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Scientific and technological advancements have allowed us to create beings that blur the distinctions between human, non-human animal, and non-biological beings, which challenge our assumptions about moral status. This volume explores our responses to these challenges and reflects on ordinary presuppositions and intuitions about moral status.

In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only
the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within
experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of
particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult
cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness,
arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains
the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining
it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of
phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status.
This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics,
bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive
science.

This paper addresses the issue of the moral status of non-human animals, or
the question whether sentient animals are morally considerable. The
arguments for and against the moral status of animals are discussed, above
all the argument from marginal cases. It is argued that sentient animals
have moral status based on their having interests in their experiential
well-being, but that there are degrees of moral status. Two interest-based
approaches are presented and discussed: DeGrazia?s view that sentient
animals have interests in continuing to live, and that their interests
should be granted moral weight; and McMahan?s TRIA which similarly
postulates that animals have interests and that in a given situation we
should compare the human and animal interests at stake. Finally, the paper
concludes that the anthropocentric approach to animal ethics should be
abandoned in favour of the biocentric ethics.

This book considers the question: to what extent does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as moral entities? The authors' contributions trace recent proposals and topics including instrumental and non-instrumental values of artefacts, agency and artefactual agency, values in and around technologies, and the moral significance of technology. The editors' introduction explains that as 'agents' rather than simply passive instruments, technical artefacts may actively influence their users, changing the way they perceive the world, the way they act in the world and the way they interact with each other. This volume features the work of various experts from around the world, representing a variety of positions on the topic. Contributions explore the contested discourse on agency in humans and artefacts, defend the Value Neutrality Thesis by arguing that technological artefacts do not contain, have or exhibit values, or argue that moral agency involves both human and non-human elements.The book also investigates technological fields that are subject to negative moral valuations due to the harmful effects of some of their products. It includes an analysis of some difficulties arising in Artificial Intelligence and an exploration of values in Chemistry and in Engineering. The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts is an advanced exploration of the various dimensions of the relations between technology and morality.

A central puzzle of contemporary moral and political philosophy is that while most of us believe that all or almost all human beings enjoy the same moral status, human beings possess the capacities that supposedly ground moral status to very unequal levels. This paper aims to develop a novel strategy to vindicate the idea of moral equality against this challenge. Its central argument is that the puzzle emerges only if one accepts a usually unstated theoretical premise about value and the proper response to value. The premise holds that if the presence of a valuable property warrants a certain kind of response towards its bearers, then every variation in the degree to which the property is present necessarily constitutes a reason for a corresponding variation in the response that is warranted towards its bearers. It argues that despite its intuitive appeal, the premise is not plausible as a general view about the proper way of responding to value, and as a view about responding to the value of rational beings in particular. It proposes an account of the proper manner of valuing rational beings that supports a distinctive version of the so-called threshold approach to justifying equal moral status.

Recent philosophical discussion of the idea of public reason has focused mainly on two issues, namely, the plausibility of its standard of political justification and the feasibility and fairness of its demands on religious citizens. An even more basic question about public reason has, by comparison, received far less attention. How, and to what degree, are requirements of public reason binding on citizens? In short, what kind of moral requirements are they? Call this the question of public reason's moral status. Adapted from the source document.

This book considers the question: to what extent does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as moral entities? The authors' contributions trace recent proposals and topics including instrumental and non-instrumental values of artefacts, agency and artefactual agency, values in and around technologies, and the moral significance of technology. The editors' introduction explains that as 'agents' rather than simply passive instruments, technical artefacts may actively influence their users, changing the way they perceive the world, the way they act in the world and the way they interact with each other. This volume features the work of various experts from around the world, representing a variety of positions on the topic. Contributions explore the contested discourse on agency in humans and artefacts, defend the Value Neutrality Thesis by arguing that technological artefacts do not contain, have or exhibit values, or argue that moral agency involves both human and non-human elements.