenogenetic progeny is nearly, but not quite, always, entirely of
the male sex; this has been ascertained again and again, and it is
impossible in these cases to suggest any advantage to the species
to compensate for constitutional parthenogenetic weakness. On the
whole, it appears most probable that the parthenogenesis, and the
special sex produced by it, whether male or female, are due to
physiological conditions of which we know little, and that the species
continue in spite of the parthenogenesis, rather than profit by it. It is
worthy of remark that one of the species in which parthenogenesis
with production of males occurs—Nematus ribesii—is perhaps the
most abundant of sawflies.
Although many kinds of Insects display the greatest solicitude and
ingenuity in providing proper receptacles for their eggs, and in
storing food for the young that will be produced, there are extremely
few that display any further interest in their descendants; probably,
indeed, the majority of Insects die before the eggs are hatched, one
generation never seeing the individuals of another. It is therefore
interesting to find that a fairly well authenticated case of maternal
attachment, such as we have previously alluded to as occurring in
earwigs, has been recorded in Perga lewisii, an Australian sawfly of
the sub-family Cimbicides. The mother, having deposited about
eighty eggs on the leaf of a Eucalyptus, remains with them until they
hatch, after which she sits over her brood with outstretched legs, and
with admirable perseverance protects them, so far as she is able,
from the attacks of parasites and other enemies; she quite refuses to
be driven away from her charges. Mr. Lewis, to whom we are
indebted for this account,[427] states that the sawfly does not
recognise her own special brood, but will give equal attention to
another brood if she be transferred thereto; and he adds that many
of the batches of larvae were destitute of any maternal guardian.
There are about 2000 species of sawflies known. A large majority of

them are found in the European and North American regions; still, a
good many are known to live in South America, and Perga—one of
the genera of the family containing many species of large size—is
peculiar to the Australian region. Although the family includes so
many species, very few anomalies of structure have been detected
in it; one species, Pompholyx dimorpha Freymuth, is described as
being apterous in the female, and as having the thorax curiously
modified in its form. There are no very small Insects in the family,
and none over the middle size. Nearly 400 species have been
detected in Britain; this number could certainly be increased by
persevering researches. The palaeontological record has hitherto
given only a very meagre evidence about sawflies. Several species
have been preserved in amber, and three or four are known from
Tertiary strata in Europe and North America.
CHAPTER XXIII
HYMENOPTERA PETIOLATA–PARASITIC HYMENOPTERA–CYNIPIDAE OR

GALL-FLIES–PROCTOTRYPIDAE–CHALCIDIDAE–ICHNEUMONIDAE–
BRACONIDAE–STEPHANIDAE–MEGALYRIDAE–EVANIIDAE–PELECINIDAE–
TRIGONALIDAE.
We now pass to the consideration of the Hymenoptera of the sub-

Order Petiolata, or Apocrita, as they are styled by Brauer. We should
make use of the term Petioliventres, for it contrasts naturally by its
termination with Sessiliventres, were it not that the word is so
uncouth that we think it better to adopt the shorter and more
euphonious expression, Petiolata.
The members of this sub-Order, without exception, have the hind

body connected with the thorax by means of a deep constriction, so
that the base of the abdomen (Fig. 336, B, b) is very narrow; the
articulation between the two parts is effected by means of a complex
joint allowing great play, and facilitating the operations of boring and
stinging, processes that are of extreme importance in the economy
of the great majority of the species. The petiole is sometimes
extremely short, but it may be so long that it appears like a stalk, at
whose extremity is borne the remaining part of the abdomen (Fig.
369). When the petiole is very short the abdomen reposes close to
the back of the thorax (Fig. 331, C), and in this case the abdomen is
usually described as sessile; while, when it is evidently stalked, it is
said to be petiolate. These terms are, however, unsuitable, as the
words sessile and petiolate should be reserved for the conditions
characteristic of the two sub-Orders. We shall therefore use the
terms pseudo-sessile and pedicellate for the two conditions of the
Petiolata.
The Hymenoptera Petiolata comprises an enormous majority of the

