moral standing

moral standing, in ethics, the status of an entity by virtue of which it is deserving of consideration in moral decision making. To ask if an entity has moral standing is to ask whether the well-being of that entity should be taken into account by others; it is also to ask whether that entity has moral value or worth and whether it can make moral claims on other beings. Moral standing is often a key topic in debates about animal rights and within bioethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics.

(Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry on ethics.)

Ethicists have taken several positions about how to determine the moral standing and inherent worth of an entity. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle adopted a teleological (purpose-oriented) view of nature that saw the world as a hierarchy within which the lower levels of plants and animals have value only in relation to the purposes of humans. More than two millennia later, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued for a deontological (duty-based) view when he claimed that human beings have direct moral duties to other human beings—who are morally autonomous entities and thus have moral standing—but not to nonhuman organisms, which are not morally autonomous. The Australian ethicist Peter Singer adopted a utilitarian approach, arguing for the recognition of moral standing in most nonhuman animals as well as in humans on the grounds that most nonhuman animals, like all humans, have interests in avoiding pain and experiencing pleasure. Some virtue ethicists have argued that a morally exemplary person would recognize the moral standing of nonhuman organisms.