essay of moral

Ethics and Morality

Morality, Ethics, Evil, Greed

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

To put it simply, ethics represents the moral code that guides a person’s choices and behaviors throughout their life. The idea of a moral code extends beyond the individual to include what is determined to be right, and wrong, for a community or society at large.

Ethics is concerned with rights, responsibilities, use of language, what it means to live an ethical life, and how people make moral decisions. We may think of moralizing as an intellectual exercise, but more frequently it's an attempt to make sense of our gut instincts and reactions. It's a subjective concept, and many people have strong and stubborn beliefs about what's right and wrong that can place them in direct contrast to the moral beliefs of others. Yet even though morals may vary from person to person, religion to religion, and culture to culture, many have been found to be universal, stemming from basic human emotions.

The Science of Being Virtuous
Understanding Amorality
The Stages of Moral Development

Those who are considered morally good are said to be virtuous, holding themselves to high ethical standards, while those viewed as morally bad are thought of as wicked, sinful, or even criminal. Morality was a key concern of Aristotle, who first studied questions such as “What is moral responsibility?” and “What does it take for a human being to be virtuous?”

We used to think that people are born with a blank slate, but research has shown that people have an innate sense of morality . Of course, parents and the greater society can certainly nurture and develop morality and ethics in children.

Humans are ethical and moral regardless of religion and God. People are not fundamentally good nor are they fundamentally evil. However, a Pew study found that atheists are much less likely than theists to believe that there are "absolute standards of right and wrong." In effect, atheism does not undermine morality, but the atheist’s conception of morality may depart from that of the traditional theist.

Animals are like humans—and humans are animals, after all. Many studies have been conducted across animal species, and more than 90 percent of their behavior is what can be identified as “prosocial” or positive. Plus, you won’t find mass warfare in animals as you do in humans. Hence, in a way, you can say that animals are more moral than humans.

The examination of moral psychology involves the study of moral philosophy but the field is more concerned with how a person comes to make a right or wrong decision, rather than what sort of decisions he or she should have made. Character, reasoning, responsibility, and altruism , among other areas, also come into play, as does the development of morality.

The seven deadly sins were first enumerated in the sixth century by Pope Gregory I, and represent the sweep of immoral behavior. Also known as the cardinal sins or seven deadly vices, they are vanity, jealousy , anger , laziness, greed, gluttony, and lust. People who demonstrate these immoral behaviors are often said to be flawed in character. Some modern thinkers suggest that virtue often disguises a hidden vice; it just depends on where we tip the scale .

An amoral person has no sense of, or care for, what is right or wrong. There is no regard for either morality or immorality. Conversely, an immoral person knows the difference, yet he does the wrong thing, regardless. The amoral politician, for example, has no conscience and makes choices based on his own personal needs; he is oblivious to whether his actions are right or wrong.

One could argue that the actions of Wells Fargo, for example, were amoral if the bank had no sense of right or wrong. In the 2016 fraud scandal, the bank created fraudulent savings and checking accounts for millions of clients, unbeknownst to them. Of course, if the bank knew what it was doing all along, then the scandal would be labeled immoral.

Everyone tells white lies to a degree, and often the lie is done for the greater good. But the idea that a small percentage of people tell the lion’s share of lies is the Pareto principle, the law of the vital few. It is 20 percent of the population that accounts for 80 percent of a behavior.

We do know what is right from wrong . If you harm and injure another person, that is wrong. However, what is right for one person, may well be wrong for another. A good example of this dichotomy is the religious conservative who thinks that a woman’s right to her body is morally wrong. In this case, one’s ethics are based on one’s values; and the moral divide between values can be vast.

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg established his stages of moral development in 1958. This framework has led to current research into moral psychology. Kohlberg's work addresses the process of how we think of right and wrong and is based on Jean Piaget's theory of moral judgment for children. His stages include pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional, and what we learn in one stage is integrated into the subsequent stages.

The pre-conventional stage is driven by obedience and punishment . This is a child's view of what is right or wrong. Examples of this thinking: “I hit my brother and I received a time-out.” “How can I avoid punishment?” “What's in it for me?”

The conventional stage is when we accept societal views on rights and wrongs. In this stage people follow rules with a good boy and nice girl orientation. An example of this thinking: “Do it for me.” This stage also includes law-and-order morality: “Do your duty.”

The post-conventional stage is more abstract: “Your right and wrong is not my right and wrong.” This stage goes beyond social norms and an individual develops his own moral compass, sticking to personal principles of what is ethical or not.

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Essay on Moral Values

List of essays on moral values, essay on moral values – short essay for kids and children (essay 1 – 150 words), essay on moral values – written in english (essay 2 – 250 words), essay on moral values – for school students (class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 standard) (essay 3 – 300 words), essay on moral values (essay 4 – 400 words), essay on moral values – importance in society and challenges (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on moral values – how to cultivate and inculcate it in human beings (essay 6 – 600 words), essay on moral values (essay 7 – 750 words), essay on moral values – long essay (essay 8 – 1000 words).

Moral values are the key essence of life and it is these values that come along with us through the journey of life. Moral values are basically the principles that guide our life in the righteous path and do not allow us to do any harm to others.

Audience: The below given essays are especially written for kids, children and school students (Class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Standard).

Moral values define the humankind. Moral values empower us to stand as the most unique creatures in the whole animal kingdom. These values are the basis to almost every religion. Thousands of years ago, Buddha described the essence of moral values in his sermons and spread it all over the world.

Since our childhood, we are taught about the good habits and their powers by the elders at home and school. Some of the most significant moral values are kindness, honesty, truthfulness, selflessness, compassion, and love.

The things we learn as a child mould us as an adult. That is why it is crucial to inculcate the pious values in the children. For the younger generation to be transformed into citizens with mighty characters, they must possess strong ethical and moral values. Only then, we can dream of making India great and emerge as an ethical leader in the world.

So, from where do we get these moral values?

Moral values are the first thing that every child learns from their homes . What is right and what is wrong is something that we see and learn from our parents as well as from our own experiences. Many religions preach moral values are part of their belief systems.

Importance of Moral Values

Moral values are very important to each and everyone because it is these values that transform us into better human beings.

i. Without knowing and learning moral values, we will not be able to differentiate between good and bad.

ii. Moral values define us and help us to be surrounded by good people.

iii. One who practices moral values will have courage to handle any situation in life.

Role of Parents

Parents of today think that providing all luxuries to their children is their only responsibility. But they miss to offer them the most important wealth – moral values. When parents deny this, they fail in their duty to give a good human being to the society.

Honesty, kindness, truthfulness, forgiveness, respect for others, helping others etc., are some of the moral values that every parent must teach their children.

“It is not what you do for your children , but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings” – Ann Landers.

Moral Values are the practices followed by human beings to be good and to live in a society. Moral values or ethics, are taught to us by our parents and teachers. These include being honest, kind, respecting others, helping those in need, being faithful and cooperating with others, to name a few, are good moral values.

What are Moral Values?

The norms of what is right or good and what is wrong or bad, define the moral values which are based on many factors like region, society, religious beliefs, culture etc. These defined norms tell the people how they must act or behave in different situations and expect similar behaviours form others.

Importance of Moral Values:

Moral values give an aim to life. Knowing difference between right and wrong is the foundation to imbibe moral values, which are taught from the birth, and bring out the best in individuals.

Moral Values in Workplace:

In every workplace, people look for individuals with good moral values. For a job interview, the interviewer looks for a candidate with good moral values. Every organization has a defined ethical code of conduct that the people in the organization are expected to follow, in addition to basic societal moral values. Organizations with people having good moral values runs more systematically and efficiently.

Moral Value in coming Generations:

People are not aware or conscious about moral values and have different outlook towards life. Parents and teachers are too busy to inculcate moral values in younger generations.

Conclusion:

Moral values are a type of law defined by the culture, society or other factors, to guide individuals on how to or not to behave in daily life. Sometimes, one may have different views and feel the moral guidelines too harsh or wrong. Such guidelines should be advocated for the good of the society.

Moral values are those characters or values seeded in a person’s mind and behavior towards oneself, others and on the whole. It can be the way a person consider other person’s life and space or the way they value each other’s feelings. The basic moral values like honesty, kindness, respect towards others, helpful mannerism, etc., will be the keys to be noted to judge a person’s character.

Moral values are the main characteristics that define the goodness in a person. These should be taught by the parents and teachers to the kids from their childhood. Moral values will help everyone in taking better decisions in life and attain the heights in an ethical way.

Instead of just thinking about our success and goals, moral values will give us the courage to take into account other’s happiness too. A person with better moral values is motivated and finds all possible ways to spread good vibes in and around them as well. Suppressing the people around you for attaining the goals you desire is the most dangerous violation of moral values.

Importance:

A person without moral values is considered to possess a bad character and the society will start to judge the person due to this behavior. This competitive world of ours has made every moral value in a person to die for their own development and growth. Such inhuman and unethical activities like dishonesty, telling lies for your own benefit, hurting others and even worst things, should be avoided.

Inculcating the importance of moral values in a kid from their growing age will help them in sticking to those values forever. It is a necessity of our society to bear such responsible youths and younger generations with good moral values so that they will help our nation to attain better heights.

This society of ours is filled with immoral people who find every scope to deceive others through their activities. The young ones learn more things by observing their elders and they mimic the way their elders behave. It is the responsibility of elders like parents, teachers, etc., to grow a future generation with more moral values seeded in them by improving their own behavior.

Moral values can be taught to students by making them listen and understand more moral stories and the rewards they will get if they show it to others as well. Such way of teaching will help them grab the importance easily rather than taking mere lectures on moral values.

Introduction:

The society helps individuals to grow in culture and learn through experiences of all aspects of life. Societies instill culture, religion, economy and politics in individual because as people grow up, they tend to pick something from dynamics of life and the societal opinions on certain aspects of life. Moral values are also instilled by a society. The values that a person grows up with are the values that will be displayed in his or her character. Society plays a big role in influencing moral values of individuals. Moral values are a set of principles that enable an individual to distinguish between the proper and improper things or right versus wrong. The moral values that are highly valued in the society are integrity, honesty, loyalty, respect and hard work.

Importance of Moral Values in the Society:

In a society, there is interactions among people and the possession of moral values is important in those interactions. Establishment of good relationships is reliant on good moral values. Values like honesty, trust, faithfulness and loyalty are essential in establishment and sustainability of good relationships. Lack of those values causes strained relationships and misunderstanding among members of the society.

Moral values are important in building the economy. Through determination and hard work, people are able to conduct activities that contribute largely to the economic growth of a society. Also through establishment of good relationships, trade is conducted smoothly and there is teamwork in trade and performance of business transactions. The growth of the economy is important in the life quality in the society.

Moral values also play a role in prevention of conflict and ease in conflict resolution. Good relationships seldom end in conflict and whenever conflict arises, it is minimum and can be resolved easily. In a society that peace thrives, there is growth and development which results in an improved quality of life.

Challenges:

The society is required to thrive in good moral values. Development of moral values is challenged by migration and interactions between different cultures and societies. The interactions dilute the morals of one society through adaption and assimilation of a different culture e.g., westernization in Africa.

Poverty is a challenge to the moral values because it creates vices like theft and deceit among members of the society. In poor economic status, everyone struggles to keep up with the hard times and moral values become a thing of the past due to strive for survival.

Education is both a challenge and promoter for development of moral values. Depending on the environment of education, students pick either good or bad morals. In modern education, students tend to pick immorality because of peer pressure.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, it is evident that moral value are an important consideration in the development of the society. Moral values go a long way in impacting the lives of an individual and the entire society. The development of moral values varies with the environmental exposure in societies. Each society should strive to uphold good moral values.

Moral values cultivated by human beings dignify the worth of human life. The morality existed from time immemorial and sustained among the communities. It amalgamated into the cultures which made the life of human beings secure and advanced. We can observe the ethical integrity in all the aspects of the individual as well as societal discourses. The moral values have been evolving with the inter-personal relationships between human beings as well as intra-personal relationships.

What are the moral values cultivated among us?

Religions have played a vital role in formulating and promoting moral values. The fundamental human values of love, respect, trust, tolerance, compassion, kindness are commonly practiced among people. Love and respect are significant in family relationships.

Love and respects are the cornerstones for the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, elders and children. The sharing and caring qualities should be encouraged among children to make them compassionate personalities in the future.

The integrity and trust plays a prominent role in maintaining professional relationships. Similarly, kindness and empathy are the two powerful units to measure the gravity of human values. Patience and forgiveness are the right symbols of a human being’s dignity.

The Relevance of Moral Values:

Nowadays, humans tend to be more focused into self-centered life. Whatever happens outside the family roof is least mattered to the modern people. The social commitment of humans towards their community gets ignored for their personal conveniences.

The compassion, brotherhood, and love are hardly found. We do not have time to spend with our parents or even have time to look after our old and sick parents. Husbands leaving their wives and vice versa have become common these days. The increased number of divorces, old age homes, and orphanages clearly show where our compassion and love stay.

The social values like secularism, religious tolerance, and universal fraternity are the most threatened moral values these days. Religious fanatics have made the lives of ordinary people terrible in many places. The violence by the fanatics are the denial of the fundamental rights of people. People do not identify the fellow beings as brothers and sisters instead they seem to recognize others on racial, economic, gender, caste, and religious terms. It affects the balance of our social system.

The increasing terrorism, revolts, violence against children and gender inequalities are the instances of the denial of fundamental rights. The refugees who wander from nations to nations, the war for food and water, robbery, child labor are still prevalent in today’s civilized society. The civilization and culture acquired through education have made our lives more primitive considering the aspect of moral values.

How to inculcate the values among the children?

Although we acquired many information and knowledge, skills and technical knowledge through our education, our curriculum gives less importance to teach human values and moral values to our children. Nowadays, children become addicted to electronic gadgets, social media, and other entertainment modes.

It is our responsibility to teach our children and students human values within our family as well as through the education system. We should help grow moral values like sharing, helping, caring, and being considerate and tolerance in our children and encourage them to practice those at an early age.

Though various cultures have different perspectives towards moral values, the fundamental human values remain the same in every culture. It is relevant to project the human values and cultivate them in our daily lives.

Moral values demand to have conviction, integrity and rational sense to dissect between right and wrong. It is not just a technical understanding of right and wrong. It is more than that. In life, even if things happen against the morale of our best belief, we tend to manage the situation which may be the right decision of the occasion. We can say morally is wrong but it is morally right too, because a concession in the moral standard might have saved a situation here.

Moral values are relative. Standing firm to the moral values should be the motto in everyone’s life. It should satisfy your conscious even if it is disadvantageous. Moral values are subject to change, and it should continue to change upon the progression of society. It should reflect on what we are standing and the kind of impact it can create on others.

Moral values can be said to simply mean the values that are good that our teachers and parents taught us. Some very important moral values include being kind and honest, always trying to help those who are in need, show respect to other people, working with others when there is a need to and faithfulness to a partner or friend. When we imbibe moral values that are good, we are building ourselves to become very good humans. A very good character is synonymous to moral values that are good. Moral values can be basically defined as values that are defined by our society so that they can help in guiding people to live a life that is disciplined. Moral values that are basic like cooperative behaviour, kindness and honesty are most times constant, some other values can change or get modified over time. Other habits that portray good moral values include integrity, helpfulness, love respectfulness, compassion and hard work.

The importance of good moral values in our lives:

Life is full of many different challenges. Each day we live, morals are very necessary in helping us differentiate between things that are wrong and things that are right. Our morals and moral values affect both us and the society around us. Good moral values can help us improve our decision making in life.

Aspects of moral values:

Moral values cut across every area of our lives and even the society at large. For us to be able to have a good society and environment, it is important for each and every one of us to have solid and good moral values. It is important that we respect each other irrespective of the age or social status of the individual we are relating to. This can help in gaining good relations in every aspects and area of life whether it is in the workplace, family or the society. Good moral values can also help us in discovering our true purpose in life.

If it is true that moral values and habits are extremely important and beneficial to us humans, why then do we have a lot of people that do not have any of the moral values and do not follow the rules of morality in this world. Why do we have a lot of crimes happening all around us in the world today? Why is there so much disbelief and distrust among all of us?

The world we live in is an extremely tempting place and there are quick fixes for all of the problems facing us and this eventually turns our attention back to the main problem. Abiding to moral values in this life requires a lot of patience and also sacrifice but eventually, it helps one in analysing the difficulties and problems one faces and help in getting a solution to them.

Overall, someone who is ready and very determined to do their best in following a life that is meaningful in a patient way ends up following moral values without any fear of the person getting judged and such person ends up standing out from among the crowd.

Imbibing and inculcating good moral values:

The best time to imbibe good moral values into a person is when the person is still young and can still learn new characters and habits. Therefore, teachers and parents should endeavour to put in their best efforts into helping students and their children imbibe very solid moral values. Most children are very observant and they copy and learn habits and behaviours of their elder siblings, parents and teachers.

Children are bound to pay solid attention to the manner of action and behaviour of people older than them and they simply do the things they do. Children tend to speak only the truth if they have noticed that the elders around them are always truthful no matter the situation.

Likewise, it is important as elders to not be engaged in any form of bad behaviour as the children tend to assume they can also do these things and that they are not wrong because the elders around them are doing it. We should try to always demonstrate good and solid moral values to children around us. The best way to teach children good and solid moral values is through our own actions and habits.

It is very important for us as human beings to bear good and solid moral values like helping others, honesty , righteousness, decency, and even self-decency. People that have great moral values are very indispensable asset to others and even the society at large.

Moral values are the models of good and bad, which direct a person’s conduct and decisions. A person may adopt moral values from society and government, religion, or self. They are also inherited from the family as well.

In past ages, it was uncommon to see couples who lived respectively without the advantage of legal marriage rules. Of late, couples that set up a family without marriage are about as common as conventional wedded couples. There has been a shift in the moral values from time to time. For instance, in earlier times, the laws and ethics essentially originated from the cultures of a family and society as a whole. As society moved into the advanced time, these have largely disintegrated and people today tend to sue their own morals they want to follow.

Definition:

Moral values, as the name says, implies the significance of the moral qualities in the conduct of the kids, the youth and everyone one in life. Primarily the moral values are the qualities which one gains from life through the journey of life. They also depict the standards of what is right and what is wrong for us which we learn in the schools and in the workplace and from our surroundings as well. The beliefs which we gain from the family and the society that directs us how we lead our lives is what moral values are all about.

Moral Values in India:

India is a country which has been known for its values since the ancient times. We start to learn moral values from our family. In India, children are taught to respect their elders, greet them properly whenever they meet them. This a way of showing respect towards the elders. A child knows that he is supposed to obey whatever is asked by the elders. Such a moral value inculcates obedience in the mind of a child. Moral values are important for all of us in order to make us live a life of a good human being.

Important Moral Values in Life:

Although there are numerous moral values which one should follow in life, there are some of them which should be followed by almost everyone in the world. Firstly, always speaking the truth is one such moral value. We should never speak lies no matter what the circumstance is. Also, we should respect our elders. Our elders have seen and experienced the world better than us. It is always good for their blessings and advice in our important decisions. Loyalty towards our work and integrity are other such moral values which should be practised by one and all.

Examples from History:

There have been many examples from history which have depicted the importance and rightful following of moral values in life. One such example which we all are familiar with is from our epic Ramayana. Lord Ram was asked to go to fourteen years in exile just because his father King Dasaratha had granted a wish to the queen Kaikeyi. He could have refused it as well as it was not he who had granted the wish. But just to keep his father’s words he accepted the exile graciously and went into exile. Not only this, his wife Sita and his younger brother Laxman also followed his footsteps as they believed that it was their prime duty to follow him.

The Scenario Today:

Such was the moral value depicted during that period. But, now things are so different. People seem to have forgotten their moral values and are more focused on modern life. There are a number of instances every day where parents are left alone by their children to live a lonely old life. Many of them even die in isolation and there is no one to look after them during the last years. Apart from this, there are frequent quarrels between families over petty matters which could have been avoided if the people remembered the moral values our ancestors stood for.

Nowadays, people smoking and drinking and that too in front of their parents and children is a common sight. This is so against our moral values. We should not teach our children the evils ,such habits can do harm them in later years of their life.

The Remedy Available:

Since there has been a strong drift in the moral values of the people, the government has initiated to make the students learn about moral values in life and their importance to us. In order to execute this, schools of today teach moral values to the children in a greater sense. This is important as the students are the future of tomorrow. If the schools and the families alike teach the children such values from childhood, they shall turn into good human beings when they grow up.