Order. Although it includes many of the most interesting and
important of Insects, its classification is but little advanced, for a
great many of the forms are still rare or unknown. Three series may
be adopted for the purposes of nomenclature.
1. Parasitica.—Trochanters of two pieces, female with an ovipositor.
2. Tubulifera.—Trochanters undivided; abdomen consisting of only

three, four, or five visible segments.
3. Aculeata.—Trochanters undivided; abdomen consisting of six or

seven visible segments; female furnished with a retractile sting.
In the absence of any clear distinction between sting and ovipositor,

these groups are merely conventional. The character furnished by
the trochanters is unfortunately subject to some exceptions, there
being a few parasitic forms in which the trochanters are not divided,
and a few aculeates in which the reverse is more or less distinctly
the case; moreover, the division, when it exists, is in some cases
obscure, and the two pieces are of unequal size. Ratzeburg calls the
upper division, which is frequently much larger than the other, the
trochanter, and the lower division the apophysis. There is much
reason for believing that the apophysis is really merely a secondary
division of the femur. The Tubulifera are a comparatively small
group, and will probably be merged in one of the other two, when the
anatomy and morphology of the abdomen have been more
thoroughly elucidated.
Fig. 345.—Divided (ditrochous) trochanter of an Ichneumon: a, coxa; b,

the two divisions of the trochanter; c, femur. (For monotrochous
trochanter see Fig. 335, A, c.)
Hymenoptera Parasitica or Terebrantia.
This is one of the most extensive divisions of the class Insecta.

There can be little doubt that it contains 200,000 species, and
possibly the number may be very much greater than this. It is,
however, one of the most neglected of the great groups of Insects,
though it is perhaps of greater economic importance to mankind than
any other.
Insects derive their sustenance primarily from the vegetable

kingdom. So great and rapid are the powers of assimilation of the
Insect, so prodigious its capacity for multiplication, that the Mammal
would not be able to compete with it were it not that the great horde
of six-legged creatures has divided itself into two armies, one of
which destroys the other. The parasitic Hymenoptera are chiefly
occupied in destroying the tribes of vegetarian Insects; the parasites
do this by the simple and efficient device of dwelling in the bodies of
their hosts and appropriating the nutriment the latter take in. The
parasites do not, as a rule, eat the structures of their host,—many of
them, indeed, have no organs that would enable them to do this,—
but they absorb the vegetable juices that, in a more or less altered
state, form the lymph or so-called blood of the host. The host could
perhaps starve out his enemies by a judicious system of abstention
from food; instead, however, of doing this, he adopts the suicidal
policy of persistent eating, and as the result of his exertions,
furnishes sufficient food to his parasites, and then dies himself,
indirectly starved. Ratzeburg considers that the traditional view that
the larvae of parasitic Hymenoptera live by eating the fat-body of
their host is erroneous. They imbibe, he considers, the liquid that fills
the body of the parasitised Insect.[428]
The wide prevalence of Insect parasitism is appreciated only by

entomologists. The destructive winter moth—Cheimatobia brumata
—is known to be subject to the attacks of sixty-three species of
Hymenopterous parasites. So abundant are these latter that late in
the autumn it is not infrequently the case that the majority of
caterpillars contain these destroyers. Although Lepidoptera are very
favourite objects with parasitic Hymenoptera, yet other Insects are
also pertinaciously attacked; there is quite a host of Insect creatures
that obtain their sustenance by living inside the tiny Aphididae, or
"green-flies," that so much annoy the gardener. A still larger number
of parasites attack eggs of Insects, one or more individuals finding
sufficient sustenance for growth and development inside another
Insect's egg. As Insects have attacked Insects, so have parasites
attacked parasites, and the phenomena called hyperparasitism have
been developed. These cases of secondary parasitism, in which
another species attacks a primary parasite, are extremely numerous.
It is also pretty certain that tertiary parasitism occurs, and Riley is of
opinion that even quaternary destruction is not outside the range of
probability.
The physiological problems connected with Insect parasitism are of

