Moral circle expansionHow do values change over time and can we create a more compassionate future?
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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.
Explore existing research
- 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.
- Buchanan, Allen (2020) Our Moral Fate: Evolution and the Escape from Tribalism, MIT Press
- Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle, Clarendon Press
The Sentience Institute is a think tank researching long-term social and technological change, particularly moral circle expansion.
Find a thesis topic
If you’re interested in working on this research direction, below are some ideas on what would be valuable to explore further. If you want help refining your research ideas, apply for our coaching!
You could explore the topics and questions listed below from the Sentience Institute. If you’re interested in working on any of these questions, they encourage you to reach out, or apply for coaching and your coach can connect you.
- Past examples of moral circle expansion or contraction (How tractable is changing the course of history?)
- The general nature of historical trajectory (example) (How tractable is changing the course of history?)
- Past technologies with relevance to general moral circle expansion (How tractable is changing the course of history?)
- What evidence is there of changing social norms following changing technology, e.g. with whales and horses? (Longtermism and animal farming trajectories)
- Are there promising interventions targeted specifically at ensuring positive spillover from modern animal issues to long-term issues, such as producing more publications like Owe and Baum (2021) and Singer and Tse (2022) on AI and nonhumans? (Longtermism and animal farming trajectories)
- If moral progress occurs largely due to people with old moral values passing away and young people with new views coming into social power, would human life extension slow down moral progress? (Sentience Institute research agenda)
You could also look into questions such as:
- Over time, have people come to extend their concerns and caring to an ever broader range of groups (that is, have we seen a trend towards what philosophers cause moral circle expansion)? If so, what has caused these sorts of expansions of concern?
- What has been the rate of change in values throughout history? Is the rate of change increasing?
- What factors have tended to drive changes that we would judge as moral regression (e.g. an increase in repression).
- What role (if any) has moral philosophy played in past moral changes? What role have social movements played? What role has been played by changes in underlying economic or political considerations?
You could explore the questions below from the Sentience Institute. If you’re interested in working on any of these questions, they encourage you to reach out, or apply for coaching and your coach can connect you.
- How do changes in attitudes towards particular species of farmed animals affect attitudes towards other species of farmed animals? (Sentience Institute research agenda)
- How do changes in attitudes towards farmed animals affect attitudes towards other entities? (Sentience Institute research agenda)
- If moral progress occurs largely due to people with old moral values passing away and young people with new views coming into social power, would human life extension slow down moral progress? (Sentience Institute research agenda)
- Work in this area includes Growth And The Continued Expansion Of Liberal Values
- What mechanisms other than codifying moral change in law could be most effective for locking in moral changes, or otherwise reduce the risk of rubber banding? (Longtermism and animal farming trajectories)
Other research ideas are suggested in On the longtermist case for working on farmed animals from Rethink Priorities researcher Michael Aird.
Psychology and cognitive sciences
- The research agenda ‘Psychology for Effectively Improving the Future‘ suggests many research questions related to moral circle expansion.
- Many suggested research questions on the inclusion of artificial sentience in the moral circle can be found here.
- How does discussing the concept of a moral circle affect someone’s moral circle? (Sentience Institute)
- How does discussing speciesism affect someone’s speciesism? (Sentience Institute)
- How does compassion for other humans correlate with and relate to compassion for nonhumans? (Sentience Institute)
- How do changes in attitudes towards farmed animals affect attitudes towards other entities? (Sentience Institute)
- Which messages (e.g. texts, video) most effectively encourage moral consideration of farmed animals, wild animals, and artificial sentience? (Sentience Institute)
- Other research ideas are suggested in On the longtermist case for working on farmed animals from Rethink Priorities researcher Michael Aird.
If you’re interested in working on any of the questions in the Sentience Institute’s research agenda, they encourage you to reach out, or apply for coaching and we can connect you.
Further resources
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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.
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