Moral values depict our character to the outer world. They are of extreme importance in our lives. In earlier times, people were so determined to follow these values inherited from our ancestors. Such was their determination that once committed they never went back on their words. But with modernisation and urbanisation, we have seemed to have lost our moral values somewhere. Children disrespecting their parents are a common sight nowadays.

But, we should not blame the children for this. It is perhaps our own upbringing which has led to such immoral practices all over. It is we who should inculcate the moral values in our life first. Children will follow what they observe around them. If they shall see people living in joint families together and respecting each other, even they shall do so when they grow up. If we speak lies to our children even they shall do so. For the children imbibe the habits they see in their parents, teachers, peers at school and others around them.

So, it is we who have to take the first step forward. The children shall surely follow us. Moral values give us character and strength. If each one us practice some moral values in life, there would be peace and harmony all around. Moreover, we shall have a bright future for our next generations as well.

Moral Science , Moral Values , Values

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157 Topics on Morality & Essay Samples

In your morality essay, you can cover ethical dilemmas, philosophy, or controversial issues. To decide on your topic, check out this compilation of 138 titles prepared by our experts .

❔Top 10 Moral Essay Topics

🏆 Best Morality Essay Topics & Examples

👍 good essay topics on morality, 💡 most interesting morality topics to write about.

⭐ Simple & Easy Morality Essay Titles

❓ Questions on Morality for Discussion

❔ top 10 moral essay topics.

Moral issues in society today
Genetic engineering: ethical considerations.
Religious values and morals.
An ethical discussion about artificial intelligence.
The morality of stem cell research.
Euthanasia and social concerns.
The importance of ethical debate.
Life sentences and death penalties.
The relativism of free will.
GMO and environmental ethics.
Ethics and Morality Relationship Ethics is a term used to refer to the body of doctrines that guide individuals to behave in a way that is ideologically right, fine, and appropriate.
Relationship Between Ethics and Religion Essay While a believer will pose that the two function as a couple, a non-believer, on the other hand will hold that morality is independent of religion.
Morality of Human Acts and Determining Factors Such parameters include the action’s objective, the circumstances engulfing the action, and the intentions of the performer. For instance, when one sets fire to a bush near a human settlement, the primary objective of the […]
Happiness and Morality This paper will look at the meaning of happiness and morality, the relationship between morality and happiness and why many philosophers hold that in order to be happy, one has to be moral.
Sport Advantages, Disadvantages and Morality Another great advantage of this kind of sport is that it is very popular and its popularity can guarantee that a player will become famous and well paid, especially if he is playing at a […]
Religion Impact on Morality in Christianity and Islam The fact that discussion still goes on testifies to the importance and complexity of the issue rather than the lack of effort in clarifying it.
Morality and Ethics: Religion Effect on Human Behavior The second objective is to articulate the effect of religions on the economy and the political establishments of a society. The existence of a lot of information on the impact of religion on society made […]
Morality in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland The story presents a tale of the Wielands as a precautionary tale that is meant to cushion against taking hard stance in religious matters; Theodore Wieland’s over-commitment to religion is presented in this book as […]
Symbolic Imagery and Theme of Morality in The Tale of Kieu. Thus, it is no wonder that the author uses the uses the imagery of the moon in order to explore the mental state of the main character in situations that she encounters in her life.
Nietzsche’s Notion of Slave Morality Nietzsche praised the master moralities as the strong values that lead to onward development and evolutionary growth of mankind while he blamed the slave moralities for the weak and decadent nature of the society.
Religion and Morality: An Excursus This notion shows that there are many ways in which people can spread their values and shape the world to their image of perfection.
“Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by Peter Singer It argues that while Singer’s argument for the suffering and death from lack of basic necessities is bad, his conclusion that it is the duty of the wealthy to do something to alleviate the suffering […]
Socrates’ Claim “Morality Is Objective” People’s moral beliefs of what is good and what is bad is a construction of the knowledge that was obtained from other people of the same society as children learning from the parents.
“The Morality of Migration” by Benhabib The morality of migration is never simple because of the necessity to define human rights on the one hand and the authority of the government on the other hand.
Kant’s Premises of Morality in “Gone Baby Gone” Film Looking through the various theories of morality, it could be noticed that Kant’s three premises present the ultimate ground for the philosophical process. In conclusion, it could be claimed that the detective’s actions were morally […]
Deontological Ethics and Morality According to the theory, moral ethics should enable members of society to attain happiness. Finally, moral ethics should also provide room for improvement to nurture the desired behaviors in society.
Morality in Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s Views On the whole, morality takes its origins in the tension between a person’s desires or needs and the values of a society.
Religion and Morality Interconnection In other words, one can state that while religion may sometimes be the cause of evil, without religion there is no basis for religious morality.
Noble Morality and Slave Morality The major difference between good morality and bad morality according to Nietzsche is that good morality is connected to nobility and bad morals are linked to the common man and simplicity.
“Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis: Morality as a Natural Law A major takeaway from the way the author structures his argument is the objectivity of the moral law as the law of nature, and one may understand it reliably through reason and observation.
Ethics and Morality in Health Profession Health professionals watch the patient suffering; in this scenario, any intervention leads to a rise in agony and pain, thus putting the healthcare providers in a dilemma.
Morality and Free Will in “Daisy Miller” by James Later on that evening, Daisy suggests to Winterborne about her wish to ride on the lake and willingly overlooks the appropriateness of the time.
Moran’s View on Teaching Morally and Teaching Morality The teachers, the state and the entire society are the main player in the act of including morality education in schools but have been blocked from doing so by the people’s view of morality as […]
Rhetoric: “The Morality of Birth Control” by Margaret Sanger In her speech, Sanger supports the argument that the American women should have the right to learn more about the birth control because of their responsibility for the personal health and happiness in contrast to […]
Morality and Truth in Real-Life Situations Any delay could cause the loss of people’s lives, and the financial and reputational losses to the airline and partner companies would be enormous.
Guilt as an Inner Morality Category Thus, the category of guilt must be evaluated case by case, and injustice is not a reason for the lack of local guilt.
Mortality and Unfulfillment in Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” Tolstoy’s novel, “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” is a meditation on life and morality, as seen through the eyes of a man who is nearing the end of his life.
World Religions, Morality, and Ethical Issues Equality is the core of humanity since human beings were made in the image and likeness of God and have the same value as the supreme being.
Readers on Morality: Don’t Let TV Be Guide The article “Readers on Morality: Do not Let TV be a Guide” published by the Today is focused on the perception of people about the impact of TV on morality.
Kant’s Philosophy: Can Rules Define Morality He uses the formula of the law of nature and the end in itself, to support the categorical imperative principle as the only command that dictates the universality of actions.
“Morality and Religion” Article by Hauser and Singer Marc Hauser and Peter Singer explain the importance of morality and how it is related to religion in their “Morality and religion” report.
Morality and Legitimacy in Politics and Religion Thinking about it, it is always the wealthiest and most powerful people in society who get to rule in governments, and mostly the needs of the poor and powerless are considered the least.
The Morality of Prenatal Genetic Screening Most of the time, “genetic screening has been more associated with this option in the collective mental, rather than the possibility to better address a specific condition, leading to the complex discussion of an ethical […]
Machiavelli’s vs. Plato’s Ideas of Political Morality According to him, reconciling the gap between ideal and reality is necessary for the development of a political philosophy capable of guiding the Greeks in their quest for liberty.
The Morality and Law Relationship In the US, a combination of factory owner neglect and a desire to maximize profits drove factories to ignore the moral and ethical concerns of their workers.
Value-Added Tax and Tax Morality: Legal Framework In order for the concept of tax morality to be determined, it is essential to identify the legal framework for the flat tax that consumers pay once they purchase an item.
Virtue Ethics and Private Morality It can tentatively be characterized as an approach that emphasizes virtues and moral character, as opposed to approaches that emphasize the importance of duties and rules or the consequences of actions.
History of Tax Morality Theory At the beginning of the 1990s, tax morale drew widespread interest and has since become a fundamental problem in the scholarly investigation of tax compliance.
Law and Morality Separation and Relationship The qualifier ‘objectively’ obscures its ultimate point of uncertainty, which is alluded to in the tautological phrase ‘rule of recognition.’ The secularized legislation, like the secular state, relies on the success of its people’s consciences, […]
Morality in Utilitarianism and Deontology Followers of utilitarianism thus claim that an action is morally right when it increases the happiness of the involved parties and minimizes the harm.
Global Poverty: Famine, Affluence, and Morality In the article Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Michael Slote contends that rich people have a moral obligation to contribute more to charities.
Kantian Morality and Enlightenment According to Kant, thinking of leaders as guardians who have to guide others and prevent them from “daring to take a single step” without strict directions is the premise for the end of humanity.
Pop Culture and Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Morality, and Gender On the other hand, there is a historically, politically, and economically determined point of intersection between parts of the feminist movement and the conservative media.
The Relativism and Objectivism Views on Morality However, the criticism of the theory refers to Kant and utilitarianism as other moral theories that always include the interests of other people as major factors. On the other hand, objectivism illustrates the necessity for […]
“On the Genealogy of Morality”: Nietzsche’s Critique of Modern Values The central problem of On the Genealogy of Morality can be found in the first essay titled Good and Evil, where the skeletal structure of the state-of-the-art of morality is depicted by Nietzsche.
“Active and Passive Euthanasia” and “Sexual Morality” According to Scruton, morality is a constraint upon reasons for action and a normal consequence of the possession of a first-person perspective. For Scruton, sexual morality includes the condemnation of lust and perversion that is, […]
Mandatory Vaccination Issue: Support, Morality, and Public Benefit The author of the article states the presence of a moral obligation to undergo mandatory vaccination. The author alleges that there is a public benefit when there are policies for mandatory vaccination.
Famine, Affluence, and Morality: Essay Analysis In addition to the constructive rate of preference as the time off of the suffering, the form of pleasure related to food, housing, also medical care is more valued than the form of pleasure associated […]
Animal Morality Debate Studies Essentially, humans should ensure animals have their basic rights because both animals and humans are social animals and should live interdependently in mutually benefitting ways.
Metaphors that Help Understand Christian Morality That is how the writer proves his thesis that there is no chance of being happy and fulfilled as a person without satisfying the need of a higher power and finding a religious purpose.
Moral Rules, Christian Morality and Healthcare Environments All types of morality and ethics allow people to live in harmony and face the consequences of their actions when morals are not followed.
Morality and Humane Traits in Huckleberry Finn The most important one, in the presence of which it is possible for the author to commit a legal crime, is the fact that doing otherwise would cross my own ethical values.
“Seven Fallen Feathers”: Injustice and Morality The issues of the relationship between the indigenous people and the Canadian population are highly varying. Even though the are many distinctions between the people described, such as the periods they lived in and the […]
Founding Era, Morality, Knowledge, and Religion The founding fathers were instrumental in ensuring that the right approaches were adopted to shape the nation. Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the place of religion in America 65.
Malaria and Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane: Health, Morality and Economics While every single negative effect that DDT has on the people in the vicinity is to be taken into account and considered a separate legitimate statement against the use of DDT, the fact that the […]
How Decency, Morality and Fairness Have Been Reflected in Islamic Commercial Transactions Business ethics is a field of study that analyzes all the moral and ethical principles that govern the conduct of all the involved parties in commercial relations.
Ethical Philosophy: Morality and Self-Interest Generally, it is a term that is used to describe the code of acceptable behaviors in a given context or society.
Morality Evolution, Its Explanations, and Definitions The evolution of morality is closely connected to the issues of human evolution and human moral development7 that are discussed by Darwin and his followers.
Morality Law and Fuller’s Principle Applied to Scenarios It is therefore the responsibility of both parties to follow the law that governs them: the officials expect that the people will follow the law and hence the people should also expect that the officials […]
Three Stages of Morality by Kohlberg and Its Reconstructruction It is a way of reasoning exemplified by adolescents and adults who seek to judge the morality of actions by the views and mores of society.
God and Human Sexuality: Changes in Culture and Morality In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he stresses the return to the original purpose of the Old Testament law which can be fulfilled not just by refraining from murder, adultery, and false oaths, […]
Ethics and Morality Theories: Explanation and Comparison The third area that is given consideration in observing the ethics of care is the importance of background information in protecting and upholding the interests of the individuals in question.
“Morality, Metaphysics, and Chinese Culture” by Vincent Shen It is necessary to underline the fact that we could not perceive the morality as human qualities cultivation; the author stressed the idea of humanism, subjectivity and self-assertion to be the necessary components of the […]
Morality in “Faerie Queene Book II” by Capote and “In Cold Blood” by Spenser The thanksgiving dinner for the family reunion is also one case in point that represents religious as well as social morals for the Clutter family.Mr.
Same Sex Marriage Morality: Discussion Patterson further concluded that as long as the homosexual parents could let their children understand the real scenario, there is a strong indication that children could very well accept and love their parents even though […]
The Two Main Types of Morality Behind Nietzsche’s Theory Nietzsche regarded that every personality needs to arrange their moral structure: the key point of principles is to facilitate every individual to sublimate and regulate their obsessions, to emphasize the originality inherent in their being, […]
Morality: Philosophical Questions It will be recalled that a person is free to perform an action if and only if that person performs the action if he chooses to perform it, does not perform the action if he […]
Kant’s Opinion on Morality Kant basis his principles of moral ethics on rational procedures and distinguishes the concept of duty from the “self and others” asserting that all actions must be performed only out of a sense of duty […]
Morality of a Defense Attorney Because of the responsibilities that lawyers have once they have committed themselves to their clients, there are times that their morality is put to test.”A lawyer has to be with a client loyal, knowledgeable, skillful, […]
The Nature and Basic Principles of Morality Analysis Furthermore they have to be the controls of such a being as we suppose God is. The notion of the utilitarianism is that the first and most significant principle that is believed can be resulting […]
Morality in Neo-Confucian Works In fact, such a view on the nature of things implies that humans and their minds form a unity with the world.
Religion and Morality Relation One impediment to the analysis of religion and morality is the propensity of analysts to use their social perspective in describing a moral concern.
Morality and Religion: What Is Moral Behavior? The aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion by attempting to give an insight into what constitutes moral and immoral behavior as well as the relationship that exists between morality and religion.
Survival Morality in Ooka’s “Fires on the Plain” Thus, the protagonist is facing the unknown in total solitude because the society around him is in survival mode, at the point of desperation, making each individual and group extremely pragmatic: All stop caring about […]
God, Others and Self: Catholic Morality It is necessary to note that Christian ethics is a crucial part of the Christian religion that defines appropriate and wrong behaviors, and is based on several sources.
Morality and Politics: Aristotle and Machiavelli For a government to be effective, there must be a set of morals and virtues in place to ensure the people are happy.
Non-Consequential Morality Theories and Medical Ethics In particular, it repudiates the idea that the nature of moral order results in sentiment and emotion. In such cases, it is necessary to ask for patient’s consent to reveal the private data in order […]
Lobbying: Ethics, Morality and Legalities In bribery, the objective of the bribe is clear while in lobbying, the person giving the gift may necessarily not state the reason why s/he is doing so but in mind, s/he is sure the […]
Morality of States and the Use of Force Abroad In such scenarios, the sovereignty of the country as advanced through the discourse of international relations by the UN is invalidated.
Opium Trade Morality From Political Perspective Warren was a famous writer of his period, and The Opium Question became a result of Warren’s cooperation with James Matheson, who was interested in presenting his vision of the Opium War, as well as […]
Opium Trade, Opium War and Its Morality in History What was the economic and political significance of the British-Chinese opium trade? In addition, moral was not the primary concern of the Chinese people involved in the opium trade.
Ban Smoking Near the Child: Issues of Morality The decision to ban smoking near the child on father’s request is one of the demonstrative examples. The father’s appeal to the Supreme Court of California with the requirement to prohibit his ex-wife from smoking […]
Morality of Friedrich Nietzsche and Alasdair MacIntyre Self-deception is the nature of moral judgments because relying on a set of rules that is universal for everyone, regardless of how limiting, presupposes the control over the people’s actions and the security of the […]
Morality, Faith, and Dignity in Modern Youth The blistering evolution of society combined with the appearance of new opportunities resulted in the significant deterioration of moral and values which determine the nature of human actions.
Open Immigration, Its Benefits and Morality In this paper, Kukathas articulates that the benefits of open migration as compared to other approaches to the question of immigration. In this essay, Risse makes the argument that “the natural resources of the planet […]
Law: The Morality of the Sweatshops A closer look at the way in which African sweatshops work will reveal that the introduction of the specified principles into the operation of sweatshops is hardly possible due to the cultural differences between the […]
Thomas Aquinas: Morality and God As the matter of fact, the fourth argument has the moral aspect that shows the Aquinas’s attitude towards the relationship between the God and morality.

⭐ Simple & Easy Health Essay Titles

MTV Channel and Morality Values Therefore, it is possible to state that the channel is a product of capitalism and it reflects trends which persist in the society.
Religion and Morality Connection In the words of Plato, “Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods and impiety is that which is not dear to them”..
Religious Studies: Morality in Buddhism In this case, much attention should be paid to a collection of restrictions or taboos that should govern the decisions or actions of a person. This is one of the issues that should not be […]
Adam Smith on the Rules of Morality The reason for this is that, contrary to what many people think, the rules of morality are simultaneously ‘given’ and continuously formed, in regards to what happened to be the affiliated external circumstances.
Morality and Modernity: Cronon and Daston’s Understanding of Nature Although there is no connection between the ideas expressed by Cronon and Daston and the ideas that the authors of the movie are trying to convey, the latter can still be viewed through the lens […]
Computer Games: Morality in the Virtual World It is necessary to note that these sets of morals are often employed in the virtual world only as many people create alter egos when playing games.
Nietzsche’s and Sartre’s Views on Morality On balance, it is possible to note that Nietzsche and Sartre both see morality as certain doctrine aimed at helping people live in the society.
Ethics and Morality in Business Practice According to Debeljak and Krkac, the corporate environment is quite broad and defined by a number of attributes like the market system, the number of players in the market, the amount of competition in the […]
Morality of Warfare It should be noted that the Quran only allows the Muslim to engage in war if their faith is threatened and there is need to protect it but abhors war if the Muslim will engage […]
Memory Lane and Morality In the first experiment where participants were expected to remember their childhood experience, those memories aided the experimenter more than they let the participants take control.
The Morality of Euthanasia In the meantime the medication and the doctors are not trivial anymore in stopping the pain and the victim despite all the sufferings, he or she is in a vegetative state and there is nothing […]
Morality as a Code of Conduct This is upon reference to an argument on the righteousness of the act. If only a given community or an entity can consider the issue as of moral value, thus it is solely their decision […]
Morality in Buddhism The purpose of this paper is to expound on the concept of morality in Buddhism, and how the various Buddhist teachings, such as the Four Noble Truths, have enhanced my morality in me and in […]
Animal Liberation vs. Environmentalism With regards to environmentalists, Callicott noted that they were more holistic and real than the animal liberationists since they allocated moral values to the natural ecosystems and resources of the environment.
Morality Is Rooted in the Character of God In Christianity the character is divided into two aspects where one should exercise the love to God and to man, just as Christ grouped the Ten Commandments in to two.
Relationship Between Charity, Duty, and Morality The author’s argument is that it is necessary for the society to change its way of responding to the problems of needy people.
Ethics and Morality in Society and Business The main idea of a business ethic is that it closely correlates with the laws of society, and even though people’s kindness and respect are expected, in order for the companies and organizations to flourish, […]
Hegel’s Ideas on Action, Morality, Ethics and Freedom Nonetheless, the duties and the very morality developed in one society can significantly differ from the norms accepted in another society, so it is impossible to state that ethical norms of a society correspond to […]
Sport Drugs and Its Ethic and Morality Impacts Ethics and morality have often been a part of the debate in the usage of such drugs and especially, the influence that the case will have on the greater public.
Devil’s Playground: Social Norms and Rules of Morality It is the first step to the social chaos and decline which can be observed today in the youth’s alcohol and drugs abuse in spite of all the limitations. According to the Amish people’s visions, […]
Famine, Affluence, and Morality He claims that giving a certain amount to Bengal would result to suffering of individuals and their dependants, which will correspond to the suffering he relieved in Bengal.
The Essence of Morality as a Driving Force Behind One’s Behavior For example, Plato used to refer to the notion of morality as being synonymous to the notion of justice: “True’ city and the corrupted city are put forward for us as models of human nature […]
Kim Trong as the Embodiment of Confucian Morality At the beginning of the poem, one can see Kim Trong as an ideal of a man according to the norms and principles of the Vietnamese society: Kim Trong, a scion of the noblest stock.
Greek Civilization: Morality and ‘Philosophy’ of Life, Politics, and the Way History Is Written by Herodotus In this respect, the Book II written by Herodotus can be considered a good documentary evidence of the process of embalming though morality of this process can be questioned by the contemporary audience taking into […]
Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s? Labour and economy remained intertwined in that; the former was a factor that determined the state of the latter. Scholars single out economical differences between the two states as the cause of the slavery in […]
Business Ethics: Morality Issues Toward Customers However, with the aggressive managerial and expansionist practices utilized at the end of the 20th century, and a series of scandals in which the administration of large corporations was involved, the issues of preserving the […]
Sports Industry: Morality vs. Money In the end, they will find no need for the use of steroids and the integrity of the game would be restored. At the core of this quest to be the first is the need […]
“On the Genealogy of Morality” by Friedrich Nietzsche: Passage Analysis They based their perception of what is good on what they received and deemed good while the masses were obliged to accept that as common and if common then as the norm of the values.
John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant on Morality Unfortunately, in the scrimmage, George had to run for his life and by the time he came back to England he had not heard about his mother; they were separated.
Morality and Moral Responsibility as Presented in Plays by Brecht and Kushner Despite the harshness of the environment in Afghanistan, as we come to discover through the eyes of the daughter, she fosters on in her quest to find her mother.
Can Law Exist Without Morality?
What Is the Difference Between Religious Morality and Secular Morality?
Does Morality Have a Place in Law?
Are Spirituality and Morality the Same Thing?
Can Science Explain and Account for Human Morality?
What Are the Differences Between Ethics and Morality?
Does Morality Override Self-Interest?
Can Morality Only Come From God?
What Is the Difference Between Morality and Ethics?
Does Fiction Build the Morality of Individuals and Societies?
How to Teach Morality Without Religion?
What Will Happen to Society Without Morality?
Is God the Only Possible Foundation for Objective Morality?
Can Profitability and Morality Co-exist?
How Does Personal Morality Affect Business?
What Are the Consequences of Nietzsche’s Discussion of Religion on His Understanding of Morality?
Does Killing Someone Have Any Morality Behind It?
Which Socio-Economic Indicators Influence Collective Morality?
Is There a Correlation Between Wealth and Morality?
What Are Nietzsche’s Main Arguments Against Morality?
How Does Morality Affect the Health Care Field?
What Are the Causes of Disturbances of Morality in Redistribution Systems?
Does Morality Depend on Society?
What Does Morality Mean for the Average Person?
Can a Society Be Ethical Without Morality?
When Did Humans Develop Morality?
Should Morality Be Enforced by the Law?
Why Is Morality Important in Business Ethics?
Is Human Morality Instinctive or Learned?
Can Humans Live Without Morality?
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Essay On Values

Essay on Moral Values

500+ words essay on moral values.