great interest to the entomologist; the modes of nutrition and
respiration of these encaged creatures could not fail to be most
instructive were we fully acquainted with them. It is obvious that
when an Insect-egg is laid inside another Insect's egg, and the
parasite has to undergo the whole of its growth therein, it is in the
strangest condition as regards nutrition. It is unnecessary for the
intruded egg to have yolk of its own; moreover, the embryonic mode
of nutrition may be continued during what would, with other Insects,
be the larval period. And it seems to be the case that both these
conditions are actually met with in the lives of egg-parasites. The
embryology and post-embryonic development of parasitic
Hymenoptera have already been ascertained to be of the most
extraordinary nature. Great variety, however, will no doubt be found
to exist, as will be readily understood if we tabulate the conditions of
the early life of various parasitic Hymenoptera.
1. The egg may be laid outside a larva, and the embryonic and larval
developments may both be passed on the exterior.
2. The egg may be laid and the embryonic development passed
through, outside the host, but the parasite on hatching may enter the
host, so that the post-embryonic development is passed in the lymph
of the host.
3. The egg may be laid inside the host, both embryonic and post-
embryonic developments being gone through in the fluids of the
host.
4. The egg may be laid inside another egg, the embryonic and post-
embryonic developments being passed therein.
We shall find that all these conditions exist in the Insects we are
about to consider.
We shall treat the series as composed of ten families; but we must

remind the student that this great subject is still in a very
unadvanced state; the combined efforts of generations of naturalists
will be required to perfect it. Of the ten families five are
comparatively insignificant in number of species. Many of the
Cynipidae are not parasitic in habits, but live in galls. After what we
have said as to the mode of nutrition of parasites it will be
understood that the physiological conditions of life may not be so
different in a gall-dweller and a parasite as would at first be
supposed; and it is perhaps not a matter for much surprise that good
characters cannot be found to separate the gallicolous from the
parasitic forms.
Fam. I. Cynipidae—Gall-flies.
Wings with very few cells, with no dark patch (stigma) on the
anterior margin; pronotum fixed to the mesonotum, and at each
side extending back to the point of insertion of the front wing.
Antennae not elbowed but straight, composed of a moderate
number (12-15) of joints. Early stages passed either in galls or
as parasites in the bodies of other Insects.
Fig. 346.—Neuroterus lenticularis. Britain.
The Cynipidae are always small, frequently minute, Insects; usually

black or pitchy in colour. The simple structure of the antennae and
the number of their joints are of importance as an aid in identifying a
Cynipid. The mesonotum is usually remarkably convex, and has,
behind, a prominent scutellum, which more or less overhangs the
small metanotum and the median segment; these are perpendicular
in their direction; the sculpture of these posterior parts of the alitrunk
is usually deep and remarkable. The abdomen has usually only a
short petiole, so as to be pseudo-sessile; but there are some genera
in which this part is rather long. The abdomen is generally so very
much changed in outer form that its structure is not easily
understood. The visible portion is frequently in larger part made up of
the greatly enlarged dorsal plate of the second or third segment, or
of both. These large plates are really chiefly composed of free flaps,
and on lifting them up the large ventral plates are disclosed, although
these appeared previously to be nearly or quite absent. In the female
there is a very slender ovipositor, of which only a small part
protrudes, although the organ is really elongate; it is drawn into the
abdomen by means of a peculiar series of structures, the modified
terminal segments to which it is attached being folded over into the
interior of the body in such a way that the posterior part becomes
situated anteriorly. In conformity with this arrangement, the ovipositor
is bent double on itself, the anterior and the middle portions of the
borer being carried into the body, leaving only a small part projecting
beyond the extremity. The Cynipid ovipositor is an instrument of
much delicacy, and is capable of a great deal of movement; it is
usually serrate just at the tip, and although it looks so very different
from the cutting apparatus of the sawflies (Fig. 344), it seems that it
is really composed of pieces similar in their origin to those of the
Tenthredinidae.
Fig. 347.—Ovipositor of Neuroterus laeviusculus. (After Adler.) a, a,

