Moral weight research
Understanding animals’ experiences and moral standing to prioritise welfare interventions
This profile is tailored towards students studying biological sciences, philosophy, political science 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?
How confident can we be that different species have the conscious experiences we take to be necessary for moral standing? Do some species have a much higher or lower capacity to suffer or experience wellbeing than others? When trying to improve the world, which animals should we prioritise helping and in what circumstances? These are examples of moral weight questions – in other words, they are questions that address how much the ‘lives, interests, or experiences’ of potential moral patients (beings that have moral value) matter.
There are many trillions or quintillions of beings in existence whose welfare we could potentially try to improve, but the resources that can be drawn upon are comparatively very limited. This makes it particularly important that we understand more about the moral weight of different beings and can make interspecies comparisons. There are two key questions we need to answer: which animals are moral patients, and how much weight should we give their interests? Further research on these questions could drastically improve the effectiveness with which we can work to increase the welfare of moral patients.
This profile is written primarily from a sentientist perspective, which is the perspective that the capacity to experience pleasure or suffering is what causes a being to matter ethically. According to most researchers, sentience is particularly ethically important. Some researchers think that other capacities, such as agency, self-awareness, and normative reasoning are necessary for or relevant to moral standing.
In the video below, Jason Schukraft discusses how to determine the moral weight of different animals and the skills necessary to make progress in this area.
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Contributors: This profile was last updated 5/01/23. Thanks for originally creating this profile to Jason Schukraft. Thanks to Jeff Sebo, Leonard Dung and Heather Browning for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