Moral values are considered an essential aspect of human life. Moral values determine one’s nature, behaviour and overall attitude towards life and other people. In our lives, our decisions are primarily based on our values. The choices we make in our lives impact us and our society, organisation and nation. It is believed that a person with good values makes wise decisions that benefit everyone. On the contrary, people who have no moral values think only of themselves. They don’t care about others’ needs or society and make choices based solely on their needs. They create an unfriendly and sometimes unsafe environment around themselves.

Importance of Moral Values

The value of a person reflects their personality. Moral values help us understand the difference between right and wrong, good and evil and make the right decisions and judgements. They empower and drive a person to be a better human being and work for the betterment of society. Some moral values a person can inculcate in themselves are: dedication, honesty, optimism, commitment, patience, courtesy, forgiveness, compassion, respect, unity, self-control, cooperation, care and love. A person becomes humble and dependable with good values. Everyone looks up to a person with good values, whether personally or professionally.

If a person has good values, he spreads love, joy, and positive vibes. A person with good values works for the upliftment of society, along with taking care of their life. Such people are always considerate of the needs of others and understand the importance of unity and teamwork. They don’t lose their temper very easily and forgive others. People with good values are an asset to the organisation they work in and the society they live in.

Values Must Be Imbibed

We need to imbibe good values to function as humans and live in a society. Good values include dedication towards work, honesty, respect, commitment, love, helping others, taking responsibility for others’ deeds and acting responsibly. All these values are essential for the positive growth of an individual.

If you want to become a true leader and inspire others, you need to have good values. People always show respect and love to a person with good values. Additionally, they’ll trust and depend on a person of good values because they get proper advice and opinion from such a person.

Ethics Must Be Followed

A person with good values behaves ethically. We often hear of an ethical code of conduct. These are a set of rules or codes an individual is expected to follow. For example, talking politely with others, respecting elders/co-workers, handling difficult situations calmly, maintaining discipline and acting responsibly. Following these ethics helps create a healthy and safe work environment. So, it is essential for everyone to follow the ethical code of conduct.

The Role of Parents and Teachers

Moral values are not just born in a person but must be taught and inculcated right from childhood. When we talk about raising or nurturing children with good values, the credit goes to parents and teachers. It is their responsibility to teach children good values and should make them understand why it’s necessary to follow ethical behaviour. Schools should also take the responsibility to have a separate class dedicated to teaching ethics and moral values from the beginning. They should also train the students so that they imbibe these values.

An individual should imbibe good moral values to do well both in their professional and personal lives. A person with good values is also recognised among the crowd and is always appreciated for his behaviour and attitude towards others. On the contrary, people who lack good values often get into trouble and are not accepted in society. So, we should make sure that we teach our children good values and ethical behaviour from an early age. It is our responsibility to make our future generation learn moral values and ethics. This will help them become good human beings and upstanding citizens of the world. Additionally, it will give them the strength and courage to achieve great things in their lives.

The importance of moral values cannot be overstated. A nation with a high proportion of good values will undoubtedly progress and develop more rapidly than where people lack values. Moral values nurture us individually, build strong character and help create a better world around us.

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Essay on Moral Philosophy

Students are often asked to write an essay on Moral Philosophy in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Moral Philosophy

What is moral philosophy.

Moral philosophy is thinking about what is right and wrong. It’s like a guide for making good choices. People who study this are called philosophers. They ask big questions about how we should live and treat others.

Important Ideas in Moral Philosophy

There are many ideas in moral philosophy. Some say we should act in ways that bring the most happiness. Others believe we should follow strict rules, like always telling the truth, no matter what.

Making Decisions

When we make decisions, moral philosophy can help us choose the best action. It’s not just about following rules, but thinking carefully about how our choices affect others.

Different Cultures, Different Morals

What’s right in one culture might be wrong in another. Moral philosophy helps us understand these differences. It teaches us to be open-minded and respectful to everyone’s views.

Why It Matters

Moral philosophy matters because it shapes our world. It influences laws, schools, and how we get along with each other. It helps us build a world where everyone can live well and happily.

250 Words Essay on Moral Philosophy

Moral philosophy is about thinking hard on what is right and what is wrong. It is like a big map that guides people on how to be good and how to choose the right path in life. This subject asks questions like “What should I do?” and “How should I live?” to help everyone understand how to act well.

Right and Wrong

One big part of moral philosophy is figuring out what is right and what is wrong. It is not always easy, because different people and cultures might have their own ideas. For example, sharing might be seen as good, while stealing is seen as bad. Moral philosophers try to find rules that can apply to everyone, no matter where they are from.

Good Habits

Moral philosophy also talks about virtues, which are good habits. Being honest, brave, and kind are all examples of virtues. These are like muscles – the more you use them, the stronger they get. By practicing good habits, people can become better at being good.

Choices Matter

Every day, people make choices. Some are small, like what to eat for breakfast, and some are big, like helping a friend in trouble. Moral philosophy teaches that every choice can matter and that thinking about the reasons behind our choices is important.

Why Study Moral Philosophy?

Studying moral philosophy is important because it helps people understand how to make the world a better place. It teaches that what we do affects others and that being good is not just about following rules, but about caring for each other. By learning moral philosophy, students can grow up to make wise, kind choices in life.

500 Words Essay on Moral Philosophy

Moral philosophy is a part of philosophy that asks big questions about what is right and wrong. It is like a guide that helps people decide how to act in a good way. Think of it as a map for behavior, showing us which paths are good to take and which ones we should avoid.

Good vs. Bad

One of the main things moral philosophy looks at is the difference between good and bad actions. For example, sharing your toys with a friend is seen as a good thing because it makes both of you happy. On the other hand, taking something that doesn’t belong to you is considered bad because it can hurt others. Moral philosophy tries to explain why some things are good and others are bad.

Rules and Choices

Moral philosophy also talks about rules that many people agree on, like telling the truth and being fair. These rules can help us make choices that are good for everyone. But sometimes, it’s hard to know what the best choice is. That’s when we have to think carefully and use what we know about right and wrong to decide.

Different Views

People from different places or with different beliefs might have their own ideas about what is right and wrong. This is because what we think is good or bad can be shaped by our families, our friends, and the society we live in. Moral philosophy helps us understand these different views and why people might not always agree.

You might wonder why we need to study moral philosophy. It’s important because it helps us live together peacefully. When we understand what is right and wrong, we can make better choices that help us get along with others. It also makes us think about how our actions affect other people and the world around us.

Thinking for Ourselves

Even though moral philosophy can give us some answers, it also encourages us to think for ourselves. We can learn from others, but in the end, we have to decide what we believe is right. This means asking questions, listening to our hearts, and sometimes even standing up for what we think is good, even if it’s not easy.

Moral philosophy is like a compass that helps us navigate through life’s choices. It’s not just about following rules; it’s about understanding why those rules are there and thinking about how our actions affect others. By learning about moral philosophy, we can grow into thoughtful and caring people who make the world a better place, one good choice at a time.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Moral Development
Essay on Money Management
Essay on Money And Happiness

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

The Difference Between Morals and Ethics

Brittany is a health and lifestyle writer and former staffer at TODAY on NBC and CBS News. She's also contributed to dozens of magazines.

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Stockarm / Getty Images

What Is Morality?

What are ethics, ethics, morals, and mental health, are ethics and morals relative, discovering your own ethics and morals, frequently asked questions.

Are ethics vs. morals really just the same thing? It's not uncommon to hear morality and ethics referenced in the same sentence. That said, they are two different things. While they definitely have a lot of commonalities (not to mention very similar definitions!), there are some distinct differences.

Below, we'll outline the difference between morals and ethics, why it matters, and how these two words play into daily life.

Morality is a person or society's idea of what is right or wrong, especially in regard to a person's behavior.

Maintaining this type of behavior allows people to live successfully in groups and society. That said, they require a personal adherence to the commitment of the greater good.

Morals have changed over time and based on location. For example, different countries can have different standards of morality. That said, researchers have determined that seven morals seem to transcend across the globe and across time:

Bravery: Bravery has historically helped people determine hierarchies. People who demonstrate the ability to be brave in tough situations have historically been seen as leaders.
Fairness: Think of terms like "meet in the middle" and the concept of taking turns.
Defer to authority: Deferring to authority is important because it signifies that people will adhere to rules that attend to the greater good. This is necessary for a functioning society.
Helping the group: Traditions exist to help us feel closer to our group. This way, you feel more supported, and a general sense of altruism is promoted.
Loving your family: This is a more focused version of helping your group. It's the idea that loving and supporting your family allows you to raise people who will continue to uphold moral norms.
Returning favors : This goes for society as a whole and specifies that people may avoid behaviors that aren't generally altruistic .
Respecting others’ property: This goes back to settling disputes based on prior possession, which also ties in the idea of fairness.

Many of these seven morals require deferring short-term interests for the sake of the larger group. People who act purely out of self-interest can often be regarded as immoral or selfish.

Many scholars and researchers don't differentiate between morals and ethics, and that's because they're very similar. Many definitions even explain ethics as a set of moral principles.

The big difference when it comes to ethics is that it refers to community values more than personal values. Dictionary.com defines the term as a system of values that are "moral" as determined by a community.

In general, morals are considered guidelines that affect individuals, and ethics are considered guideposts for entire larger groups or communities. Ethics are also more culturally based than morals.

For example, the seven morals listed earlier transcend cultures, but there are certain rules, especially those in predominantly religious nations, that are determined by cultures that are not recognized around the world.

It's also common to hear the word ethics in medical communities or as the guidepost for other professions that impact larger groups.

For example, the Hippocratic Oath in medicine is an example of a largely accepted ethical practice. The American Medical Association even outlines nine distinct principles that are specified in medical settings. These include putting the patient's care above all else and promoting good health within communities.

Since morality and ethics can impact individuals and differ from community to community, research has aimed to integrate ethical principles into the practice of psychiatry.

That said, many people grow up adhering to a certain moral or ethical code within their families or communities. When your morals change over time, you might feel a sense of guilt and shame.

For example, many older people still believe that living with a significant other before marriage is immoral. This belief is dated and mostly unrecognized by younger generations, who often see living together as an important and even necessary step in a relationship that helps them make decisions about the future. Additionally, in many cities, living costs are too high for some people to live alone.

However, even if younger person understands that it's not wrong to live with their partner before marriage they might still feel guilty for doing so, especially if they were taught that doing so was immoral.

When dealing with guilt or shame, it's important to assess these feelings with a therapist or someone else that you trust.

Morality is certainly relative since it is determined individually from person to person. In addition, morals can be heavily influenced by families and even religious beliefs, as well as past experiences.

Ethics are relative to different communities and cultures. For example, the ethical guidelines for the medical community don't really have an impact on the people outside of that community. That said, these ethics are still important as they promote caring for the community as a whole.

This is important for young adults trying to figure out what values they want to carry into their own lives and future families. This can also determine how well young people create and stick to boundaries in their personal relationships .

Part of determining your individual moral code will involve overcoming feelings of guilt because it may differ from your upbringing. This doesn't mean that you're disrespecting your family, but rather that you're evolving.

Working with a therapist can help you better understand the moral code you want to adhere to and how it ties in aspects of your past and present understanding of the world.

A Word From Verywell

Understanding the difference between ethics vs. morals isn't always cut and dry. And it's OK if your moral and ethical codes don't directly align with the things you learned as a child. Part of growing up and finding autonomy in life involves learning to think for yourself. You determine what you will and will not allow in your life, and what boundaries are acceptable for you in your relationships.

That said, don't feel bad if your ideas of right and wrong change over time. This is a good thing that shows that you are willing to learn and understand those with differing ideas and opinions.

Working with a therapist could prove to be beneficial as you sort out what you do and find to be acceptable parts of your own personal moral code.

Morals refer to a sense of right or wrong. Ethics, on the other hand, refer more to principles of "good" versus "evil" that are generally agreed upon by a community.

Examples of morals can include things such as not lying, being generous, being patient, and being loyal. Examples of ethics can include the ideals of honesty, integrity, respect, and loyalty.

Because morals involve a personal code of conduct, it is possible for people to be moral but not ethical. A person can follow their personal moral code without adhering to a more community-based sense of ethical standards. In some cases, a persons individual morals may be at odds with society's ethics.

Dictionary.com. Morality .

Curry OS, Mullins DA, Whitehouse H. Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies . Current Anthropology. 2019;60(1):47-69. doi:10.1086/701478

Dictionary.com. Ethics .

Crowden A. Ethically Sensitive Mental Health Care: Is there a Need for a Unique Ethics for Psychiatry? Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry . 2003;37(2):143-149.

By Brittany Loggins Brittany is a health and lifestyle writer and former staffer at TODAY on NBC and CBS News. She's also contributed to dozens of magazines.

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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Essays in Moral Skepticism

Richard Joyce, Essays in Moral Skepticism , Oxford University Press, 2016, 274pp., $74.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198754879.

Reviewed by Jack Woods, University of Leeds

Richard Joyce is best known for his articulation and defense of the moral error theory, for his particular brand of moral fictionalism, and for his part (along with Sharon Street) in popularizing evolution-based debunking arguments against various moral realisms. This book is proof that these achievements unite into a compelling take on moral thought, talk, and the justification thereof. The collection is divided into three parts, corresponding roughly to these three claims to fame, though the essays often cross these section divisions. The two new contributions are an essay revisiting evolutionary debunking arguments in the light of recent developments and a useful summary introduction to the three themes of the book. Even though eleven of the twelve essays are reprinted, collection in one volume is useful given how much of it was previously published in other volumes and special collections.

The first section, on moral error theory, illustrates the usefulness of collecting this work together. Chapter 1, "Expressivism, Motivational Internalism, and Hume," lays out the relationship between Joyce's error-theory and non-cognitivism. Roughly, his view is that moral judgments have cognitive content, like ordinary judgments about mid-sized dry goods, but our moral assertions nevertheless also express conative non-cognitive content. We might think of this as a V-shaped expressivist view of moral assertion: as a matter of convention, our moral assertions express both cognitive content and non-cognitive content. Truth and falsity apply to the former -- and since there ain't no (instantiated) moral properties, moral assertions are typically false -- whereas our motivational states and much of the function of moral discourse are systematically connected to the latter. It is an initially attractive package since it allows us to (a) maintain the common sense view that moral judgments are to be glossed with non-moral descriptive judgments, while (b) recognizing and, in a sense, legitimating a deep connection between moral assertions and our conative and affective states.

Whether the initial attraction of this package persists on inspection is another question. One of Joyce's central motivations for the expressivist portion of his view is the putative incoherence of a moral assertion that is conjoined with a denial of being in the relevant conative state:

Hitler was evil; but I subscribe to no normative standard that condemns him or his actions.

This, though, doesn't feel incoherent in the same way Moore-paradoxical constructions like:

Nazim Hikmet was a poet revolutionary, but I don't believe he was

do, at least when I force myself to hear "subscribe" in an expressivist-friendly way. I worry that insofar as this example feels incoherent, it is because "subscription to a normative standard" typically indicates belief talk, not expression talk (2014: footnote 16 and objection 6). In its most humdrum usage, we subscribe to theories and views, which is (at least usually) a kind of belief-like endorsement of descriptive content. And "evil" feels pragmatically connected with condemnation -- we usually don't believe people to be evil if we do not condemn their actions. So it is difficult to avoid hearing the above as "Hitler was evil, but I don't believe he was". More generally, I have argued that analogous, but more explicitly non-cognitive constructions simply aren't incoherent in the same way as paradigmatic Moore-paradoxical constructions. This puts pressure on the idea that expression of non-cognitive content is (partially) constitutive of competent moral assertion.

That there is a constitutive connection between moral assertion and cognitive content like belief is rather more plausible (as Joyce notes). Given that:

Hitler was evil, but I don't believe it

is flagrantly incoherent in exactly the same way as ordinary instances of Moore's paradox, expressivists need find room for belief talk. This is a lesson many recent expressivists have taken on board. This situation suggests that motivation for a Joyce-style expressivism/error-theory package will not come from arguments like the above, but rather from careful study of the overall theoretical virtues and vices of the package. As we should expect.

Chapter 2, "Morality, Schmorality," launches an investigation into the functional role of morality on the back of an analysis of whether it's bad to be bad. Joyce argues that if all (reasonable) pretenders to morality turn out to be schmoralities -- if they fail to serve the intended functional role of morality -- then we ought to be error theorists. This raises important questions about the costs of error-theory; after all, we want the functional role of morality served somehow . Joyce suggests that we might turn to a form of fictionalism here, fleshing out the common thought that we ought to carry on with our moral practices even in the wake of widespread error. He tempers this suggestion by arguing that whether or not this is the right path -- whether it is good to pretend to believe in the good -- itself depends on empirical facts about psychological feasibility and pragmatic utility (this theme is revisited later the collection.)

The complementary third chapter, "The Accidental Error Theorist," suggests that many contemporary naturalistic accounts of moral properties slip into error theory unwittingly by potentially inhuman theorizing. That is, they postulate properties which fit reality only under the presumption of implausible restrictions on what kind of beings we are. Response-dependent and sentimentalist accounts posit generic properties, such as a general disposition to feel resentment upon certain coarsely described stimuli, which we probably don't possess. For example, it is extremely implausible that we are always disposed to feel resentment in the face of unkindness; it is somewhat implausible that we are typically disposed to feel it.

Ideal observer theories and contractualist accounts, on the other hand, neglect the fact that we humans come in varieties far askew from the bourgeois moral and doxastic norm theorists in these traditions typically start with. These positions thus tend to either succumb to the temptation to cheat by building a substantive moral constraint into their account or, alternatively, attempt increasingly fraught rationalizations of counterexamples in terms of failures of information or affect. In short, many roads to error theory are paved with empirical plausibility; starting from a compelling analysis of what moral properties are, we may end up accepting it as the correct analysis of moral properties and rejecting that so-analyzed moral properties are ever instantiated.