The ovipositor partially coiled; b, extremity of posterior plate; c, c,
muscles.
The wings frequently bear fine hairs; the paucity of nervures and the
absence of the "stigma" are of importance in the definition of the
family. The most important of the cells is one called the radial cell,
situate just beyond the middle of the front part of the wing.
We cannot enter into a consideration of the classification of the

family, as authorities are not agreed on the subject.[429] As regards
their habits Cynipidae are, however, of three different kinds: (1) the
true gall-flies, or Psenides, which lay an egg or eggs in the tissues of
a growing plant, in the interior of which the larva lives after it is
hatched; this mode of life may or may not, according to the species,
be accompanied by formation of a peculiar growth called a gall: (2)
Inquilines,[430] or guest-flies; these lay their eggs in the galls formed
by the gall-makers subsequent to the growth of the galls, of which
they obtain the benefit: (3) Parasites; these live, like most
Ichneumon-flies, in the interior of the bodies of other living Insects;
they prey on a considerable variety of Insects, but chiefly, it is
believed, on Aphididae, or on Dipterous larvae. These parasitic flies
belong to the sub-family Figitides.
A great deal of discussion has occurred relative to the nature and

origin of galls, and many points still remain obscure. Considerable
light has been thrown on the subject by the direct observations of
modern naturalists. Previous to Malpighi, who wrote on the subject
two hundred years ago, it was supposed that galls were entirely
vegetable productions, and that the maggots found in them were due
to spontaneous generation, it having been an article of belief in the
Middle Ages that maggots in general arose from the various organic
substances in which they were found, by means of the hypothetical
process called, as we have said, spontaneous generation. Malpighi
was aware of the unsatisfactory nature of such a belief, and having
found by observation that galls arose from the punctures of Insects,
he came to the further conclusion that the growth of the gall was due
to the injection by the Insect into the plant of a fluid he termed Ichor,
which had, he considered, the effect of producing a swelling in the
plant, something in the same way as the sting of a bee or wasp
produces a swelling in an animal. Réaumur also made observations
on the gall-Insects, and came to the conclusion that the latter part of
Malpighi's views was erroneous, and that the swelling was not due to
any fluid, but simply to irritation caused by the prick; this irritation
being kept up by the egg that was deposited and by the subsequent
development of the larva. Observations since the time of Réaumur
have shown that the matter is not quite so simple as he supposed,
for though in the case of some galls the development of the gall
commences immediately after the introduction of the egg, yet in
other cases, as in the Cynipidae, it does not occur till some time
thereafter, being delayed even until after the hatching of the egg and
the commencement of the development of the larva. Galls are
originated by a great variety of Insects, as well as by mites, on many
plants; and it must not be concluded that a gall has been formed by
Hymenoptera even when these Insects are reared from one.
Extremely curious galls are formed by scale-Insects of the sub-family
Brachyscelides on Eucalyptus trees in Australia; they are much
inhabited by parasitic Hymenoptera, and Froggatt has obtained 100
specimens of a small black Chalcid from a single dead Brachyscelid.
[431] The exact manner in which many of these galls originate is not
yet sufficiently ascertained; but the subject of the galls resulting from
the actions of Cynipidae has received special attention, and we are
now able to form a conception of their nature. They are produced by
the meristematic or dividing tissue of plants, and frequently in the
cambium zone, which is caused to develop to an unusual extent, and
in a more or less abnormal manner, by the presence of the Insect.
The exact way in which a Cynipid affects the plant is perhaps not
conclusively settled, and may be found to differ in the cases of
different Cynipidae, but the view advocated by Adler and others, and
recently stated by Riley,[432] seems satisfactory; it is to the effect that
the activity of the larva probably affects the meristem, by means of a
secretion exuded by the larva. The mere presence of the egg does
not suffice to give rise to the gall, for the egg may be deposited
months before the gall begins to form. It is for the same reason
improbable that a fluid injected by the parent fly determines the gall's
growth. It is true that the parent fly does exude a liquid during the act
of oviposition, but this is believed to be merely of a lubricant nature,
and not to influence the development. It is said that the gall begins to
form in some cases before the larva is actually hatched, but the eggs
of some Hymenoptera exhibit remarkable phenomena of growth, so
that the egg, even during development of the embryo in it, may in
these cases, exert an influence on the meristem. It is to reactions
between the physiological processes of the meristem and the
growing Insect that the gall and its form are due.
The investigations of several recent naturalists lend support to the

