Moral circle expansion
How do values change over time and can we create a more compassionate future?
This profile is tailored towards students studying history, sociology and psychology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
Many attempts at improving the world aim to expand humanity’s moral circle – the circle of sentient beings considered morally important. Movements such as anti-slavery, feminism, and animal rights all involve attempting to expand this circle. Understanding how moral circle expansion occurs, how tractable it is, and to what extent changes persist could be important for improving the welfare of a huge number of present and future beings. Many (plausibly) sentient beings are not considered morally important, or not sufficiently important to prevent great harm potentially occurring to them. Wild animals, insects, and future artificial intelligences are examples of beings whose suffering could be particularly overlooked.
-
Research Papers
Anderson, Elizabeth (2014) Social Movements, Experiments in Living, and Moral Progress: Case Studies from Britain’s Abolition of Slavery
Anthis, Jacy Reese & Eze Paez (2021) Moral Circle Expansion: A Promising Strategy to Impact the Far Future, Futures
Crimston, Charlie R., et al. (2018) Toward a Psychology of Moral Expansiveness, Current Directions in Psychological Science
Jamieson, Dale (2017) Slavery, Carbon, and Moral Progress, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
Kirkland, Kelly, et al. (2022) Moral Expansiveness around the World: The Role of Societal Factors across 36 Countries, Social Psychological and Personality Science
Waytz, Adam, et al. (2019) Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle, Nature Communications
Wilks, Matti, et al. (2021) Children Prioritise Humans Over Animals Less Than Adults Do, Psychological Science
Wilks, Matti & Bastian Jaeger (2022) The Relative Importance of Target and Judge Characteristics in Shaping our Moral Circle
See also this blog post series on the tractability of changing the course of history, and this and this blog post for examples of informal debate about the value of working on moral circle expansion.
Books
Buchanan, Allen (2020) Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism, MIT Press
Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle, Clarendon Press
Organisations
The Sentience Institute is a think tank researching long-term social and technological change, particularly moral circle expansion.
-
Related research directions
If you’re interested in exploring how values change over time, you could also explore our profiles on historical persistence and contingency and the most important historical trends.
You could also explore our profiles on wild animal welfare and AI sentience, moral status and rights.
Contributors: This profile was last significantly 01/09/2022. Thanks to Matti Wilks and Thomas Moynihan for helpful feedback on this profile. All mistakes remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