The final essay of this section, "Metaethical Pluralism", ties these themes all together. Joyce argues that given the widespread disagreement in philosophical accounts of assertion and value, there may be no decisive reason to favor cognitivism over non-cognitivism, nor any decisive reason to favor moral naturalism over moral skepticism. The most compelling aspect of this argument is the explicit attention paid to the payoff between interpretational issues, and context-relative pragmatic concerns. The conclusion, that it might very well be that there is no decisive answer to which view is right and, more importantly, no decisive answer to which view we ought to take, strikes me as compelling. This ecumenism might seem a step back for Joyce, but I don't read it that way.

Rather, I read it as a welcome two-part shift. First, a shift away from the view that we will find sufficient grounds for error theory in explicating our moral thought and talk. Second, a shift towards treating empirical issues, such as psychological tractability and pragmatic payoff, modulated by the standpoint we start from, as an important but not decisive factor in whether we should accept an error theory or a revisionary moral naturalism. The upshot is a type of theoretical maturity: we can go on with which view we like, while recognizing that we do so by making decisions about our concepts which were not already forced. Recognizing that we could have gone another way, we might occasionally usefully flirt with the road not taken.

Turning to the second section, my competence lies entirely with the second pair of essays (chapters 7 and 8), which address moral debunking arguments. Debunking arguments argue for some skeptical position about moral judgments -- they're all false, they're all unjustified, etc. -- on the basis of an explanation of our possession of our moral beliefs that is entirely independent of the truth of our moral judgments. For example, many have argued that telling an evolutionary story about how we came to have the moral beliefs we have somehow undermines taking our moral beliefs to be accurate or justified (Street 2006, Joyce 2006). These two chapters counter the pervasive mistake of thinking that debunking arguments establish a strong version of a moral skepticism absent the addition of substantive epistemological theses which close the gap between the modest skeptical position "Theory T (currently) lacks justification" and the extreme skeptical position "Theory T is unjustifiable."

The discussion is sensible, compelling, and rich. For example, one brief footnote (7 of chapter 7) recaps a back and forth between Joyce and Justin Clarke-Doane while making the crucial point that usefulness-oriented explanations of our beliefs in certain facts, like mathematics, may (and, as I argue in my (forthcoming), typically do) require their truth, immunizing them from debunking skepticism. This chapter strikes me as one of the more important contributions of the volume. It pulls the teeth of a number of confusions about debunking, such as the idea that compelling debunking arguments require specifically evolutionary genealogical premises. It is slightly regrettable that Joyce does not here engage directly with the recent argument that evolutionary premises are the only interesting bit of the current fascination with debunking (Vavova 2014). This, however, is only a minor quibble. I hope this chapter, the only one not previously published, is widely read and thoroughly absorbed.

Chapter 8, "Irrealism and the Genealogy of Morals," continues the project of undermining vulgar takes on debunking skepticism. In particular, it reminds us that we often need to answer substantive epistemological questions, such as "when is it reasonable to move from the absence of evidence to the evidence of absence" in order to move from reasonable premises like "we lack grounds to believe in explanatorily impotent facts" to stronger premises like "we have grounds to disbelieve in explanatorily impotent facts." As Joyce points out, much of the philosophical action concerns these epistemological bridging principles.

The remainder of the essay asks whether we can run skeptical worries, analogous to evolutionary debunking arguments, against non-cognitivist views. The answer, both the right one and Joyce's, seems to be "yes." Drawing on the plausible idea that even conative and affective states like liking and disliking are conditioned by substantive appropriateness conditions, Joyce sketches some prima facie cases where we might undermine these by considerations similar to those deployed by debunkers against moral cognitivists. This seems a fruitful area to be pursued in future work by Joyce and others.

The final section takes up questions about projectivism and fictionalism. It opens with an analysis of the claim, famous from Hume and somewhat developed in Mackie (1977), that we project affective reactions, like our disgust at cruelty, onto the events and agents themselves, treating these psychological reactions as worldly properties. This is analogous to the (slightly) less contentious claim that we project our (psychological) impressions of color onto worldly objects, treating colors as worldly properties. Mackie uses projectivism to support his view that there really are no worldly moral properties, just as we might use color projectivism to support the view that there are no worldly color properties. In both cases the actual support provided by projectivism is nowise clear. A bit of thought shows that both moral and color projectivism are clearly compatible with realism about moral and color properties.

The interesting question is whether there are compelling abductive arguments for moral skepticism that moral projectivism supports. Joyce explores two possibilities, both due to Mackie, and locates the role projectivism plays in each. He finds that Mackie's earlier and more prima facie compelling argument suffers from dialectical sloppiness. It first uses projectivism as a tie-breaker fact arbitrating between conservativism about moral beliefs and conservativism about naturalistic beliefs. It then uses projectivism as itself an argument for the bizarreness of moral properties. But the bizarreness of moral properties is used to support conservativism about naturalistic beliefs. Joyce's reconstruction of Mackie's sloppiness strikes me as plausible, though I wish he had addressed whether we could rejigger Mackie's argument to avoid the circularity.

What Joyce really thinks is that Mackie should have provided empirical support for moral projectivism before using it as a tiebreaker. Chapter 10 explores this, arguing that minimal projectivism, the view that "we experience moral wrongness as an objective feature of the world", can and should be interpreted as an empirical hypothesis. What will come out of testing this hypothesis is an open question, but if we could justify it empirically, we could then feed it back into Mackie's argument above to produce a compelling (though hardly bulletproof) argument for moral skepticism. In this sense, at least, we can answer Joyce's coy closing question about whether minimal moral projectivism is interesting once made empirically tractable: yes, definitely.

The final two essays discuss fictionalism, first moral, then psychological. Joyce has a vivid sense of the limitations and advantages of such views and a wicked eye for where the real problems for them lie. The last essay, which I will not address in depth, claims psychological fictionalism is more problematic than moral fictionalism, but still salvageable. It does excellent work in undermining overly pat "how could we believe it?" arguments against both fictionalism and eliminativism about folk psychology.

Chapter 11, "Moral Fictionalism," develops Joyce's favored brand of fictionalism and defends it from a number of worries. His moral fictionalism is revolutionary (we're not already pretending, but we should start pretending) and game-oriented (we pretend to morally assert, we don't assert of the moral pretense). Fictionalizing is claimed to be a reasonable thing to do in our day-to-day lives when we find ourselves, in our more critical moments, disavowing moral facts. The set-up strikes me as slightly strange, especially given Joyce's claim that the notion of a critical moment doesn't involve significant idealization. Taking our actual critical moments as indicative of what we really believe strikes me as problematic since our critical "classroom" moments are still governed by social pressure and confounds. Years in academia have trained me to not take seminar or classroom discussion as indicative of what people really believe. So I worry about Joyce's starting point, even though I find the general approach reasonable.

There are a number of other immediate worries, such as whether "pretending to assert" is really what we do when we speak as sophisticated skeptics in a vulgar world. I reckon 'no', though I also reckon that Joyce could have said "non-committal assertion in line with and governed by the rules of the moral fiction" instead and avoided this sort of objection. Putting that aside, pretend assertion raises other interesting worries. Contrast pretend promises: pretend promises, insofar as they have uptake, are still promises. We can cross our fingers behind our back all we like, we've still promised, goddamn it. Is pretend assertion likewise still assertion?

The answer depends on whether we take assertion to be publicly governed (like promises) or not. Joyce writes suggestively that we need not take moral fictionalists, when fictionalizing, as liars or, alternatively, we could take them as blameless. I would have liked to see Joyce's take on whether we have asserted at all, in the sense of being committed to what we have said, when we pretend assert. After all, few of us are fictionalists, and rare perverse linguistic intentions don't typically determine meaning or commitment.

Joyce closes by asking whether it is in our interest to be moral fictionalists. This, like so many of the questions Joyce raises, is largely an empirical cum psychological question. And one that Joyce suggests might be answered by a focus on the role of particular unexamined moral beliefs (precommitments) in reinforcing useful behavioral patterns. Our "precommitment" to morality might help stave off weakness of will, for example. This strikes me as plausible, not only for moral fictionalists, but also for various forms of moral conventionalism. One final worry is whether Joyce has overly narrowed his focus by treating eliminativism and fictionalism as the only responses to moral error theory. Moving to a small-m moral conventionalism (or relativism, if you prefer) once we've seen that our moral beliefs don't track objective reality strikes me as equi-reasonable. It is not clear that we would lose much of the desired effect on our behavior since, after all, formal norms like those of etiquette also stave off weakness of will: they're certainly "real", we're precommited to them, and yet we hardly pretend they're objective in the way suggested by moral fictionalism.

As any review that closes on a list of questions like this indicates, Joyce's book is an interesting, occasionally frustrating, massively stimulating read. The delicate contours of moral error theory, skepticisms, and related territory are mapped out here better than anywhere else. Moreover, Joyce does not skip the hard questions, while being unafraid to leave the reader hungry for more answers. It would be good reading for anyone with a passing interest. It is essential reading for anyone with anything more. Even though the essays are largely previously published, they mesh together into a cloud of views, questions, lunges and dodges that are best read together. This volume is a rare and welcome case of a collection of an author's previous work being much more than the sum of its parts.

Joyce, Richard (2006). The Evolution of Morality . MIT Press.

Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong . Penguin Books.

Street, Sharon (2006). "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value." Philosophical Studies 127 (1): 109-166.

Vavova, Katia (2014). "Debunking Evolutionary Debunking." Oxford Studies in Metaethics 9: 76-101.

Woods, Jack (2014). "Expressivism and Moore's Paradox." Philosophers' Imprint 14 (5): 1-12.

Woods, Jack (2016). "Mathematics, Morality, and Self‐Effacement." Noûs 50 (4).

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The Grounds of Moral Status

An entity has moral status if and only if it matters (to some degree) from the moral point of view for its own sake. More specifically, one’s moral status consists in there being certain moral reasons or requirements, for one’s own sake, for how one is to be treated. For instance, an animal may be said to have moral status if there is at least some moral reason to avoid its suffering, on account of this animal itself and regardless of the consequences for other beings.

At the most general level, there are two main ways of understanding the moral requirements that moral status, or what others sometimes call “moral standing” or “moral considerability,” entails. On the utilitarian approach (see the entry on the history of utilitarianism ), moral considerability (their preferred term) is a matter of a moral requirement to have one’s welfare-related interests (e.g., the intensity, duration, etc. of one’s pleasure or pain) factored into the calculus that determines which action brings about the greatest utility, and is thus morally best. On the non-utilitarian approach, to have moral status is for there to be reasons to act for the sake of the entity (whether this might be to promote its well-being or to appropriately regard some other aspect of the entity, such as its autonomy), reasons which are prior to, and may clash with, what the calculation of the overall best consequences would dictate. The non-utilitarian approach is necessarily coupled with two further ideas: acting unjustifiably against such reasons as well as failing to give these reasons their proper weight in deliberation is not only wrong but wrongs the entity and one owes it to the entity to avoid acting in this way. Note that utilitarians could incorporate these two ideas by claiming that it is owed to entities with moral status to properly incorporate their interests into the utilitarian calculus, and that one wrongs an entity when this is not done. But these two ideas are inessential to the utilitarian approach.

Some non-utilitarian philosophers allow for the possibility that moral status comes in degrees, and introduce the notion of a highest degree of status: full moral status (FMS). After reviewing which entities have been thought to have moral status and what is involved in having FMS, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status, this article will survey different views of the grounds of moral status, focusing especially on FMS, as well as the justification for treating these as grounds of moral status.

1. For Which Entities Does the Question of Moral Status Arise?

2.1 stringent presumption against interference, 2.2 strong reason to aid, 2.3 strong reason to treat fairly, 2.4 distinguishing reasons constitutive of moral status from other reasons, 3. degrees of moral status, 4. scalar versus threshold conceptions of moral status, 5.1 sophisticated cognitive capacities, 5.2 capacity to develop sophisticated cognitive capacities, 5.3 rudimentary cognitive capacities, 5.4 member of cognitively sophisticated species, 5.5 special relationships, 5.6 incompletely realized sophisticated cognitive capacities, 5.7 other grounds, 6. justifying the grounds of moral status, other internet resources, related entries.

A variety of applied ethics debates regarding how certain beings – human beings, non-human animals, and even ecosystems – should be treated hinge on theoretical questions about their moral status and the grounds of that moral status. It is these theoretical questions that are the focus of this entry, but a quick survey of the applied ethics debates helpfully allows us to identify which entities have been thought to have moral status.

It is usually taken for granted that all adult cognitively unimpaired human beings have FMS. Of course, historically the moral status of people falling into a group perceived as “other,” such as foreigners, racial minorities, women, the physically disabled, etc. has been routinely denied. Either they were not seen as having any moral status, or if they were granted some status, it was not FMS. However, accounting for their status does not pose much of a theoretical challenge (see section 5.1) and nowadays their status is rarely explicitly and directly denied on principled moral grounds.

By contrast, constructing plausible theories that account for the moral status of other human beings – not only the degree of their status, but in some cases also whether they have it at all – is more challenging (see section 5). Debates about disability rights and the permissibility of eugenics rest in part on theoretical disagreements about the moral status of cognitively impaired humans. These issues include controversies regarding the treatment of cognitively disabled infants, such as the past U.S. practice of allowing infants with Down syndrome to die. Debates concerning abortion, stem cell research (see the entry on the ethics of stem cell research ), and the question of what to do with unused frozen embryos from in vitro fertilization also rest on the theoretical question of the moral status of extremely underdeveloped human beings at various stages of development: zygote, embryo, and fetus (see section 5.2). The moral status of both underdeveloped and cognitively impaired human beings is often taken to be at issue when it comes to the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and amniocentesis. In addition, medical advances that prolong life, as well as debates about euthanasia, have led people to question the moral status of humans incapable of consciousness, such as those in a persistent vegetative state and anencephalic babies (born without the higher brain).

Humans are not the only beings about whom we might ask if they have moral status, and if so, to what degree. The moral status of animals is also of concern. Debates regarding the treatment of livestock (e.g., raising calves for veal, burning off the beaks of chickens, etc.), management of wild animals (e.g., killing wolves to protect livestock, killing deer in response to their overpopulation, etc.), and the creation and design of zoos rest, in part, on the moral status of domesticated and wild animals. In some cases the ethical question of an animal’s treatment arises because of the discovery of their cognitive sophistication (e.g., dolphins, elephants, and great apes), which is taken to have a bearing on the theoretical issue of their moral status.

We have already noted that, while there are disagreements from one culture to another, and even within a single culture, both historically and at any given time, there is also significant agreement, at least among non-philosophers, that all cognitively unimpaired human adults have the highest degree of moral status. But, in addition, non-philosophers in principle, if not always in practice, accept the same view regarding all cognitively unimpaired human infants as well as human infants and adults with mild to severe cognitive impairments (as we use the term, “severe cognitive impairment” excludes those incapable of consciousness). That is, they hold that infants and the cognitively impaired, whether their impairment is intellectual or emotional, have not merely higher moral status than most animals, but also have FMS. We will call this the commonsense view. By contrast, there is no such consensus about the moral status of human fetuses, humans incapable of consciousness, and even sophisticated animals like great apes.

Nonetheless, providing an adequate theory to account for the FMS of unimpaired infants and cognitively impaired human beings (whether infants or adults) without attributing the same status to most animals has proven very difficult. In fact, our survey in section 5 suggests that this challenge has not been fully met by any of the existing accounts of the grounds of moral status. Some philosophers have, as a result, questioned or even abandoned this seemingly commonsense view, including the aspect that holds that all adult cognitively un impaired human beings have FMS (see the end of section 4).

It is important to note that questions of moral status – having it at all as well as the degree to which it is had – arise not only for humans and non-human animals, but also for any living being/entity (such as a tree), as well as for entire species, ecosystems, and non-living entities, such as mountains or a natural landscape (see the entry on environmental ethics ).

In section 5 we will discuss how a range of humans (developed, and in various stages of underdevelopment, unimpaired and impaired), non-human animals, species, and ecosystems fare with respect to various accounts of the grounds of moral status.

2. What Is Full Moral Status (FMS)?

In this section, we will discuss what having FMS amounts to – a notion key to many non-utilitarian accounts of moral status. With respect to this highest degree of moral status, the literature is the most developed and detailed. Those with FMS are often called “moral persons.” Standardly, FMS is understood to involve (i) a very stringent moral presumption against interfering with the being in various ways – destroying the being, experimenting upon it, directly causing its suffering, etc. While the strong presumption against interfering is the main aspect of FMS, some philosophers include as part of FMS (ii) a strong, but not necessarily stringent, reason to aid and (iii) a strong reason to treat fairly. Since there is no higher moral status, all beings with FMS are owed the same protections and entitlements. That is, all beings with FMS have equal moral status (see the entry on egalitarianism ).

Note that while the label “FMS” comes from views that allow degrees of moral status, some non-utilitarian philosophers (Kant [GMM], Regan 2004) see the same protections as comprising the one and only possible moral status.

All who employ the concept of FMS agree that, under most circumstances, we are morally prohibited from interfering in various ways with a being with FMS even for the sake of another valued creature and its interests, or for the sake of any other value, such as art, justice, or world peace. For instance, we are prohibited from killing a being with FMS for the sake of saving one or several other such beings. Some philosophers discuss this stringent presumption using the terminology of duties and rights and focus mainly on the right not to be killed (e.g., Feinberg 1980, pp. 98–104).

Note that FMS is not typically considered to preclude paternalistic interference. A seven-year-old human being is typically granted FMS (as we will see below) but it is nevertheless permissible to treat her paternalistically in some respects (see the entry on paternalism ).

The stringent moral presumption against interfering with a being with FMS, as it is typically understood, has at least these features:

It is an extremely strong moral reason against interfering, regardless of whether this interference results in harm. This extremely strong reason can be overridden only in a narrow set of special circumstances and might altogether silence many types of conflicting reasons. For example, while pleasure is a legitimate reason for action in numerous circumstances (e.g., when choosing a leisure activity), the fact that someone might receive pleasure from killing a being with FMS is altogether removed from consideration as a reason for this action.
Despite its strength, the presumption not to interfere with beings with FMS may be overridden, perhaps, for example, when the lives of a very large number of others are at stake. But, crucially, even when the presumption is legitimately overridden in such special circumstances a moral residue remains, so that, for example, there is still reason to strongly regret the circumstances that called for such action.
The reason not to interfere with beings with FMS is stronger than the reason not to similarly interfere with beings that have some, but not full, moral status. For example, the reason not to kill a being with FMS in medical experiments is much stronger than the reason (if there is one) not to kill a similarly situated rabbit, which some consider to have lesser moral status. (See section 3 below for further discussion.)

As noted earlier, those with FMS have equal moral status. This entails that when two beings both have FMS, the reason not to interfere with them is equally strong, all relevant factors held equal, and so one equally wrongs them when acting against these reasons, all relevant factors held equal. This idea has been dubbed the “equal wrongness thesis” and it is open to various interpretations. McMahan (2002, p. 235) focuses on the equal wrongness of killing (rather than the more general idea of the equal wrongness of acting against all the stringent protections that two beings with FMS merit). According to McMahan, a variety of factors are thought not to affect the wrongness of killing of beings with FMS (and hence it does not matter whether they are held equal), in cases when killing is wrong: the being’s age, level of intelligence, temperament, social circumstances, etc. For example, for a young and an old person who both have FMS, the reasons not to kill them are claimed to be equally strong despite the fact that the young person stands to lose much more in dying than the old. This is consistent with holding (1) that other factors, unrelated to the level of harm to the being, such as the mode of agency, defeaters, the number of people affected, and special relationships, do make a difference to the degree of wrongness of killing; and (2) that when killing is not wrong, as well as in the context of saving, factors related to harm (e.g., age, etc.) do make a difference to what’s best to do (McMahan 2002, pp. 236–7). McMahan (2008) acknowledges that there are many challenges to the equal wrongness thesis. While the equal moral status of beings with FMS entails the equal wrongness of killing such beings when all relevant factors are held equal, one can disagree about how best to interpret it, i.e., which factors are or are not relevant to the degree of wrongness of killing beings with FMS.

While this is less commonly associated with FMS, some philosophers believe that there is a strong reason to provide aid to beings with FMS (e.g., Jaworska 2007 and Quinn 1984). This reason is not as strong as the stringent presumption discussed above. For example, the set of circumstances which can override the reason to aid a being with FMS is much broader compared to the stringent presumption against killing. Also, the reason not to aid might not silence many (or any) other conflicting considerations. As for which reasons override or are on a par with this strong reason to aid, there are many differing accounts (e.g., Greenspan 2010 and the entry on moral reasoning , section 2.5).