view that only the meristematic cells of the plant can give rise to a
gall. Riley says that the rate of growth of the gall is dependent on the
activity of the meristem, galls on catkins developing the most quickly;
those forming on young leaves also grow with rapidity, while galls
formed on bark or roots may take months to attain their full size.
Fig. 348.—Bedeguar on rose, cut across to show the cells of the

larvae; in some of the cells larvae are seen.
It is a curious fact that Cynipid galls are formed chiefly on oaks, this
kind of tree supplying a surprising number and variety of galls. The
plants that furnish Cynipid galls in Europe are not numerous. A list of
them is given by Cameron.[433] Several species, of the genus
Rhodites, attack rose-bushes. One of the best known of our British
galls is the bedeguar, found in various parts of the country on both
wild and cultivated rose-bushes (Fig. 348), and caused by Rhodites
rosae (Fig. 349). This gall has the appearance of arising from a twig
or stem, but it is really a leaf gall. Pazlavsky[434] has described the
mode of formation of the bedeguar. The female Rhodites in the
spring selects a rose-bud—not a flower-bud—that should produce a
twig and leaves, and pricks this bud in a systematic manner in three
places. The three spots of the bud pricked by the Insect are the three
undeveloped leaves that correspond to a complete cycle in the
phyllotaxis of the plant. The three rudiments do not develop into
leaves, but by a changed mode of growth give rise to the bedeguar.
Usually this gall, as shown in our figure, is of large size, and contains
numerous cells; but abortive specimens are not infrequently met
with; sometimes a small one is seated on a rose-leaf, and it is
thought that these are due to a failure on the part of the Insect to
complete the pricking operation. Cynipidae will not go through their
gall-making operations except under natural conditions. Giraud[435]
attempted to obtain oviposition, on gathered twigs of oak, from flies
in confinement; but, although he experimented with thousands of
specimens, they on no occasion laid their eggs in the fresh shoots
placed at their disposal, but discharged their eggs in little heaps,
without attention to the twigs. The same observer has also called
attention to the fact that after being deposited in a bud the eggs of
certain species of Cynips will remain dormant without producing, so
far as can be seen, any effect on the tree for a period of fully ten
months, but when the bud begins to develop and the egg hatches
then the gall grows.
Fig. 349.—Rhodites rosae, female. Cambridge.
The exact mode in which the egg is brought to the requisite spot in
the plant is still uncertain. The path traversed by the ovipositor in the
plant is sometimes of considerable length, and far from straight; in
some cases before it actually pierces the tissues, the organ is thrust
between scales or through fissures, so that the terebra, or boring
part of the ovipositor, when it reaches the minute seam of cambium,
is variously curved and flexed. Now as the canal in its interior is of
extreme tenuity, and frequently of great length, it must be a very
difficult matter for the egg to reach the tissue where it should
develop. The eggs of Cynipidae are very remarkable bodies; they
are very ductile, and consist of a head, and of a stalk that in some
cases is five or six times as long as the head, and is itself somewhat
enlarged at the opposite end. Some other Hymenoptera have also
stalked eggs of a similar kind (Fig. 357, A, egg of Leucospis). It has
been thought that this remarkable shape permits of the contents of
the egg being transferred for a time to the narrower parts, and thus
allows the broader portion of the egg to be temporarily compressed,
and the whole structure to be passed through a very narrow canal or
orifice. It is, however, very doubtful whether the egg really passes
along the canal of the borer. Hartig thought that it did so, and Riley
supports this view to a limited extent. Adler, however, is of a different
opinion, and considers that the egg travels in larger part outside the
terebra. It should be remembered that the ovipositor is really
composed of several appendages that are developed from the
outside of the body; thus the external orifice of the body is
morphologically at the base of the borer, the several parts of which
are in longitudinal apposition. Hence there is nothing that would
render the view of the egg leaving the ovipositor at the base
improbable, and Adler supposes that it actually does so, the thin end
being retained between the divisions of the terebra. Riley is of
opinion that the act of oviposition in these Insects follows no uniform
system. He has observed that in the case of Callirhytis clavula,
ovipositing in the buds of Quercus alba, the eggs are inserted by the
egg-stalk into the substance of the leaf, and that the egg-fluids are at
first gathered in the posterior end, which is not inserted. "The fluids
are then gradually absorbed from this exposed portion into the
inserted portion of the egg, and by the time the young leaves have
formed the exposed [parts of the] shells are empty, the thread-like
stalk has disappeared, and the egg-contents are all contained within
the leaf tissue." He has also observed that in Biorhiza nigra the
