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? (Sentence 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? (Sentence Institute research agenda)
• How do changes in attitudes towards farmed animals affect attitudes towards other entities? (Sentence 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? (Sentence 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 ideas are suggested in this post.

The research agenda ‘Psychology for Effectively Improving the Future‘ suggests many research questions related to moral circle expansion.

You could also 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 we can connect you.

• Experiments and surveys on “substratism” analogous to the psychology of “speciesism.”
• Dietary asks and cognitive dissonance

Many suggested research questions on the inclusion of artificial sentience in the moral circle can be found here.

You could also explore the ideas listed here, such as:

• How does discussing the concept of a moral circle affect someone’s moral circle?
• How does discussing speciesism affect someone’s speciesism?
• How does compassion for other humans correlate with and relate to compassion for nonhumans?
• How do changes in attitudes towards farmed animals affect attitudes towards other entities?
• Which messages (e.g. texts, video) most effectively encourage moral consideration of farmed animals, wild animals, and artificial sentience?

   

Other ideas are suggested in this post.