The strength of this reason to aid can also be understood in comparison with the reason to aid beings with lesser moral status, since beings with FMS merit the strongest reason to aid (see McMahan 2002, pp. 223–224, for a contrary interpretation of ordinary moral intuitions). Imagine a context in which one is saving individuals from a certain level of harm, such as pain, discomfort, or death. When faced with a choice of saving either a being with FMS or one without FMS, barring further reasons that may complicate the moral picture (e.g., indirect consequences of saving the being without FMS for other beings with FMS), there is a stronger reason to pick the being with FMS. Further, even in cases where aiding is not in fact possible or the reason to aid is overridden, it is a graver moral misfortune, ceteris paribus , to leave a being with FMS unaided, as compared to a being without FMS. Of course, what aid is appropriate for a being depends on the context and on the being’s stage of development. FMS is about the strength of the reason to aid and not about what type of aid to give.

Note that even if FMS entails strong reasons to aid, the reverse is not necessarily the case. Stronger reason to aid one being rather than another does not necessarily entail that the aided being has a higher moral status. See more general methodological cautions along these lines in section 2.4.

While this is even less commonly explicitly associated with FMS, some views emphasize that comparable interests of beings with FMS matter equally in moral decisions, giving rise to strong reasons to treat such beings fairly (Broome 1990–1991 and Jaworska 2007). For example, when distributing goods among such beings, in circumstances when they can all benefit similarly, barring special purposes, relationships, or independent claims on the goods, we have strong reason to distribute the goods equally (or in another way that’s fair, depending on the account of fairness). In some cases one will be distributing goods that meet needs and in other cases the goods being distributed are not needed, but will nevertheless be useful or appreciated. In either case, there is a strong reason to distribute the goods fairly among beings with FMS. This reason does not necessarily apply to beings that lack FMS; for example, a farmer need not worry about being fair in distributing food to his cows and chickens.

It is helpful to bring out two points about FMS, the second of which is not discussed in the literature, but both of which, once made explicit, would likely be accepted by those who work on FMS.

First, the reasons mentioned in sections 2.1–2.3 ought to be understood as independent of special relationships, contracts, and joint commitments. They are impartial reasons, that is, every moral agent (human, intelligent Martian, etc.) has reason to act or forbear acting in the ways thus far discussed (McMahan 2005). So, for instance, a parent has at least two reasons not to kill his own child: a reason in virtue of the child’s FMS, and a reason in virtue of the parental relationship, which generates a special obligation for this particular agent not to kill this particular child. In addition, these reasons are independent of other facts about the action, for example, the action’s possible bad long-term effects. Instead, they are reasons to treat the being this way for the being’s own sake.

Second, it is important, methodologically speaking, not to infer moral status (full or otherwise) simply from the degree of wrongness or badness of an act, from the existence of rights, or from the strength of reasons in favor of the act (including omissions). For example, it might be worse for a parent to kill his own child than a stranger’s child, but that does not mean that the children have different moral status. The child has a right that her parent not kill her, in virtue of the special relationships between parents and their children, but this is in addition to, and separate from, the right not to be killed that the child has in virtue of her moral status. Or, to take another example, there may be a large difference in the strength of reasons to save each of two beings from death, but this difference may have little to do with the moral status of the beings. Both McMahan (2002) and Singer (1993) hold, on quite different grounds, that death is not very bad for most animals, while it is very bad for ordinary adult human beings. Accordingly, on their views, the reason to save an ordinary adult human being from death is much stronger than the reason to save, say, a rabbit from death. But this is not itself evidence of a higher moral status of the human being. The vast difference in the benefits of aid in the two cases could, on its own , lead to a difference in the strength of reasons, which would be fully compatible with the claim that the human and the rabbit have the same moral status. (Of course, one can hold, on other grounds, that they in fact have different status, as McMahan himself does.)

Certain views might acknowledge that some humans lack FMS and yet emphasize that we ought, nevertheless, to treat them as though they have FMS due to the bad effects that would otherwise follow. One bad effect would be the mistreatment of those who really do have FMS. For example, someone might think that, for practical purposes, we need a very straightforward, stable, and difficult to misinterpret criterion of moral status (such as treating being human as a sufficient condition for FMS). If we don’t treat all human beings as if they have FMS, unclarity and moral confusion would ensue. It would open the floodgates for different people to set the threshold capacity required for FMS differently, and thereby lead to mistaken underinclusion and consequent mistreatment of vulnerable humans (such as drug convicts) who do in fact have FMS. Kant’s remarks about the treatment of animals can be interpreted along these lines. He argued that we have reasons to avoid cruelty to animals, and thus to treat animals better than their (lack of) moral status implies, since otherwise we might develop psychological propensities that could lead us analogously to mistreat humans who have FMS (Kant [LE], pp. 212–13). Similarly, one might think that if we do not treat those humans without FMS as having FMS, we might develop psychological propensities that could lead us to mistreat humans who have FMS. Another bad consequence that can arise, at least were we to fail to treat neonates as having FMS by permitting infanticide, is depriving would-be adoptive parents of the opportunity to adopt (Warren 1996, Postscript).

There are also more self-interested possible bad consequences to consider. Failure to treat infants as having FMS might lead to a lack of tenderness toward them, and thereby contribute to their turning into people who will mistreat us when they are older (Feinberg 1980, p. 198). Moreover, a rule of treating cognitively impaired human beings as having FMS would ensure that we will be treated well should we ever suffer from cognitive impairment (considered without endorsement by McMahan 2002, pp. 227–8).

Regardless of the details, on all such proposals, the requirement of treating a being as if it had FMS, or some other degree of moral status, to avoid bad consequences is not equivalent to that being’s having this moral status: while the reasons adduced might indeed be good reasons to treat the being as if it had the requisite moral status, these reasons are not for the sake of that being, but rather for the sake of other beings.

Other types of reasons for treating beings as if they had a certain degree of moral status have also been offered. Some virtue ethicists claim that we ought to avoid harming animals because harming them is incompatible with displaying the virtuous character traits we ought to display (see the entry on the moral status of animals for details). Several contractualists (see section 6 below and the entry on contractualism ) have argued that one may reasonably opt out of any agreement that does not afford sufficient moral status to one’s children and others one cares about, including those who are severely cognitively impaired (Morris 2011, pp. 265–267 and Carruthers 2011, pp. 387–394). Critics and proponents disagree whether these considerations can establish reasons (e.g., reasons not to interfere) that are for these beings’ sake; hence, it is unclear whether they can establish the moral status of the beings in question.

Those who accept that moral status comes in degrees have not developed fine-grained accounts of what each degree of status would involve. Their emphasis has been on the difference in status between creatures or entities that have some moral status (dogs, rabbits, etc.), and those who deserve the highest degree of moral status (FMS). However, with the above account of FMS made explicit, one can delineate different paradigms for capturing degrees of moral status, which we will list here simply in the spirit of marking out possible positions, and thus without addressing the pros, cons, and implications of each position.

One way to capture degrees of moral status is to vary the strength of the reasons outlined in section 2 (and hence also the degree of wrongness involved in acting against these reasons – see DeGrazia 2008). For example, while there is a very stringent moral presumption against killing an unimpaired adult human being, there might be only strong but non-stringent reasons not to kill a dog, and very weak reasons not to kill a fish. The weaker the reason not to kill is, the broader the set of circumstances are that can override this reason. In addition, it will silence fewer, if any, conflicting considerations. The other categories of reasons would be handled similarly: when the benefit to be received, the cost of providing that benefit, and other similar factors are on a par, there is a strong reason to aid an unimpaired adult human being, but only some reason to aid a dog, and very little reason to aid a fish, and so on.

Alternatively, one could treat FMS as involving a stringent reason not to be killed of the type that, in cases of conflict, would override what maximizes the overall good, whereas, for a being with lesser moral status, what maximizes the overall good – with this being’s good included in the calculus – does settle how this being should be treated (McMahan 2002, pp. 245–247).

Another way to capture degrees of moral status is to vary not the strength of the reasons but which reasons apply. Instead of the three categories of reasons discussed above, lesser moral status might involve two kinds of reasons (a stringent moral presumption against interference and a strong reason to aid, but no reason to treat fairly) or only one (a stringent moral presumption against interference, but no reason to aid or treat fairly). This, of course, is compatible with other reasons, in a given context, to aid or treat fairly that do not derive from the being’s moral status (see section 2.4).

Alternatively, lesser moral status might involve fewer presumptions against different types of interference. For example, there might be only a presumption against causing a chicken pain but not a presumption against killing it.

Of course, one could combine these approaches. For example, to have the highest degree of moral status is for there to be very strong reasons of all three types, an intermediate level of moral status (e.g., the status of a dog) might involve some reason not to kill the being but no reason to aid it or treat it fairly, while the lowest degree of moral status would involve a very weak reason of just one type. Although having the lowest degree of moral status would not afford much protection, it nevertheless is different from having no moral status at all. A fingernail has no moral status and so no reasons of any kind need be given for cutting it up and discarding it. But sufficient justification must be provided for doing this to a being with even very low moral status.

One could hold either a threshold or scalar conception of moral status, although FMS is a threshold conception. Suppose, for example, that the capacity to value (which we will use as shorthand for the capacity to make an evaluative judgment) were a sufficient ground for having a high degree of moral status. According to the threshold conception, if the capacity to value grounds a high degree of moral status, then any being that has this capacity, regardless of how often or how well it can exhibit this capacity, has the same moral status as any other being with this capacity. A being that could recognize only one value among many, and could only value it on rare occasions, would have the same moral status as a being that could recognize many valuable things and value them on every relevant occasion. If the capacity to value is not only sufficient but necessary for a high degree of moral status, then all beings lacking this capacity would not have this high degree of moral status. However, the threshold conception would nevertheless leave it open whether having some other feature, such as the mere capacity to have preferences, might be grounds for a lesser degree of moral status. (Having preferences is different from making an evaluative judgment; only the latter involves thinking of something as good, worthy, and requiring defense [Watson 1975]. As Watson notes, the strength of one’s preference needn’t at all reflect that one values it or the degree to which one values it.)

The threshold conception is not tied to any particular account of the grounds for moral status. Different grounds, discussed in section 5, might involve membership in a group, the capacity for sentience, and so on. To put the threshold conception more broadly, so as to cover any ground for moral status, and any degree of moral status, whether high or low, one could state it thus: for any X that is a sufficient ground for having n-degree of moral status, this status is not altered by factors such as how much of X a being has, how well it displays X, or the number of other features sufficient for n or lower degrees of moral status the being possesses. The threshold conception leaves it open whether having some other feature (e.g., parts of X or something lesser but akin to X) might be grounds for a lesser degree of moral status and whether yet other features (e.g., more complex capacities) might be grounds for higher degrees of moral status. FMS is a central example of this approach: all beings that meet the threshold qualifications for FMS have the same status and this status is full.

In contrast, the scalar conception highlights the importance of, for example, how often and how well one can exhibit or exercise a capacity to value. Put alternatively, if the possession of a generic capacity to value makes a difference to moral status, then the possession of different specific levels of this capacity (e.g., being able to value a greater number valuable things or to value them more fully) confers differential status. As Arneson (1999) would put it, a higher degree of the capacity entails a higher status. And so, two beings with the same (generic) capacity might not have equal moral status; only two beings with the same (specific) capacity level would have equal moral status. Arneson also thinks that if two beings have the specific capacity, but only one of them ever exercises it, then that being will have a higher moral status.

Keep in mind that, as with the threshold conception, the scalar conception of moral status is not tied to any particular account of what grounds moral status – it applies to any X that is proposed to ground moral status. Moreover, a scalar conception might not only pay attention to (i) how much of X a being has or displays, as described in the case above with the capacity to value. It also might attend to (ii) how many morally relevant features a being has. One version of (ii) focuses on features that on their own give rise to the same degree of moral status (Arneson [1999] alludes to such a view). Suppose, for example, that the capacity to value and being a member of the human species each on their own grounded n-degree of moral status. A scalar approach might hold that if a being has both these features, it has a higher moral status than a being that has only one. Another version of (ii) would allow for cases like this: suppose the capacity for preferences grounds a certain degree of moral status, while the capacity for consciousness grounds a lesser moral status. Yet, someone of a scalar frame of mind might think that the two together give a slightly higher degree of status than the capacity for preferences alone.

Lastly, the scalar conception might consider that a being’s moral status might be greater, not because it has additional less sophisticated morally relevant features, as in the previous example, but (iii) because the being has additional more advanced morally relevant features. (iii) works this way. Suppose the capacity to employ means-ends reasoning combined with being a member of the human species grounded n-degree status. The capacity to value is more sophisticated than the capacity to employ means-ends reasoning. Then, according to (iii), a human being with the capacity to value has an even higher moral status.

While both threshold and scalar conceptions of moral status allow for degrees of moral status, each faces its own set of difficulties. For example, it is not enough for those who hold the threshold view to stipulate that, for example, the capacity to do an activity well does not affect one’s status. Once the importance of some feature, such as the capacity to value, is highlighted, it seems that not only the possession of the capacity but also how well one can exercise it is morally relevant to one’s status. This is especially compelling when we compare, for example, an ordinary human adult’s capacity to set many ends (i.e, to value and pursue many objects and states of affairs) with the capacity of an impoverished being who, in its lifetime, “can set just a few ends and make just a few choices based on considering two or three simple alternatives” (Arneson 1999, pp. 119–120). The problems is essentially the same regardless of whether the capacity is actual, potential, or incompletely realized (e.g., when we compare an unimpaired baby’s potential – ability to have an ability – to set many ends with an impaired baby whose potential is far more limited).

Analogous problems also arise for accounts on which the status conferring feature is species membership or being in a special relationship. Possession of the features that qualify one for species membership may be incomplete and a matter of degree (consider Turner Syndrome where one is missing or partially missing the X chromosome) and relationships can be stronger or weaker. The strength of a relationship might depend, for example, on how robustly one instantiates the features defining the relationship (e.g., how robustly one qualifies as a member of a community) or on how well one actively relates (e.g., a child is a more active participant in a relationship than a fetus).

Furthermore, on views that allow for multiple threshold qualifications for the same degree of status (e.g., the capacity to value and being a member of the human species), whether an individual meets only one or both qualifications seems morally relevant to the degree of their status. Also, some individuals possess features more advanced than the threshold qualification. Threshold views need to provide an explanation for why such differences do not matter.

Additionally, the threshold conception allows for the possibility of discontinuities in degrees of moral status that might seem arbitrary. The difference, for example, between a being with a capacity, but who can only exercise it very poorly (e.g., a being that can recognize only one value among many and can only recognize this value on very rare occasions), and a being without this capacity (who cannot value but can only form preferences) might not seem to be very great. And yet, if the capacity to value grounds FMS, then the former being will have FMS while the latter will have considerably lesser or perhaps no moral status. The advocate of the threshold view could respond that if this capacity is important, then a being with a capacity to do it poorly has achieved something important compared to a being without this capacity. In addition, if there are multiple grounds for lesser degrees of moral status (e.g., the capacity to feel pain, the capacity to have preferences, the capacity to feel emotions, etc.), which threshold views could allow, then this might remove any large gap in status between beings with that capacity and those who lack it but who have other capacities conferring only somewhat lesser status. See McMahan (2008) for related discussion.

Scalar conceptions, on the other hand, can easily account for continuous lesser degrees of moral status, but may defy commonsense intuitions. For example, if intelligence grounded FMS, then the scalar conception would claim that those who are more intelligent have a stronger right not to be killed than those who are not quite as intelligent. But this is highly at odds with the commonsense intuition that all such beings have an equally strong right not to be killed (see Wikler 2009 for a discussion of whether degrees of intelligence are relevant to civil rights). Distinguishing and elevating the moral status of cognitively unimpaired adult humans compared to other animals thus comes at the price of denying that all cognitively unimpaired adult humans have equal moral status.

5. Grounds of Moral Status

Accounts differ on what it is about the individual that grounds or confers moral status and to what degree. This section will focus primarily on the grounds of FMS. We begin with the Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities accounts and their main strengths and shortcomings, especially when it comes to capturing the “commonsense view” discussed in section 1. We then show that alternative accounts also face troubles. So, the challenge remains to provide a plausible unified account of the grounds of FMS, especially for those who wish to defend the commonsense view. The order of presentation is, roughly, dialectical, not historical.

According to this type of account, a being has FMS if and only if the being has very sophisticated cognitive capacities. These capacities might be intellectual or emotional. Historically, the most famous sophisticated intellectual capacities account was given by Kant, according to whom autonomy, the capacity to set ends via practical reasoning, must be respected (see the entry on respect ) and grounds the dignity of all rational beings ([GMM], pp. 434, 436, Prussian Academy pagination). Beings without autonomy may be treated as a mere means (p. 428). For a contemporary version, see Quinn (1984, pp. 49–52) who claims that the capacity to will (his term for autonomy) is sufficient for rights of respect. Other intellectual capacities that have been suggested, even if not always embraced, as grounding what we call FMS include the following: the capacity for self-awareness (McMahan 2002, pp. 45 and 242) or awareness of oneself as a continuing subject of mental states (Tooley 1972, p. 44); being future-oriented in one’s desires and plans (one could draw on Singer 1993, pp. 95 and 100, though insofar as his own view is utilitarian it does not fall into section 5.1); capacity to value, or, more specifically, “to appreciate the value of valuable things” (Buss 2012, p. 352); “being good for ourselves in virtue of the capacity to value” (Theunissen 2020, pp. 126–127); capacity to bargain, and to assume duties and responsibilities (all part of a longer list in Feinberg 1980, p. 197). On the emotional side, one sophisticated capacity that has been proposed is the capacity to care, as distinguished from the mere capacity to desire. (Jaworska (2007) posits this as sufficient but perhaps not necessary for FMS.) There are also combination views that appeal to both intellectual and emotional sophisticated cognitive capacities as necessary and sufficient for FMS (Feinberg 1980, p. 197).

According to Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities accounts, the feature grounding FMS is not relational: the source of moral status is neither a relation the individual stands in (e.g., membership in a species) nor a capacity whose exercise requires active participation of another (e.g., the capacity to relate to others in certain mutually responsive ways). In some versions, the exercise of the relevant capacities does not even require the existence of anyone else, while in others (as in the case of caring about someone) it, at most, involves the presence of another being but not necessarily that being’s active participation. Individuals have FMS solely because they can engage in certain cognitively sophisticated acts or responses on their own.

A being of any type that has these sophisticated cognitive capacities has FMS, and so the accounts avoid anthropocentrism. However, since most (but not necessarily all) animals lack sophisticated cognitive capacities, they are not accorded the same moral status as an unimpaired adult human. Similarly, in the case of a living organism such as a redwood tree or a fetus, as well as non-individual entities, such as species and ecosystems, they would not have FMS on these views.

Some of these views (e.g., Kant’s) do not allow for any moral status other than FMS, and so would hold that beings who don’t meet the threshold for FMS have no moral status at all. Other views are silent on this question and compatible with lower degrees of moral status for beings or entities that are not cognitively sophisticated. Yet others (e.g., McMahan 2002) explicitly insist that all sentient beings have some degree of moral status.

A stock objection to Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities accounts is their underinclusiveness. Not only will some environmentalists and animal activists find the view underinclusive, but so too will those who subscribe to the “commonsense view” articulated in section 1. For example, infants lack sophisticated cognitive capacities, and so fail to meet this necessary condition for FMS. The versions that offer only a sufficient condition for FMS seem more plausible since they leave open alternative routes to FMS. But such accounts still leave the moral status of infants unaccounted for, and possibly on a par with that of dogs and rabbits. Of course, these views nevertheless allow that there are very strong reasons not to kill human infants: it would be disrespectful and harmful to the infant’s parents, it would likely cause psychological harm to the killers, etc. But these reasons, as explained in section 2.4, have nothing to do with the moral status of infants, since they are not reasons for the infants’ own sake (Feinberg 1980, p. 198 and McMahan 2002, p. 232).

The problem, at least from the standpoint of the commonsense view, of 5.1’s underinclusion of infants can be avoided while still retaining a shared source of FMS. The accounts can be modified as follows: sophisticated cognitive capacities or the capacity to develop these sophisticated capacities (without losing one’s identity) are necessary and sufficient for FMS. This is usually labeled the “potential” account in the literature (e.g., Stone 1987), although some authors do not use this terminology, but rather speak, for example, of the wrongness of killing due to the loss of a “future like ours” (Marquis 1989 and 1995). One can also treat potentiality as a ground for some, but not full, moral status (Harman 1999, notwithstanding the revisions in Harman 2003) or as only an enhancer of moral status (Steinbock 1992, p. 68). Views differ in their interpretation of potentiality. For example, some deny that a fetus that will die while still a fetus (of any cause) has the relevant potential (Harman 1999, p. 311).