pedicel, or stalk, only is inserted in the embryonic leaf-tissue, and
that the enlarged portion or egg-body is at first external. The same
naturalist also records that in the case of a small inquiline species,
Ceroptres politus, the pedicel of the egg is very short, and in this
case the egg is thrust down into the puncture made by the borer, so
that the egg is entirely covered.
Some Cynipidae bore a large number of the channels for their eggs
before depositing any of the latter, and it would appear that it is the
rule that the boring of the channel is an act separate from that of
actual oviposition. Adler distinguishes three stages: (1) boring of the
canal; (2) the passage of the egg from the base of the ovipositor,
where the egg-stalk is pinched between the two spiculae and the
egg is pushed along the ovipositor; (3) after the point of the
ovipositor is withdrawn, the egg-body enters the pierced canal, and
is pushed forward by the ovipositor until it reaches the bottom.[436]
About fifty years ago Hartig reared large numbers of certain species
of gall-flies from their galls, obtaining from 28,000 galls of Cynips
disticha about 10,000 flies, and from galls of C. folii 3000 or 4000
examples of this species; he found that all the individuals were
females. His observations were subsequently abundantly confirmed
by other naturalists, among whom we may mention Frederick Smith
in our own country, who made in vain repeated attempts to obtain
males of the species of the genus Cynips. On one occasion he
collected in the South of England 4410 galls of C. kollari (at that time
called C. lignicola), and from these he obtained 1562 flies, all of
which were females. A second effort was attended with similar
results. Hartig, writing in 1843, after many years' experience, stated
that though he was acquainted with twenty-eight species of the
genus Cynips, he had not seen a male of any one of them. During
the course of these futile attempts it was, however, seen that a
possible source of fallacy existed in the fact that the Insects were
reared from collected galls; and these being similar to one another, it
was possible that the males might inhabit some different gall. Adler
endeavoured to put the questions thus raised to the test by means of
rearing females from galls, and then getting these females to
produce, parthenogenetically, galls on small oaks planted in pots,
and thus completely under control. He was quite successful in
carrying out his project, and in doing so he made a most
extraordinary discovery, viz. that the galls produced by these
parthenogenetic females on his potted oaks, were quite different
from the galls from which the flies themselves were reared, and
were, in fact, galls that gave rise to a fly that had been previously
considered a distinct species; and of this form both sexes were
produced. Adler's observations have been confirmed by other
naturalists, and thus the occurrence of alternation of generations,
one of the two generations being parthenogenetic, has been
thoroughly established in Cynipidae. We may mention one case as
illustrative. A gall-fly called Chilaspis lowii is produced from galls on
oak-leaves at Vienna at the end of April, both sexes occurring. The
female thereafter lays eggs on the ribs of the leaves of the same
kind of oak, and thus produces a different gall from that which
nourished herself. These galls fall off with the leaves in the autumn,
and in July or August of the following year a gall-fly is produced from
them. It is a different creature from the mother, and was previously
known to entomologists under the name of Chilaspis nitida. Only
females of it occur, and these parthenogenetic individuals lay their
eggs in the young buds of the oak that are already present in the
autumn, and in the following spring, when the buds open and the
leaves develop, those that have had an egg laid in them produce a
gall from which Chilaspis lowii emerges in April or May. In this case
therefore the cycle of the two generations extends over two years,
the generation that takes the greater part of the time for its
production consisting only of females. Adler's observations showed
that, though in some species this alternation of generations was
accompanied by parthenogenesis in one part of the cycle, yet in
other species this was not the case. He found, for instance, that
some gall-flies of the genus Aphilothrix produced a series of
generations the individuals of which were similar to one another, and
were all females and parthenogenetic. In some species of the old
genus Cynips no males are even yet known to occur. A very curious
observation was made by the American, Walsh, viz. that of galls
gathered by him quite similar to one another, some produced
speedily a number of both sexes of Cynips spongifica, while much
later on in the season the remainder of the galls gave rise to females
only of an Insect called Cynips aciculata. It is believed that the galls
gathered by Walsh[437] were really all one species; so that parts of
the same generation emerge at different times and in two distinct
forms, one of them parthenogenetic, the other consisting of two
sexes. It has, however, been suggested that Cynips spongifica and
C. aciculata may be two distinct species, producing quite similar
galls.
Turning now to the questions connected with inquiline or guest-flies,