These potentiality accounts, like the accounts in 5.1, avoid anthropocentrism without according most animals the same elevation in moral status. But, unlike the accounts in 5.1, they also include very underdeveloped human beings: not only infants and one-year-olds, but even early fetuses have the capacity to develop sophisticated cognitive capacities (barring unusual cases). (Of course, these accounts are of no help to those interested in according moral status to non-human animals, trees, species, and ecosystems.)

Although Boonin (2003) denies that his view is a potentiality account (p. 62), his view does implicitly appeal to potentiality, albeit with somewhat different implications than those above. He defends having the conjunction of “a future-like-ours” (a kind of potentiality) and “actual conscious desires that can be satisfied only if [one’s] personal future is preserved” as sufficient for FMS (p. 84). Barring early death, most two-year-olds and older children meet both conditions: they have a future like ours while also having conscious desires (e.g., for avocado tomorrow), which can only be satisfied if the child lives until the next day. Early fetuses also typically have a future like ours, but they lack mental states such as desires, and thus are excluded from FMS. Boonin is explicitly neutral on the question whether animals have a future-like-ours, so his proposal is compatible with several different views about the moral status of animals (p. 84, note 36).

Any attempt to ground moral status in potentiality introduces its own challenges. One could argue that mere potential cognitive capacity is insufficient for FMS or even a weaker moral status. A potential US president has neither rights nor even a claim to command the military; likewise in the case of potentially cognitively sophisticated beings and the rights associated with moral status (Feinberg 1980, p.193). While this particular analogy has been contested (Wilkins 1993, pp. 126–127 and Boonin 2003, pp. 46–49), one can appeal to other analogies: a small child (a potential adult) doesn’t have the rights of adults to own property or to watch any television program it wants (Boonin 2003, p. 48).

Still, there is room to press back on some aspects of this objection. We do, after all, often treat people with potential differently from those without it. We provide extra music instruction, music scholarships, and create music camps for those with the potential to become great musicians, whereas we do not do so for those lacking such potentiality. While being a potential adult human does not give one a right to vote, perhaps it gives us reason to act as trustees with regard to childrens’ future status and interests and thus to educate and prepare them to become voters by the time they are adults; it does seem that children would be wronged if we neglected to so prepare them. In this way, we treat children differently from dogs who lack the potential to become adult humans, even though neither is now an adult human. And perhaps this difference in treatment would extend even to not taking certain actions (e.g., killing) that would result in the loss of the relevant potentiality. But this line of response might only go so far when it comes to fetuses. With respect to a future-like-ours, some argue that the loss of this potentiality is morally problematic only if the being is sufficiently psychologically connected to that future person, and a fetus arguably lacks this sufficient connection (McInerney 1990).

Even though the potentiality accounts come closer to capturing the commonsense view than the Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities accounts, they still are, from that point of view, underinclusive. Many conscious human beings whose cognitive impairment is both severe and permanent cannot meet these accounts’ conditions for an elevated moral status. It might be that humans who currently suffer from severe, permanent cognitive impairment, but once had sophisticated cognitive capacities, have FMS in virtue of the past possession of these capacities. But it is unclear how to defend such a claim. Moreover, the moral status of permanently severely cognitively impaired humans who never had sophisticated cognitive capacities remains unaccounted for (see the entry on cognitive disability and moral status ). Even the versions of the accounts that offer only sufficient conditions for FMS still leave their moral status open and possibly on a par with animals who similarly lack both the sophisticated cognitive capacities and the capacity to develop them. In Boonin’s case, since he is agnostic about animals and so, presumably, about cognitively impaired human beings with similar prospects, his view will either overinclude the former or underinclude the latter, as both types of beings will be treated on a par.

In response to the criticisms just discussed, one could lower the standards for the kind of cognitive capacities that are necessary and sufficient for FMS. If the relevant cognitive capacities were rudimentary enough, even severely cognitively impaired human beings would qualify. Such an account might appeal to the capacity to experience pleasure or pain (sentience), to have interests or basic emotions, or the capacity for consciousness. Whether fetuses at various stages of development will thereby have FMS depends on which rudimentary capacity is appealed to. For example, an early fetus has interests but not consciousness.

This accommodation does not fit well with the commonsense view, which would see it as overinclusive. Most (but not all) animals meet these lowered standards for FMS – they have the capacity for pleasure, pain, interests, and consciousness – and so their moral status would be on a par with most human beings (namely all those who possess these rudimentary capacities). For example, some authors claim that respecting rational nature entails respecting beings that have only parts of rational nature or necessary conditions of it (Wood 1998, p. 197). Such a view seems to treat animals, infants, and severely cognitively impaired humans, all of whom exhibit only parts of rational nature, as morally on a par with each other and with unimpaired adult humans. (See O’Neill 1998 for additional critiques of this kind of Kantian approach.) Many advocates of such views explicitly and gladly embrace this inclusiveness and reject the commonsense view of the status of animals (Regan 2004).

Some philosophers only indirectly focus on rudimentary capacities. Their focus is on the “equal moral consideration” of interests, but they make it clear that possessing rudimentary cognitive capacities is a necessary condition for having interests. Utilitarianism is the best known equal consideration view, e.g., maintaining that equal amounts of suffering and pleasure should be factored equally into the utilitarian calculus, regardless of whether the suffering and pleasure is that of a human or animal. Equal consideration may be interpreted this way: since equal interests are treated equally, the beings with those interests are of equal moral status. Singer (1993), famously associated with the equal consideration view, might fit this interpretation. However, because he thinks that self-conscious beings have interests that merely conscious beings lack, he allows that the former beings might have rights that the latter lack. Interestingly, DeGrazia (2008) embraces the same ideas but goes further by saying that beings who have additional rights due to more complex interests have a higher, and thus unequal, moral status compared to beings lacking those interests and rights. Some non-utilitarian philosophers adopt the terminology of equal moral consideration (e.g., Regan 2004), as do philosophers who wish to transcend the dichotomy between utilitarian and rights-based approaches (DeGrazia 1996).

While 5.3 accounts and the equal moral consideration approach may seem to imply treating human beings and most animals alike, many of the defenders deny this counterintuitive implication by showing that two beings can have equal moral status (or deserve equal consideration) and yet require differential treatment due to differences in the interests impacted. What an unimpaired adult human stands to lose in being killed, for example, is much weightier than what a bird would lose. The capacity of foresight, for example, can make for weightier interests, and so human beings with this or other forms of cognitive sophistication are harmed more by death (Rachels 1990, pp.186–194; Regan 2004, pp. 304 and 324; and DeGrazia 1996). Potentiality can also explain differential treatment of two beings based on interests impacted, while maintaining the beings’ equal moral status. For example, there is a stronger reason not to harm a baby as opposed to a cat, given the potential of the baby and not the cat for a cognitively sophisticated future (Harman 2003, p. 187, although this is not explicitly an equal consideration view). Admittedly, in some cases comparative judgments of whose interests are morally weightier, and hence judgments about differential treatment, can be difficult, in part due to the difficulties in knowing the capabilities of minds very different from ours and of comparing well-being across species (DeGrazia 1996).

In spite of allowing for differential treatment of morally equal beings, the above accounts remain unable to capture a key aspect of the commonsense view: they are unable to account for the differential treatment of both conscious humans with severe irreversible cognitive impairments and infants who will die due to disease before acquiring cognitive sophistication, as compared with many animals (such as a dog), since here the affected interests are similar. Thus, while one may grant that rudimentary capacities ground some moral status, one must look beyond such capacities to explain the difference in moral status between humans and most animals.

Anderson (2004), although not an advocate of equal consideration, might seem to have a way around this last criticism. She points out that one can have an interest in being dignified in the eyes of the human community. While both dogs and humans have this interest, what it takes for a human with severe cognitive impairments to be dignified might be quite different from what it takes for an animal with similar cognitive abilities to be dignified, possibly leading to different rights (pp. 282–3). However, she doesn’t explain how the interests in dignity can lead to the strong protections associated with FMS, such as the right not to be killed.

Irrespective of whether Anderson succeeds, all equal moral consideration views, despite their name, seem to be incompatible with McMahan’s interpretation of the equal wrongness thesis (discussed in section 2.1). Admittedly, these views are explicitly concerned with what should be done rather than with how to evaluate an action’s degree of wrongness when one fails to do what one should. Nonetheless, in allowing or even requiring differential treatment based on differences in the interests impacted, such views seem to also imply that an action (such as killing) is more wrong if it impacts the victim’s interests more severely, whereas McMahan holds that the victim’s age or level of intelligence should not affect the wrongness of killing.

Notice that an even more rudimentary feature, which is not cognitive, would have to be considered if one were to accord any moral status to all living beings. For example, one can appeal to having a good or well-being of one’s own that can be enhanced or damaged as a ground of moral status (Taylor 1986, p. 75, and Naess 1986, p. 14). If “interests” are understood broadly enough, then nonconscious entities, such as plants, species, and ecosystems have interests (e.g., an interest in fulfilling their nature) and thus some moral standing (Johnson 1993, pp. 146, 148, 184, 287). Of course, the central challenge for such views is to explain how and why inevitable conflicts among all those with a well-being or interests should be settled. It is not enough to provide principles adjudicating these conflicts (as does Taylor 1986, p. 261); one must justify these principles in a way that is not grounded in the moral status of the beings under consideration (since their status is taken to be equal). For additional discussion and critique of these and other views, see the entry on environmental ethics .

One way to avoid the key problems of the previous accounts is to posit membership in the human species as a sufficient condition for FMS. This is not the view that the human species itself has FMS, but rather that membership in the species gives an individual FMS. Feinberg (1980) discusses this view, whereas Dworkin (1993, ch. 3) actually posits it, although without distinguishing between this version and the modified version addressed below. Benn (1967, pp. 69–71) considers membership in the human species necessary and sufficient for FMS. Note that belonging to the human species is a relational feature (the relation of being a member of a kind), unlike the features invoked by the accounts considered thus far.

If there are non-human cognitively sophisticated individuals, such as higher animals or alien species, they would seem to deserve a high moral status equal to that of human beings. Thus, this account should not make human species membership a necessary condition for FMS, but rather be disjunctive: having sophisticated cognitive capacities or belonging to the human species is necessary and sufficient for FMS.

By introducing the latter condition (human species membership), such a view can establish FMS not only for infants and severely cognitively impaired human beings but even for fetuses and permanently unconscious human beings. Moreover, any non-human individual who lacks cognitively sophisticated capacities, which includes most (but not all) animals, lacks FMS. Thus this view accounts rather nicely for much of the commonsense view described in section 1. However, it is of no help grounding the claim that non-human animals, trees, species, or ecosystems have any moral status.

One possible cost of this approach is the loss of a unified account of FMS. That is, there are now two routes to FMS: having sophisticated cognitive capacities or belonging to the human species. Whether one is cognitively sophisticated is determined purely by psychology, while whether one belongs to the human species is determined purely by biology. Of course, it is true that the human species (as opposed to its membership criteria) is characterized both psychologically and biologically, and so in this sense the second route to FMS is related to the first.

A second problem is an arbitrary distinction between severely cognitively impaired humans and members of other similarly cognitively sophisticated species, were they to exist, who have analogous severe cognitive impairments. Imagine, for example, a cognitively sophisticated biological species of “Martians,” which has some severely cognitively impaired members. Even if an impaired Martian and an impaired human have similarly limited cognitive capacities, and even though they bear the same metaphysical relation to members of their species (they are both tokens of a biological type whose unimpaired members are cognitively sophisticated), this account nevertheless treats them as having a different moral status. This is unacceptably arbitrary.

One could modify this account by substituting membership in a cognitively sophisticated species for membership in the human species as the second sufficient condition for FMS (Cohen 1986; possibly Scanlon 1998, pp.185–86; and Finnis 1995). This approach is often implicit rather than explicitly stated and defended. For example, Korsgaard (2004) regards infants and severely cognitive impaired human beings as rational agents – presumably in the sense of being members of the kind “rational agents” – and hence deserving of respect.

This version of the account is now more unified and avoids the above charge of arbitrariness, while retaining the alignment with the commonsense view. Both sufficient conditions of FMS now ultimately appeal to the value of cognitively sophisticated capacities, and cognitively impaired members of all cognitively sophisticated species have the same moral status. Moreover, most animals still lack FMS since neither they nor their species are cognitively sophisticated.

Despite its advantages, even this modified version has problems. First, whether one belongs to a given species depends on biological criteria, such as whom one can mate with, whom one is born of, or having the relevant DNA. But it is unclear why these biological criteria are relevant for moral status. The point can be sharpened this way. The human species, for example, is a morally relevant category because the species is characterized, in part, by morally relevant properties such as sophisticated intellectual and emotional capacities, and not merely by biological criteria (e.g., mating abilities). But it is unclear why a token member of a species, a token lacking any of these morally relevant capacities, should get the moral status from the type it belongs to (the species). If membership in the type does not require any of the morally relevant features, how can the membership be morally relevant? Consequently, this modified account has its own problem of arbitrariness (Feinberg 1980, p. 193; Sumner 1981, pp. 97–101; and McMahan 2002, pp. 212–214, 216). McMahan provides an especially interesting imaginary example involving cognitively enhanced Superchimps, which, on the account under consideration, generates counterintuitive consequences for the moral status of the unenhanced chimps. For example, if the Superchimps came to outnumber ordinary unenhanced chimps, the norm for the chimp species would have changed and for this reason alone the unenhanced chimps would have gained higher moral status. A related counterintuitive consequence, not mentioned by McMahan, is the following: if the Superchimps become their own species (via gene therapy and interbreeding), a cognitively impaired member of this newly created Superchimp species with the same cognitive capacities as a non-impaired ordinary chimp (assumed here not to be sufficiently cognitively sophisticated to have FMS) would have a very different moral status from the ordinary chimp. And yet the two chimps would be alike in every respect other than their species classification.

Notice also that, on this account, an anencephalic human baby (born without the higher brain) is a member of the human species and so would have FMS. But some might find this inclusion counterintuitive.

The possibly problematic inclusion of anencephalic infants does not seem to apply to the view underlying Little’s (2008) claim that FMS is achieved late in pregnancy (pp. 332 and 348), when the fetus, which was a human organism, becomes a human being (pp. 339–341). She does not state what the criteria are for being a human being, but she may be partially following Quinn 1984 and conceiving of a human being as one who belongs to the human species and has the capacity to learn (see her page 340), where the latter feature would exclude the anencephalics. While on this view being a human being is not a merely biological matter, the view is still open to the problem of arbitrariness insofar as it holds that the morally irrelevant, merely biological feature of membership in the human species does make a difference to moral status.

One may think that the above objections can be overcome if the relevant criterion for FMS is not conceived of at all in terms of membership in a cognitively sophisticated biological species , but rather in terms of membership in a cognitively sophisticated kind . However, this approach faces a dilemma: either (a) a cognitively sophisticated kind does not include members who can never be cognitively sophisticated and thus leaves out many severely cognitively impaired human beings or (b) cognitive sophistication is not a requirement of membership in a cognitively sophisticated kind (e.g., membership requires merely having the relevant genes even if their expression is blocked by other genes or the environment), but then this membership does not seem to require any morally relevant features (e.g. the genes themselves are not morally relevant – see criticisms along these lines in McMahan 2008), and its moral relevance becomes dubious.

Some views attempt to ground strong reasons not to interfere, and perhaps also to aid and treat fairly, not only by appeal to sophisticated cognitive capacities but also by appeal to special relationships (these are therefore disjunctive accounts). On such accounts, specific agents must not interfere with an individual or must respect that individual’s rights in virtue of being in a relationship with that individual. On one popular version, the relevant relationship is being a fellow member of a community, where the community is composed of all those of the same biological species (Nozick 1997 and possibly Scanlon 1998, p.185).

The motivation for this version of the Special Relationship account comes from thinking about the species relationship as analogous to other relationships (biological, social, etc.) that generate special duties and rights. For example, the relationship between a parent and his child creates an especially strong reason for the parent not to kill and to aid his child. Also, some people believe that even a gamete donor has special reason to aid the resulting child.

Other authors focus on non-species relationships, either as sufficient conditions for FMS or as merely enhancers of moral status. Kittay (2005) holds that the biosocial relation of being someone’s child is sufficient for FMS while Stienbock (1992, pp.9, 13, and 69–70) maintains that being someone’s child only enhances one’s moral status. So, for example, having a well-being, sentience, or consciousness (all of which both animals and humans have) might be sufficient for some moral status (e.g., weak rights not to be harmed and to be aided), but the status is full (e.g., the rights are at full strength) when the individual is in a specific relationship with a moral agent. Instead of being someone’s child, the relationship might be co-belonging to a community where the community’s membership requirements need not be strictly biological, but could be both biological and cognitive (see Quinn’s discussion of rights of humanity 1984, pp.32–33 and 50–54), or both biological and social (Warren 1997, p. 176).

According to Anderson (2004), the capacity for reciprocal accommodation with moral agents is a necessary (not sufficient) condition of having rights (pp. 287–9). This may appear to be a 5.3 type of view. However, unlike the capacities in 5.3, a rat, for example, might fail to have this mutual accommodation capacity vis-à-vis most humans, and so would not have the right to be killed by these humans; but the rat might nonetheless have this capacity vis-à-vis other moral agents (human rat lovers, angels, etc.), and so might be able to gain this right from these agents based on additional conditions. When this capacity for mutual accommodation is combined with membership in the human society (which does not require being a human), then, according to Anderson, this is sufficient for a relationship that grounds rights to non-interference and aid from human beings, though perhaps not as strong as those associated with FMS (p. 284).

All of these Special Relationship accounts escape one drawback of the Member of a Cognitively Sophisticated Species account. The reason not to interfere (or aid, etc.) is not based on being a token of a type with morally irrelevant criteria for membership. Merely belonging to a species or other type of group is not the source of the reason not to interfere. Instead, by being a member of a species or another group, a token individual is thereby in a relationship with another token member of the group and this relationship is taken to be the source of the reason not to interfere.

Instead of the capacity for reciprocal accommodation, Gilbert (2018) holds that if the rights associated with FMS involve the authority to demand respect for these rights, then such rights must be grounded in an actual joint commitment (p. 332).

A central problem with these approaches is that they do not truly offer an account of moral status, but only of particular agents’ reasons vis-à-vis the individual at issue. A being’s moral status should give every moral agent, whether human or not, reasons to protect that being (see section 2.4). But on these accounts, by contrast, only those moral agents who are members of the same species, or are in some other special relationship with the being, have a reason, let us say, not to kill the being (McMahan 2005, p. 355). For example, a human being, in virtue of being in a special relationship (via species community) with a human infant, has a reason not to kill the infant, but a Martian, if there were one, would not have this reason, since he would lack this special relationship with the human infant. Similarly, a human being does not have a reason not to kill an ape infant, even if adult apes are cognitively sophisticated, because the two are not in a special species-based relationship. Reasons of this sort, constitutive of special obligations, are different in kind from, and contrasted with, reasons constitutive of moral status, which are impartial. Recall the contrast between two reasons a parent has not to kill his child: the reason constitutive of his parental obligation versus the impartial reason constitutive of the child’s moral status (section 2.4).

Perhaps some Special Relationship accounts (e.g., Quinn’s discussion of rights of humanity as distinct from rights of respect) do not take themselves to be offering an account of FMS but rather only to be capturing, e.g., a strong right against others to not be killed (the key component of FMS). If so, they leave behind both the term “moral status” and the concept of impartiality. Other special relationship accounts (Steinbock’s and Kittay’s) do use the term “moral status” leaving it unclear whether they think that special relationships could somehow generate impartial reasons.

Another concern with those Special Relationship accounts that attempt to ground rights and requirements analogous to those of FMS is that they are overinclusive (although see exceptions below). If the relevant relationship is one with those in one’s social community then, depending on how this is interpreted, any animal incorporated into human social communities (e.g., dogs) would gain strong rights, contrary to the commonsense view. If the relevant relationship is instead one with those in one’s species community, then all humans are in a special species relationship with an anencephalic human baby and so, according to such an account, owe it a high level of moral protection. But, as noted earlier, some would find this counterintuitive. A related problem emerges once we notice that humans might have more of a relationship with other “embodied minds” (i.e., any being with both a body and mind, such as an animal) than with human organisms that lack minds (such as an anencephalic baby). The Special Relationship approach would then be committed to claiming that animals have stronger rights than some cognitively impaired humans (McMahan 2002, pp. 225–226). But the account would not welcome these implications of its own approach and, if it did so, it would then suffer the problem of overinclusiveness with respect to animals.

Quinn’s view (1984), although quite similar to the species community relationship view, may not be overinclusive with respect to anencephalics or animals. Though Quinn does not consider this case, he would likely conclude that anencephalic infants are mere human organisms, not human beings (because they lack the capacity to learn), or are at most partially, rather than fully, existent human beings. Thus, they do not stand in a special relationship with other human beings to the degree that unimpaired infants or cognitively impaired human beings with the capacity to learn do. Moreover, it is plausible to accept that we have more of a relationship with human beings in Quinn’s sense, which are human embodied minds, than with non-human embodied minds, such as animals. Steinbock’s view also would not be overinclusive with respect to anencephalics or animals, since the full strength of rights she discusses requires both consciousness and being someone’s child.

It is less clear whether a view like Gilbert’s (2018) is under- or overinclusive from the commonsense point of view. Making a joint commitment requires exercising sophisticated cognitive capacities. If only those who actually make joint commitments (to recognize the rights associated with FMS) thereby get such rights, then the view is even more underinclusive than those described in 5.1, since not all those who can make such joint commitments actually do so (pp. 341–342). However, if the recipients of rights do not need to be members of the joint commitment that bestows such rights on them, then the view could end up being overinclusive – the rights associated with FMS could be extended to anencephalics and all animals.

Insofar as Special Relationship accounts intend to ground the notion of FMS without denying that cognitive sophistication alone can ground FMS, they will also suffer from another problem encountered earlier: they are not unified since they offer two unconnected routes to FMS (sophisticated cognitive capacities or special relationships).

Almost all the accounts we have considered so far recognize cognitively sophisticated capacities as sufficient qualifications for FMS. The search for additional sufficient qualifications for FMS, meant to secure the justification for the commonsense view of who should have this highest status, has run into considerable difficulties, chiefly: overinclusion, appeal to criteria of questionable moral relevance, and loss of the impartiality characteristic of FMS.

Jaworska and Tannenbaum (2014) offer an alternative approach, anchored in the idea that cognitively sophisticated capacities can be realized incompletely. If cognitively sophisticated capacities are sufficient to elevate a being’s moral status, so too should the same sophisticated capacities incompletely realized.

To understand this proposal, let’s begin with incompletely realized activities. These are activities one engages in when one learns X “by doing”: e.g., a novice piano player learns to play by slowly reading simple note sequences and pressing (at least some) corresponding piano keys, guided by the end of mastering the instrument. With certain background conditions in place, the pressing of the keys is best thought of not as playing the piano badly, but rather as incomplete realizations of what piano playing amounts to. Jaworska and Tannenbaum interpret certain activities of cognitively unsophisticated humans analogously. With certain background conditions in place, when a child or a cognitively impaired adult models, even in a most rudimentary way, a cognitively sophisticated activity, guided by a mentor’s (parent’s, caretaker’s) end of the mentee acquiring cognitive sophistication, the mentee incompletely realizes the corresponding cognitively sophisticated activity. For instance, playing a simple game like “I-smile-then-you-smile” becomes rule following as an incomplete realization of practical reasoning.

The key background conditions are: (1) it must be reasonable for the mentor to adopt this end and (2) the mentee’s activities must be feasible means of achieving the mentor’s aim. These conditions ensure a sufficiently firm connection between the mentee’s rudimentary activities and the mentor’s end of the mentee mastering the sophisticated activity.

Now consider capacities, since they, and not activities, ground moral status. Unimpaired babies’ activities with their caretakers can straightforwardly fit the above template, so babies have the capacity to incompletely realize cognitively sophisticated activities, and thus have the corresponding elevated moral status. Perhaps more surprisingly, even many human beings incapable of achieving cognitive sophistication can fit the above template. A caretaker of such impaired humans is required, in virtue of that role, to have that human’s flourishing as an end, and the flourishing of a human being encompasses developing sophisticated cognitive capacities. When circumstances are unfavorable and the caretaker cannot reasonably hold the latter, subsidiary end as an aim to be realized, the caretaker can still reasonably hold this end as a standard (meeting condition 1), i.e. as a guide as to what next best aim to adopt. The activities of many cognitively impaired human beings can be feasible means to the caretaker’s next best aim guided by this standard (meeting condition 2). In this way, these beings have the capacity to incompletely realize cognitively sophisticated activities and so also have the corresponding elevated moral status. By contrast, it would never be reasonable for a dog’s caretaker to hold the standard of developing the dog’s cognitive sophistication, since the dog can fully flourish without such sophistication. Moreover, typically it is also unreasonable to hold the end of making the dog cognitively sophisticated as an aim (not merely as a standard). But even in some odd circumstances a caretaker could reasonably adopt this aim, the activities of the dog would fail the feasibility condition (2). So, either way, dogs lack incompletely realized cognitively sophisticated capacities.

Thus, this account overcomes the under- and overinclusion problems of the accounts canvassed above. Moreover, the capacities this account appeals to are modest extensions of the capacities deemed morally relevant by a broad spectrum of views. In addition, the account grounds impartial rather than relationship-based reasons for moral regard: the feature grounding status is not a relationship but rather is vested in the individual, just as the capacity to play a squash match is vested in the individual even though this requires that someone could play with her. The main shortcoming of this account is that, although it provides grounds for an elevation of moral status, there is no guarantee that this elevated status reaches the full array (and strength) of protections and entitlements associated with FMS. The goal of this particular account was to show that two beings (e.g. a baby and a dog) who are otherwise cognitively on a par, can have differing moral statuses in virtue of the fact that one, and not the other, currently has cognitively sophisticated capacities incompletely realized. The account assumes that cognitively sophisticated capacities are sufficient for FMS but does not address whether such incompletely realized capacities ground FMS or only a somewhat lesser moral status.

In addition to some of the features noted in section 5.3 (e.g., having interests, having a good, etc.), some philosophers have attempted to ground the moral status of an entity on features that do not connect with interests in any way. One such feature is not being designed by anyone to fulfill any purpose, which some philosophers hold as a ground for being treated as an end and not a mere means, and thus having at least some degree of moral status (Brennan 1984, pp. 44 and 56 and Katz 1997, pp. 129–131). Naturalness, that is, being unaltered by humans, has also been proposed as itself a ground of intrinsic value, and so as grounding at least some degree of moral status (Elliot 1997, p. 80). Perhaps harmony and beauty might be yet other features one could appeal to as grounds of the moral status of ecosystems (Leopold 1949 and Callicott 1980). These views do not discuss whether moral status comes in degrees and provide no guidance for how to adjudicate the numerous conflicts that would arise among entities with moral status. Insofar as these two issues are addressed by supplementing these views with one (or more) of the accounts discussed in sections 5.1–5.6, the views will inherit the problems of those accounts. For elaboration of these and other such views as they arise in environmental ethics, along with critiques, see the entry on environmental ethics .

The survey in section 5 of the various proposed grounds of moral status largely sidestepped the question of why the proposed grounds can play their purported role in grounding moral status. What is so special about these grounds that they can confer special status on their possessors? For most of the proposed grounds this issue is not addressed in the literature. However, this issue is addressed extensively by some views that take sophisticated cognitive capacities, especially the capacity for autonomy, to ground FMS, and also by some views that take rudimentary cognitive capacities, such as sentience, to ground some moral status. So these are the views we will briefly summarize here.

Authors working within the Kantian tradition have elaborated and defended various versions of the claim that autonomy, or the capacity to set ends according to reason, is unconditionally valuable and the ultimate condition of value of everything else (see the entry on autonomy in moral and political philosophy , sections 2 and 2.1). Numerous variants of the argument for this claim can be found in the literature, and the most prominent ones take the transcendental form (see the entry on transcendental arguments , section 5). On one version, in rationally choosing or valuing anything at all one must presuppose the supreme value of one’s own rational capacities, and, by extension, the supreme value of rational capacities in general (Korsgaard 1996a and 1996b). On this picture, rational agents must recognize the supreme value of rational capacities as a condition of valuing anything else, and this recognition takes the form of affording FMS to beings with rational capacities. This argument has spawned numerous responses from both critics and proponents. For critiques, see, for example, Regan (2002) and Bukoski (2018). For alternative defenses and responses on the Kantians’ behalf, see Sussman (2003).

Some philosophers have attempted to establish that the capacity to value confers special status on those who have it due to its instrumental usefulness. For example, Buss (2012) traces the value of this capacity to the value of non-instrumentally valuable things (e.g., works of art, beautiful landscapes, animal species) that must be valued (appreciated for their value) in order to be given “their due” (p. 350, see also p. 358). She claims that though the capacity is merely instrumental, and that beings with this capacity are “very special instruments” (p. 347, see also p. 353), nevertheless such beings are to be treated with “awe admiration, and deference” (p. 347) and not merely as a means to an end (p. 349). This view is incomplete without an explanation of why human beings qua instruments ought to be treated with the deference owed to what they appreciate (p. 353), given that we do not generally hold instruments in the high regard that we hold what they are for.

There are also those who, inspired by the ancient Greek tradition, turn to the “good for” relation as the underpinning of all value to defend the claim that the capacity to value confers special status on those who have it. According to Theunissen (2020), whatever is genuinely good for human beings is of value in the sense that it generates reasons to act accordingly. The capacity to value is good for human beings (is beneficial to them regardless of anyone’s attitude or opinion about it) and that explains this capacity’s special value (p. 127). A daunting challenge for this view is to explain – without slipping into circularity by claiming that humans have a special moral status – why the “X is good for humans” relation confers value on X while, in general, the “Z is good for Y” relation (e.g., a rabbit is good for itself) does not confer analogous value on Z.

Contractualist conceptions of morality attempt to derive all of morality, together with full moral status of individuals, from a hypothetical reciprocal agreement (entered into under conditions specified variously by different versions) among rational agents (see the entry on contractualism ). The claim is that all able parties would agree (make a contract) to be bound and to bind others to treat them in the agreed-upon ways (that encompass FMS). These views work well to explain why the capacity to enter and adhere to such a reciprocal agreement, which includes the capacity to both demand moral status for oneself and to respect the moral status of others by assuming duties and responsibilities, would confer FMS on an individual.

Related views, such as Gilbert’s (2018), explain the normativity of agreements by interpreting them as joint commitments and ground rights in actual joint commitment. These views also offer a ready explanation of why those deemed to have the rights do have them, but they do not correlate rights with capacities. If such views were to ground rights in hypothetical joint commitments, they could explain why those possessing the sophisticated cognitive capacities required to make joint commitments would have the rights.

More generally, on views that conceive of morality as at least partly originating from rational agents actively binding, obligating, or imposing authority on one another, it is easy to see why those with sufficient cognitive capacity to impose their authority on others would have FMS that others are bound to respect. For example, Quinn (1984) speaks of a “picture of morality as a nexus of independent spheres of authority to permit, forbid, and require” (49) and, because he sees the capacity to will as sufficient for such authority, it is also sufficient for FMS.

Utilitarians and those sympathetic to utilitarian approaches often see the protection and promotion of interests, where this is understood to presuppose consciousness, as the central subject matter of morality (e.g., DeGrazia 1996, p. 39). On such views it is straightforward why the capacity to have interests is crucial to having any moral status at all. On some views, the capacity to experience pleasure or pain (sentience) is a prerequisite of having interests and this explains why sentience is a ground of moral status (Singer 1993, p. 57). Environmentalists, unlike Utilitarians, do not assume consciousness is a necessary condition for having interests and hence use the term in a broader fashion. However, they do not explain why interests, broadly construed in this way, give rise to moral status.

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Philosophy Bites: Jeff McMahan on Moral Status , April 15, 2012.
Environmental Ethics , by Alasdair Cochrane, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

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Essay on Moral Values in 100, 150, 200, 300, 350, & 400 Words

Table of Contents

Essay on Moral Values in 100 Words

Moral values serve as guiding principles that shape our behavior, decisions, and interactions with others. They provide a moral compass and help individuals lead a meaningful and ethical life. In this essay, we will explore the significance and relevance of moral values in our society.

Moral values promote empathy, honesty, respect, and fairness, fostering a harmonious coexistence among individuals. They enhance our character, shaping us into responsible and compassionate human beings. Emphasizing moral values cultivates a sense of integrity and accountability, ensuring that our actions align with our beliefs. Moreover, they provide a foundation for building strong relationships and fostering mutual trust.

Essay on Moral Values in 150 Words

Moral values play a significant role in shaping our lives and society. They serve as guides to help us distinguish between right and wrong, shaping our behavior and decision-making processes. These values act as a compass that directs us towards uprightness, justice, empathy, and respect.

Moral values encompass several aspects, such as honesty, integrity, compassion, and fairness. Honesty cultivates trust and credibility, forming the foundation of healthy relationships. Integrity encourages us to act in accordance with our ethical principles, even when no one is watching. Compassion moves us to understand and help others, promoting harmony and unity. Fairness demands equal treatment and consideration for all, ensuring justice prevails.

By adhering to moral values, we create a society that thrives on righteousness and respect. Our actions become reflections of our character, contributing to a positive and ethical world.

Essay on Moral Values in 200 Words

Moral values play a crucial role in shaping the fabric of society. They are the principles that guide individuals in making ethical decisions and treating others with respect and compassion. In a world filled with diversity and differing belief systems, moral values act as the universal language that transcends cultural boundaries.

At their core, moral values encompass honesty, integrity, empathy, fairness, and kindness. These values serve as the building blocks of strong relationships, fostering trust and understanding among individuals. By adhering to moral values, one can lead a life that is not only morally upright but also contributes positively to the greater good.

Moreover, moral values provide individuals with a sense of direction and purpose. They act as a moral compass, guiding our actions and decisions. In times of confusion and moral dilemmas, these values serve as a reference point to help us differentiate right from wrong.

Moral values are also essential for personal growth and development. They shape our character and define who we are as individuals. Living by these values helps cultivate virtues such as patience, forgiveness, and perseverance, leading to personal fulfillment and happiness.

In conclusion, moral values form the foundation of a just and harmonious society. They foster a sense of unity and shared responsibility among individuals. As we navigate through life, it is crucial to uphold and promote moral values, ensuring a world where compassion, fairness, and integrity prevail.

Essay on Moral Values in 300 Words

Moral values are the foundation of a just and harmonious society. They guide our thoughts, actions, and decisions, shaping our character and defining who we are as individuals. In a world that can often feel chaotic and confusing, developing and upholding strong moral values is crucial for maintaining peace and stability.

At their core, moral values encompass principles such as honesty, integrity, compassion, and respect for others. They teach us to differentiate between right and wrong and to make choices that align with our inner sense of rightness. Moral values provide us with a moral compass, allowing us to navigate through life’s challenges and dilemmas.

One of the key aspects of moral values is the importance placed on empathy and kindness. These values encourage us to understand and share the feelings of others, fostering a sense of unity and compassion among individuals. They remind us to treat others with dignity and respect, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs.

Another fundamental aspect of moral values is the significance of honesty and integrity. These values promote sincerity, transparency, and accountability in our words and actions. They require us to be truthful and trustworthy, even in the face of adversity or temptation.

Moral values play a vital role in our personal and professional lives. They guide our behavior in relationships, be it with family, friends, colleagues, or strangers. They shape our decision-making process, helping us to make ethical choices that consider the well-being of others.

In conclusion, moral values form the bedrock of a well-functioning society. They provide us with a compass to navigate the complexities of life and guide us toward making ethical choices. By upholding these values, we contribute to the creation of a more equitable, empathetic, and harmonious world. It is essential that we cultivate and foster these values in ourselves and in future generations, ensuring their continued importance in an ever-changing world.

Essay on Moral Values in 350 Words

Moral values: a guiding light in life.

Moral values serve as the compass that guides individuals through their journey in life. These principles act as a moral code that shapes one’s character, behavior, and interactions with others. In today’s fast-paced and interconnected world, the significance of moral values cannot be undermined.

Firstly, moral values play a crucial role in shaping one’s personal character. These values instill qualities such as honesty, integrity, compassion, and empathy. They teach individuals to distinguish between right and wrong and encourage them to make ethical choices. When individuals incorporate moral values into their character, they become more dependable, trustworthy, and responsible.

Secondly, moral values enhance interpersonal relationships. Respect, trust, and kindness towards others are fundamental moral values that foster harmonious connections. When individuals exhibit these values, they create an environment of understanding, love, and acceptance. This promotes healthy communication, cooperation, and collaboration, which in turn leads to better relationships in both the personal and professional spheres.

Moreover, moral values guide individuals in difficult situations and dilemmas. When faced with choices that can impact their integrity or dignity, moral values serve as a beacon of guidance. These values help individuals make decisions that align with their conscience and core beliefs, even if it means facing hardships or sacrifices.

Furthermore, moral values contribute to the betterment of society as a whole. When individuals uphold values such as justice, equality, and tolerance, they contribute to creating a just and inclusive society. These values enable individuals to recognize the importance of social responsibility and motivate them to work towards the welfare of others. A society built on strong moral values is likely to be more peaceful, humane, and progressive.

In conclusion, moral values are the foundation upon which individuals build their character, relationships, and society. They provide a sense of direction and purpose, helping individuals navigate the complexities of life. Embracing moral values not only enriches one’s own life but also establishes a strong ethical framework for the betterment of society as a whole. It is necessary for individuals to reflect upon and strive to incorporate moral values in their daily lives, for they truly serve as a guiding light in the modern world.

Essay on Moral Values in 400 Words

Moral values are guiding principles that dictate the behavior and actions of individuals, communities, and societies as a whole. They serve as a moral compass, helping us distinguish right from wrong and guiding us in making ethically responsible decisions. These values are deeply rooted in our beliefs, upbringing, and cultural traditions, shaping our character and defining who we are as human beings.

One of the most important moral values is honesty. Honesty is the foundation of trust and integrity. Being honest means being truthful, sincere, and genuine in our words and actions. It is about having the courage to always tell the truth, even when it may be difficult or unfavorable. Honesty builds strong relationships and promotes a sense of trust between individuals, which is vital for a harmonious society.

Another key moral value is kindness. Kindness involves showing compassion, empathy, and consideration towards others. It is about being supportive, understanding, and respectful. Kindness can be expressed through small acts of kindness, such as helping someone in need or offering a listening ear to a friend. It promotes a sense of community and fosters a culture of compassion and caring.

Respect is also an essential moral value. Respect involves treating others with dignity, honor, and fairness. It is about valuing the opinions, beliefs, and rights of others, regardless of our differences. Respect allows for open and constructive dialogue, leading to better understanding and cooperation among individuals and communities.

Integrity is another moral value that is crucial for personal and societal growth. Integrity involves having strong moral principles and consistently adhering to them, even when faced with challenging situations. It requires individuals to be honest, trustworthy, and accountable for their actions. Integrity is the backbone of a just and ethical society, promoting fairness, responsibility, and accountability.

Finally, a moral value that cannot be overlooked is empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It involves putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and showing compassion and understanding towards their experiences and struggles. Empathy encourages a sense of connection and unity among individuals, fostering a more inclusive and supportive society.

In conclusion, moral values play a crucial role in shaping our character, guiding our behavior, and creating a harmonious society. Honesty, kindness, respect, integrity, and empathy are just a few examples of important moral values that should be cultivated and practiced by individuals. By embracing and promoting these values, we can contribute to a more just, compassionate, and ethical world.

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Morality And Morality

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Morality Vs Morality

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Morality Of Morality In Islam

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Morality Exists Independently from Religion Historically, religion and morality have had an influence on each other. The influence of religion has led to the development of some aspects of morality. For example, many abolitionists were religious leaders. On the other hand, morality has had an influence on religion. For example, morality has influenced the Catholic Church’s role over women and abortion. While religion and morality may influence each other, is one necessary for the other? It is a…

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Morality is one of the most controversial subjects to understand because there is no clear right or wrong answer. It can be one way for somebody and completely different for someone else living in the same area. A majority of people chose their morality based off society or how other people tell them it should be. These people never question why things are considered morally good and evil, rather they unquestionably accepted the values of what’s good and evil dominant in their society. Sigmund…

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Why the World Still Needs Immanuel Kant

Unlike in Europe, few in the United States will be celebrating the philosopher’s 300th birthday. But Kant’s writing shows that a free, just and moral life is possible — and that’s relevant everywhere.

Credit... Illustration by Daniel Barreto

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By Susan Neiman

The philosopher Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany.