we may commence with drawing attention to the great practical
difficulties that surround the investigation of this subject. If we open a
number of specimens of any kind of gall it is probable that several
kinds of larvae will be found. In Fig. 350 we represent four kinds of
larvae that were taken out of a few bedeguar galls gathered on one
day in a lane near Cambridge. It is pretty certain that No. 1 in this
figure represents the larva of Rhodites rosae, and that Nos. 2 and 3
are larvae of inquilines, possibly of Synergus, or of a parasite; while
No. 4, which was engaged in feeding on No. 3 in the position shown,
is possibly a Chalcid of the genus Monodontomerus, or may be
Callimome bedeguaris. It is clear that, as we cannot ascertain what
is inside a gall without opening it, and thereby killing the tenants, it is
a most difficult matter to identify the larvae; the only safe method is
that of observation of the act of oviposition; this may be
supplemented by rearing the flies from galls, so as to ascertain what
variety of flies are associated with each kind of gall. This last point
has been well attended to; but the number of cases in which
oviposition of inquiline gall-flies in the galls formed by the Psenides
has been ascertained by direct observation is still very small; they
are, however, sufficient to show that the inquilines deposit their eggs
only after the galls are formed.
Fig. 350.—Larvae inhabiting bedeguar gall at Cambridge. 1, Rhodites

rosae in cell; 2 and 3, larvae of inquilines; 4, larva of a parasitic
Hymenopteron.
Bassett recorded the first case of the kind in connexion with a North
American species, Cynips (Ceroptres) quercus-arbos Fitch. He says:
"On the first of June galls on Quercus ilicifolia had reached their full
size, but were still tender, quite like the young shoots of which they
formed part. Examining them on that day, I discovered on them two
gall-flies, which I succeeded in taking. They were females, and the
ovipositor of each was inserted into the gall so deeply that they could
not readily free themselves, and they were removed by force."
The great resemblance of the inquiline gall-fly to the fly that makes
the gall both dwell in, has been several times noticed by Osten
Sacken, who says "one of the most curious circumstances
connected with the history of two North American blackberry galls is,
that besides the Diastrophus, which apparently is the genuine
originator of the gall, they produce another gall-fly, no doubt an
inquiline, belonging to the genus Aulax, and showing the most
striking resemblance in size, colouring, and sculpture to the
Diastrophus, their companion. The one is the very counterpart of the
other, hardly showing any differences, except the strictly generic
characters! This seems to be one of those curious instances, so
frequent in entomology, of the resemblance between parasites and
their hosts! By rearing a considerable number of galls of D.
nebulosus I obtained this species as well as its parasite almost in
equal numbers. By cutting some of the galls open I ascertained that
a single specimen of the gall frequently contained both species, thus
setting aside a possible doubt whether these Insects are not
produced by two different, although closely similar galls."[438]
The substance of which galls are composed, or rather, perhaps, a