Published April 17, 2024 Updated April 18, 2024

When I arrived in Berlin in 1982, I was writing a dissertation on Kant’s conception of reason. It was thrilling to learn that the apartment I’d sublet turned out to be located near Kantstrasse, though at the time I wondered in frustration: Why was there no James Street — Henry or William — in the Cambridge, Mass., I’d left behind; no streets honoring Emerson or Eliot? Were Americans as indifferent to culture as snooty Europeans supposed? It didn’t take long before I, too, could walk down Kantstrasse and turn right on Leibniz without a thought.

It’s harder to ignore the way Germany, like other European nations, sets aside entire years to honor its cultural heroes. This century has already seen an Einstein Year , a Beethoven Year , a Luther Year and a Marx Year , each commemorating some round-numbered anniversary of the hero in question. Federal and local governments provide considerable sums for events that celebrate the thinkers in question and debate their contemporary relevance.

Years before Immanuel Kant’s 300th birthday on April 22, 2024, the Academy of Science in Berlin, to which he once belonged, organized a conference to begin preparations for his tercentennial. A second conference published a report of the proceedings, but when I urged colleagues to use the occasion to create programs for a wider audience, I was met with puzzled silence. Reaching a wider audience is not a talent philosophy professors normally cultivate, but conversations with other cultural institutions showed this case to be especially thorny.

It wasn’t just uneasiness about celebrating “another dead white man,” as one museum director put it. The problems became deeper as the zeitgeist changed. “ Immanuel Kant: A European Thinker ” was a good title for that conference report in 2019, when Brexit seemed to threaten the ideal of European unification Germans supported. Just a few years later, “European” has become a slur. At a time when the Enlightenment is regularly derided as a Eurocentric movement designed to support colonialism, who feels comfortable throwing a yearlong birthday party for its greatest thinker?

Nonetheless, this year’s ceremonies will officially commence on April 22 with a speech by Chancellor Scholz and a memorial lunch that has taken place on the philosopher’s birthday every year since 1805. Two days earlier, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany will open an exhibit at the presidential palace devoted to Kant’s writing on peace.

The start of the year saw special Kant editions of four prominent German magazines. A Kant movie made for television premiered on March 1, and another is in production. Four exhibits on Kant and the Enlightenment will open in Bonn, Lüneburg, Potsdam and Berlin. The conferences will be numerous, including one organized by the Divan, Berlin’s house for Arab culture.

But why celebrate the Kant year at all?

The philosopher’s occasional autobiographical remarks provide a clue to the answer. As the son of a saddle maker, Kant would have led a workman’s life himself, had a pastor not suggested the bright lad deserved some higher education. He came to love his studies and to “despise the common people who knew nothing,” until “Rousseau set me right,” he wrote. Kant rejected his earlier elitism and declared his philosophy would restore the rights of humanity — otherwise they would be more useless than the work of a common laborer.

Chutzpah indeed. The claim becomes even more astonishing if you read a random page of his texts. How on earth, you may ask, are human rights connected with proving our need to think in categories like “cause” or “substance?” The question is seldom raised, and the autobiographical remarks usually ignored, for traditional readings of Kant focus on his epistemology, or theory of knowledge.

Before Kant, it’s said, philosophers were divided between Rationalists and Empiricists, who were concerned about the sources of knowledge. Does it come from our senses, or our reason? Can we ever know if anything is real? By showing that knowledge requires sensory experience as well as reason, we’re told, Kant refuted the skeptics’ worry that we never know if anything exists at all.

All this is true, but it hardly explains why the poet Heinrich Heine found Kant more ruthlessly revolutionary than Robespierre. Nor does it explain why Kant himself said only pedants care about that kind of skepticism. Ordinary people do not fret over the reality of tables or chairs or billiard balls. They do, however, wonder if ideas like freedom and justice are merely fantasies. Kant’s main goal was to show they are not.

The point is often missed, because Kant was as bad a writer as he was a great philosopher. By the time he finishes proving the existence of the objects of ordinary experience and is ready to show how they differ from ideas of reason, the semester is nearly over. Long-windedness is not, however, the only reason his work is often misinterpreted. Consider the effects of a bad review.

Had Kant died before his 57th birthday, he’d be remembered by a few scholars for some short, early texts. He withdrew from writing them in 1770 to conceive and compose his great “Critique of Pure Reason .” After what scholars call his “silent decade,” Kant pulled the text together in six months and finally published in 1781. For a year and a half, Kant waited for responses. When one finally appeared, it was a hatchet job accusing him of being a Berkeleyan solipsist: someone who denies the existence of ordinary objects.

Any author can imagine Kant’s dismay, and most likely his rage. In haste to refute the distortion of his life’s work, Kant wrote a second edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” and more fatefully, the “Prolegomena .” Since the latter is much shorter than the main book, it’s read far more often, and this has skewed the interpretation of Kant’s work as a whole. If the major problem of philosophy were proving the world’s existence, then Kant surely solved it. (Richard Rorty argued that he did, and that philosophy has little more to offer.)

In fact Kant was driven by a question that still plagues us: Are ideas like freedom and justice utopian daydreams, or are they more substantial? Their reality can’t be proven like that of material objects, for those ideas make entirely different claims on us — and some people are completely impervious to their claims. Could philosophy show that acting morally, if not particularly common, is at least possible?

A stunning thought experiment answers that question in his next book, the “Critique of Practical Reason .” Kant asks us to imagine a man who says temptation overwhelms him whenever he passes “a certain house.” (The 18th century was discreet.) But if a gallows were constructed to insure the fellow would be hanged upon exiting the brothel, he’d discover he can resist temptation very well. All mortal temptations fade in the face of threats to life itself.

Yet the same man would hesitate if asked to condemn an innocent man to death, even if a tyrant threatened to execute him instead. Kant always emphasized the limits of our knowledge, and none of us know if we would crumble when faced with death or torture. Most of us probably would. But all of us know what we should do in such a case, and we know that we could .

This experiment shows we are radically free. Not pleasure but justice can move human beings to deeds that overcome the deepest of animal desires, the love of life. We want to determine the world, not only to be determined by it. We are born and we die as part of nature, but we feel most alive when we go beyond it: To be human is to refuse to accept the world we are given.

At the heart of Kant’s metaphysics stands the difference between the way the world is and the way the world ought to be. His thought experiment is an answer to those who argue that we are helpless in the face of pleasure and can be satisfied with bread and circuses — or artisanal chocolate and the latest iPhone. If that were true, benevolent despotism would be the best form of government.

But if we long, in our best moments, for the dignity of freedom and justice, Kant’s example has political consequences. It’s no surprise he thought the French Revolution confirmed our hopes for moral progress — unlike the followers of his predecessor David Hume, who thought it was dangerous to stray from tradition and habit.

This provides an answer to contemporary critics whose reading of Kant’s work focuses on the ways in which it violates our understanding of racism and sexism. Some of his remarks are undeniably offensive to 21st-century ears. But it’s fatal to forget that his work gave us the tools to fight racism and sexism, by providing the metaphysical basis of every claim to human rights.

Kant argued that each human being must be treated as an end and not as a means — which is why he called colonialism “evil” and congratulated the Chinese and Japanese for denying entry to European invaders. Contemporary dismissals of Enlightenment thinkers forget that those thinkers invented the concept of Eurocentrism, and urged their readers to consider the world from non-European perspectives. Montesquieu put his criticisms of French society in the mouths of fictitious Persians; Lahontan attacked European politics through dialogues with a Native American.

At a time when the advice to “be realistic” is best translated as the advice to decrease your expectations, Kant’s work asks deep questions about what reality is. He insisted that when we think morally, we should abstract from the cultural differences that divide us and recognize the potential human dignity in every human being. This requires the use of our reason. Contrary to trendy views that see reason as an instrument of domination, Kant saw reason’s potential as a tool for liberation.

He also argued that political and social relations must aim toward justice rather than power, however often those may be confused in practice. We’ve come to better understand how racism and sexism can preclude genuine universalism. Should we discard Kant’s commitment to universalism because he did not fully realize it himself — or rather celebrate the fact that we can make moral progress, an idea which Kant would wholeheartedly applaud?

In Germany, it’s now common to hear that the Enlightenment was at very best ambivalent: While it may have been an age of reason, it was also an age of slavery and colonialism. This argument ignores the fact that, like progressive intellectuals everywhere, Enlightenment thinkers did not win all their battles. It also neglects the fact that they fought for them anyway, despite the risks of censorship, exile and even death.

Significantly, many contemporary intellectuals from formerly colonized countries reject those arguments. Thinkers like the Ghanaian Ato Sekyi-Otu, the Nigerian Olufemi Taiwo, the Chilean Carlos Peña, the Brazilian Francisco Bosco or the Indian Benjamin Zachariah are hardly inclined to renounce Enlightenment ideas as Eurocentric.

The problem with ideas like universal human rights is not that they come from Europe, but that they were not realized outside of it. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Enlightenment and listen to non-Western standpoints?

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This Quote Means: ‘If you want to test a man’s character, give him power’

The quote speaks of the moral and ethical implications of wielding power. here’s a brief look at how power has been viewed by some great philosophers and political scientists, and what this quote argues. ethics also forms a part of the upsc cse syllabus..

Power is a subject to which philosophers and thinkers have devoted a great deal of thought – in defining it, in discussing who wields it, what ought to be done with it, and whether power is inherently a good or bad thing.

In popular culture too, quotes such as “With great power comes great responsibility”, and “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” give great weight to it. Another popular quote says: “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power”.

Popularly attributed to US President Abraham Lincoln, it likely has another source but is nevertheless a testament to power being linked to larger ethics and morality. What exactly does it say about the nature of power, and how does it differ from other views on the matter? We explain. Further, topics related to ethics and morality also form a part of the UPSC CSE syllabus.

What does this quote mean?

According to a Reuters fact-check from 2021, the quote comes from an American politician named Robert G Ingersoll, who said it about Lincoln.

In an 1883 speech, he reportedly said: “If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy.”

It argues that in times of trouble, every person gets down to their survival instincts. However, it is when a person is given power, which may be understood as the capacity to affect or change things meaningfully, that we get a sense of what their true character is like.

Power can also mean control over resources. A poor person may not be able to accomplish what she wants, or transform her intentions (good or bad) into reality. But when someone has power, they can make a difference, and it is then that we can understand a person’s true character.

Even at an individual or micro level, this can be witnessed to a degree, say when someone becomes the head of a local neighbourhood association or becomes in charge of organising an event. As part of the responsibilities they are given, do they become a team player or simply give instructions to others? Are they more interested in letting their vision prevail or are they open to criticism? Are they using that power for their benefit, say by asking others to do their work for them? In this way, power allows us to understand a person’s worldview.

On a larger level, when politicians get elected to powerful posts, or when bureaucrats or judges or media persons have to handle big issues related to their jobs that can affect thousands of people, one can witness their values and ethics through their work.

Different views of power

Nivedita Menon, a professor of political thought at Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote that in political and social theory, “power refers to the ability to do things and the capacity to produce effects within social interaction.” Therefore, it is deeply connected to not individuals but them in relation to others.

Political scientist Hannah Arendt viewed power not just as coercion but as a tool of communication between people. No one can suddenly emerge and exercise power – it is something that gets its legitimacy from a group of people who agree to be part of a system.

She wrote, “power needs no justification, being inherent in the very existence of political communities; what it does need is legitimacy… Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert, but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting together rather than from any action that then may follow.”

In that sense, power can be energising. A democratically elected leader may choose to fix a broken system since he derives his authority from the community he is from. He could be aware that his power comes from deliberations, discussions, and a history of larger forces keeping people working together. He would then want to use it to better the lives of people in that community.

On the other hand, several Marxist scholars view power as the ability of dominant groups or economic classes in society to exercise control over others. For others, it is simply a tool to make someone do what they want.

Further, obtaining power is one thing, but maintaining it might compel a person to make decisions that are often amoral. As a result, the intention of doing something when one gets power can be noble, but the practical realities in society may make it difficult to be ethical in its exercise.

Although it is not a justification for all unethical actions, it is a criticism against the idea that all actions of a person in power directly reflect their character. They can also reflect the time they are in or the systems they are a part of, and could be linked to larger externalities.

Lastly, the quote also makes another assertion – that “any man can stand adversity”. Tough times – losing a loved one, money, or other intangible things of value – can force a man to fend for himself. But in that situation, if they are kind and choose to do good for others, is that also not a show of their character? It thus raises the question, is power the right judge of a person’s character?

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Importance of Moral Education Essay

November 28, 2020 by Son of Ghouse Leave a Comment

In the modern era, when people around the world are civilized, we have an unprecedented boom in technology and science. Consequently, the quality and standard of life of the average person are at an all-time high. Though human history is comparatively newer on this 4.35 billion years old earth, we have managed to successfully hone the forces of nature to not just survive but thrive as a species. This write-up is an essay on importance of moral education essay.

Our ancestors started as hunters and gatherers, but now we are writing complex computer programs to make artificial intelligence carry out our space explorations. When you search for the reasons behind this huge evolution of human development, you can easily conclude that the system of education has made us more capable and competent.

Education is one of the most important processes that help an individual to be enlightened about his or her existence. Education provides us with knowledge in accessible and practical ways that guide future generations. This process provides an individual with skills, habits, beliefs, and values that will help him or her attain a successful and prosperous life.

There are various systems of education in different parts of the world. But no system of education can be complete without students getting proper moral education as a part of their curriculum.

Moral education consists of a set of beliefs and guidance acquired in the philosophical journey of our society. It makes a student well mannered, courteous, vigorous, non-bullying, obedient, and diligent. It guides the behavior, attitudes, and intentions of the students towards others and nature. It helps a person throughout his or her life to decide what is right or what is wrong.

Definition Of Moral Education

Some educational theories suggest that new avenues of the future can only open when the previous generation makes a path for it by staying out of the way. Though adults can take their moral understanding further with their ability of critical thinking that they acquire from systematic education, children require more careful attention as they are easily impressed and influenced. That is why the guidance of past generations and traditions remain very important in the form of moral education.

Moral education is very ambiguous as a term as different cultures, based on where they live and how they live, have a different set of moral values. But one thing that can be agreed upon universally is that moral education intends to shape the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in young minds.

By the term ‘good’, you can assimilate deeds like contributing towards a healthy society, not harming a fellow member of the society, helping others, being civic, and being productive. The term ‘bad’ however refers to any thought or force that opposes the good deeds.

Although the modern education system is very new and still developing, the branch of moral education has been taught to pupils since ancient times. Earlier, the duty of imparting moral lessons used to be carried out by the religious leaders and educators who specialized in uplifting the moral value of the society by both adhering to and reforming the old traditions. In the modern age, especially after the colonization of several parts of the world, moral education has been reinforced by the new age educationists.

In the contemporary world moral education has become more universal in approach. More and more humanitarian aspects like human rights, rights for specially-abled people, women’s rights, animal rights, and rights of other marginalized sections of the society have been included.

This progressive approach towards moral education results in a more harmonious society where students become more inclusive and compassionate towards each other along with being successful individually.

Also Read: Essay on Aatma nirbhar Bharat in English

Essay On Importance Of Moral Education In 150 Words

The purpose of an individual’s education is their all-round development, and not just securing high paying jobs, no matter how much the rat-races of the world may have convinced us otherwise.

The education of an individual can never be complete unless they have learned the lessons of tolerance, compassion, pluralistic values, respect, faith, honesty, and many other great virtues that are essential for an upright social life.

These lessons are acquired from the moral education that kids are imparted through stories, skits, interactions, dialogues, and discourses, and are expected to come from the elder members of the society.

Moral lessons teach young children about ideas that take them towards the ‘good’ life and help them identify the ‘bad’. A life that is not guided by these lessons can easily go astray, and an individual leading such a life, instead of being useful and productive, turns out to be harmful to society.

Essay On Importance Of Moral Education In 250 Words

For a young student moral lessons are just as important as technical and scientific ones as these help in shaping their entire personality. The word moral comes from the Latin root ‘moris’ which means the code of conduct of a people, and the social adhesive that holds a community together.

Moral lessons teach students the importance of positive virtues like honesty, responsibility, mutual respect, helpfulness, kindness, and generosity, without which no society can ever function. At a personal level, this knowledge is essential for a healthy and meaningful life.

These lessons are also aimed at conveying the vital message that negative qualities like greed, vengeance, hatred, and violence can hinder the functioning of a productive society and can cause immense personal damage to the individual.

Since young minds are easily impressionable and assimilate both positive and negative influences easily, moral lessons are vital in helping them make righteous choices as adults. Moral education makes sure that children grow up to develop a virtuous character and lead a decent life.

History bears witness, whenever a society has deterred from the path of these moral values, calamities have befallen humankind. Had Adolf Hilter been taught the right lessons in tolerance and diversity, the world would have been spared the horrors of the Holocaust and a World War.

A proper system of moral education becomes instrumental in shaping the present and the future of a harmonious society. For the betterment of individuals and the community they live in, imparting the right values to children as students are therefore essential.

Essay On Importance Of Moral Education For Class 7&8

Moral education as a process of learning enables a child to acquire socially acceptable skills that make them a useful resource for society. In the present times, moral education is a necessity, keeping the changing systems of the world in mind.

Moral education should not begin in the confines of a classroom but should start in the comfort and security of a home. Parents should be the first idols of children from whom they learn the basics of moral conduct.

Imparting moral lessons to young kids who have just begun developing their thoughts and are yet to attain individuality is a task of great responsibility. They can only be shaped into righteous human beings if proper care and due guidance are provided.

It is to be remembered, in this relation, that kids learn more from observation and modeling than from lectures and discourses. The kind of environment they develop in and the kind of individuals they find as models play a vital role in shaping them as individuals.

It is, therefore, of utmost importance to make sure that children always find a healthy atmosphere of productivity and righteousness around them, with healthy, meaningful relationships with their parents and other elders.

However, when we allow kids to grow in an atmosphere of immoral conduct, we should only expect them to lead lives bereft of all morality. In such cases, the consequences can be dangerous.

A community whose children, the symbols of its future, develop without proper moral education is doomed to be submerged in the darkness of crimes, immorality, violence, hatred, discrimination, selfishness, and greed.

The benefits of moral education are numerous. Apart from teaching children socially useful values to guide their everyday life, an efficient system of moral education imparts lessons of cooperation. As a value, cooperation is not just vital to an individual’s everyday life, but also for the survival of human society.

There can be no future for human civilization if this value is left out of children’s education as we, as a society, need each other to survive. Morals of respect, love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and honesty help in imbibing this essential value among kids early on in life.

Moral education also helps in teaching children values of responsibility and independence which is otherwise difficult to make them learn. An effective curriculum of moral education would help children build a positive approach to difficult situations, and make them self confident. It helps children in realizing their purpose in life, their motivations, and goals, and make them dedicated to the cause of social well being.

Moral education is the only hope of humanity in the process of eradicating social evils like gender discrimination, animal abuse, oppression, violence, racial discrimination, and violence against minorities.

In order to create a better tomorrow and ascertain the continuation of human civilization, imparting moral education to children is a must. As an integral part of education as a whole, moral lessons should be focussed on, making sure that children receive an all-round education that enhances their personality.

Relevance Of Moral Education During The Present times

The present world is ever-changing. With the advent of technology and globalization, changes in family structure, the evolution of the education systems, changes in patterns of recreation, emergence of the ‘virtual’ world, and variations in the interpersonal relationships, children’s lives, thought patterns, and learning needs have undergone tremendous changes. Under these circumstances, the need and relevance of moral education have also changed.

With the virtual world casting a lasting impression on children, they have now become a lot more vulnerable to negative influences. Misuse of technology nowadays leads many young children and teenagers astray.

The damage caused in many cases is beyond repair. The distortions in the nature of human relationships and their consequences are having lasting impacts on young minds.

Under these changed circumstances, moral education has to assume a changed, and probably more important role. Due to the changes in most major spheres of life, moral values have also suffered major distortions.

Greed, violence, discrimination, and jealousy are becoming common among people. With social media, hatred spreads like wildfire. Values like honesty and generosity are only found in textbooks these days and their practical implications are becoming a rare sight.

Moral education is the only way in which the situation can be expected to improve. Proper moral education in classrooms and at home can help in boosting the morale of the students. But these lessons have to be provided in a more time-adjusted way to suit the need of the hour.

Making proper use of technology, a more visual and engaging curriculum can be drafted to engage the students in a practical and life-like manner.

Including moral education in school curriculums and adding extra weightage to these lessons is, therefore, a vital step to take in this direction.

As a society, the value of moral education is immense for us. If we are to produce sensible, kind, generous, responsible, and sensitized individuals to lead the future, moral education cannot be left out. In fact, our very existence as a civilization stands on how morally righteous and upright our future generations are.

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This Quote Means: ‘If you want to test a man’s character, give him power’