juice they afford, is apparently a most suitable pabulum for the
support of Insect life, and is eagerly sought after by a variety of
Insects; hence by collecting galls in large quantities many species of
Insects may be reared from them; indeed by this means as many as
thirty different kinds of Insects, and belonging to all, or nearly all, the
Orders, have been obtained from a single species of gall. Some galls
are sought by birds, which open them and extract their tenants, even
in cases where it might be supposed that the nauseous flavour of the
galls would forbid such proceedings.
Not more than 500 species of Psenides and Inquiline Cynipidae are
known from all parts of the world; and of described Parasitic
Cynipidae there are only about 150 species. The British forms have
recently been treated by Cameron in the work we have already
several times referred to.[439]
A few Cynipidae have been found in amber; and remains of

members of the family, as well as some galls, are said by Scudder to
have been found in the Tertiary strata at Florissant.
Fam. II. Proctotrypidae, or Oxyura.

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Rethinking Moral Status Steve Clarke

Rethinking Moral Status

Rethinking Moral Status

What is it to possess moral status? It may seem problematic for a volume

This volume provides a forum for philosophical reflection about ordinary

Chapter 4 by Josh Shepherd homes in on three difficulties facing any regi-

Françoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University. She is a

xiv Notes on Contributors

College London, and Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre

xvi Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors xvii

1. The Idea of Moral Status

2 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 3

2. Human Moral Status

4 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 5

6 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

3. Species Membership and the Boundary between

As well as identifying grounds for attributing FMS to ordinary adult humans

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 7

species turns out to be grounded in capacities that ordinary adult members of

8 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

4. Revisionary Approaches to Moral Status

If we want a theory of moral status to account for ordinary (contemporary)

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 9

5. More-­than-­full Moral Status?

10 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 11

6. Moral Uncertainty and Moral Confusion

Suppose we managed to create post-­humans with significantly superior cog-

12 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 13

chimeras by the threat of moral confusion depends, to a significant extent, on

14 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 15

16 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Baker, L. R. (2000). Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge:

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 17

Hübner, Dietmar (2018). ‘Human-Animal Chimeras and Hybrids: An Ethical

18 Steve Clarke and Julian Savulescu

Rethinking our Assumptions about Moral Status 19

In debates about certain moral issues, it is commonly assumed that an indi­

that reasons concerned with causing or preventing suffering vary in strength

Suppose there are individuals with capacities for consciousness and

Suffering and Moral Status 25

In Brazil Dielocerus ellisii, a sawfly allied to Hylotoma, constructs a

Several species of sawflies are known to be very injurious to crops.

We have, earlier in the chapter, alluded to the fact that the

There are about 2000 species of sawflies known. A large majority of

HYMENOPTERA PETIOLATA–PARASITIC HYMENOPTERA–CYNIPIDAE OR

We now pass to the consideration of the Hymenoptera of the sub-

The members of this sub-Order, without exception, have the hind

The Hymenoptera Petiolata comprises an enormous majority of the

1. Parasitica.—Trochanters of two pieces, female with an ovipositor.

2. Tubulifera.—Trochanters undivided; abdomen consisting of only

3. Aculeata.—Trochanters undivided; abdomen consisting of six or

In the absence of any clear distinction between sting and ovipositor,

Fig. 345.—Divided (ditrochous) trochanter of an Ichneumon: a, coxa; b,

This is one of the most extensive divisions of the class Insecta.

Insects derive their sustenance primarily from the vegetable

The wide prevalence of Insect parasitism is appreciated only by

The physiological problems connected with Insect parasitism are of

5. More-than-full Moral Status?

Suppose we managed to create post-humans with significantly superior cog-

In debates about certain moral issues, it is commonly assumed that an indi