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So there's been some discussion in the recent literature and actually some discussion in this room over the last few days of

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whether we should cognitively enhance or just enhance beings in ways that might be thought to affect their moral status.

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That's just to give a few examples from the literature.

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Sarah Chan and John Harris have considered whether we should cognitively enhance animals in significant ways,

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ways that might be thought to increase their moral status. On the other hand.

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Adam Shriver and Paul Thompson have argued that we should, in fact,

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significantly cognitively dis enhance at least some animals to prevent them from suffering some of the harms involved in factory farming.

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More controversially, and I think largely undiscovered, looked at the top contention,

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and Claudia Tamborine have defended the kind of extreme cognitive enhancement of

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some human persons in ways that might be thought to affect their moral status,

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so they defend what they call the soft decapitation of some criminal offenders.

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This would involve inducing a kind of docile and healthy, but severely cognitively impaired state and in psychopaths.

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And then, as was mentioned in a couple of talks yesterday,

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there's been quite a bit of discussion about whether it would be possible and necessary desirable to enhance the

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cognitive capacities of existing human persons in ways that would increase their moral status to super personal levels.

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So and so one question that I think is going to be relevant to all of these discussions is is whether it's good for you to have moral status,

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whether your moral status contributes to your well-being or as I like to be equivalent, whether it has prudential value to you.

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If your status has prudential value,

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then presumably we have some reason to bring about cognitive enhancements of the sort that would increase moral status,

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at least as long as they're not. They don't affect numerical identity.

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On the other hand, if moral status is bad for you, we presumably have reasons not to bring about those kinds of cognitive enhancements and in fact,

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that everyone's talking about cognitive dissonance.

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But I think a little bit surprisingly less question about the prudential value of moral status hasn't attracted much attention.

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So a lot of people have noted that cognitive enhancements or just enhancements might affect a being's moral status.

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And there's been quite a bit of discussion about the possible implications of such changes in moral status for the well-being of other people.

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So a lot of the discussion, for example, about whether we should produce beings with super personal moral status has been

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about whether this would be something bad for the for the people left behind,

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for the for the mere moral persons who don't get the increased moral status.

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But the question of whether moral status is good for the bearer of the moral status itself seems

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to have been almost completely neglected as far as I'm aware from the literature I've seen,

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apart from in some work by Sarah Chan and John Harris.

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And the only exceptions in the world.

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So and so what I want to do in this talk is to begin to sort of explore the credential value of moral status by thinking

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about three different kinds of credential value or this value that we might think that moral status would have.

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I'm not going to arrive at any firm conclusions about any of these types of value,

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but I want to sort of try to try out some initial speculative arguments.

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First, a couple of preliminary comments. So first of all, just to comment on how I'm going to understand moral status,

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I'm going to take moral status to be a metric of the overall strength right and counterfactual robustness of one's fundamental moral rights.

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So in this kind of view, you can get more moral status by acquiring new fundamental rights or through an

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increase in the strength or robustness of at least some of your existing rights.

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And there are obviously lots of other ways of thinking about moral status.

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We might instead think of moral status as sort of something in the background that gives you more rights.

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We might think of moral status in broader ways that takes into account not just moral rights,

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but also interests that have some kind of moral significance, even if they don't give rise to rights.

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And I'm actually sympathetic to some of those broader ways of thinking about moral status.

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But I'm just going to stick to this kind of simpler, rights based understanding because it makes the presentation of what I want to say simpler.

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And I do actually think that I am going to make a play to some other accounts of moral status as well.

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I'm not sure exactly have a family that extends to other kinds of accounts of moral status.

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And the second part of your comment,

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and this is the third one on the handout I'm going to skip to the second one is just a comment on the scope of the argument.

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So I'm not going to try to arrive at any conclusions about whether we should in fact pursue

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cognitive enhancements or just enhancements of the sort that would affect moral status.

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I think that the question about the prudential value of moral status is sort of interesting,

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mainly because of its relevance to answering this moral question.

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But answers to this moral question are going to depend on all sorts of considerations that are not going

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to get into like questions about whether there are down theological constraints on alternative beings,

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moral status, questions about the effects of changes in most cases and one being for other beings and so on.

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OK, so let me move on to the first kind of value that I think moral status might have,

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and this is what I'm going to kind of instrumental value, and it's what I'm going to call protective value.

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So I think that the idea of protect their value is probably best illustrated by reference to legal status.

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So it's tempting to think that legal status has some kind of credential value when an individual possesses a legal right to something.

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It's often good for them that they possess that right. So it seems good for me, for example, that I possess the legal right to self-determination.

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That's characteristically conferred on citizens of a liberal democracy.

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The right to spend my time off of my labour generally live my life as I please within some constraints.

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I would be in one way worse off where I do like this right? As, for example, the slaves and the citizens of some authoritarian states.

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So why is this legal, right, good for me?

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Well, one answer is one reason why it's fiction is that it helps to protect some aspect of my well-being in this case.

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So some interest of mine, in other words, in this case, my interest in self-determination.

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So provided that people are at least somewhat disposed to comply with the laws in my possession of a legal right to

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self-determination makes it less likely that I will in fact be deprived of my self-determination compared to a situation like that,

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right? So my legal state legal status seems to have a kind of instrumental value for me by helping to protect my interests,

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making it less likely that some of my interests will be set back. So this is what I mean by particular value.

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So it's my moral status, good for me in a similar way. Does it also help protect our values?

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Well, I mean, it might seem kind of initially plausible that it does suppose that I have a moral and not just a legal right to

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self-determination and suppose that people are generally somewhat disposed to comply with their moral gains,

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including those moral duties that are correlative tomorrow, right?

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So people have generally respect one another's more rights than it might seem that my possessing a moral right

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to self-determination again makes it less likely that I will in fact be deprived of my self-determination.

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So this moral right has this kind of protective value. OK,

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but I want to try and suggest that actually the kind of what we might want to say about the protective

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value of legal status of legal rights doesn't doesn't carry over straightforwardly to the moral case.

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And that's because I think there's an important analogy between legal and moral rights

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that has to do with the relationship between rights and the interests that they protect.

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So legal rights, it seems to me, a kind of practically independent of the interests that they protect.

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Someone could easily deprive me of my legal rights to something without doing anything to undermine my interest in it.

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Someone could take away my legal right to self-determination. But I would still have an interest in such determination.

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I would still be better off if I could determine the course of my life. And presumably, actually,

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this is the situation that most people who in fact lack the legal right to self-determination that may have no legal rights determination,

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but they nevertheless have an interest in self-determination.

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But I think we don't have the same kind of independence between the relationship between a moral right and the interests that it protects.

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And in fact, I think it's quite plausible that having an interest in it or in something or at least

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a certain kind of interest in something is sufficient for having a moral right to it,

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at least if we understand more rights in a kind of weak sense,

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which is I'm inclined to do so in the hand that it says that I think it might be plausible

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that you have a moral right if and only if you have to have a certain kind of interest.

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I should just say if that's a mistake in mind, that it's correct in this version of this.

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I just want to say that having a certain kind of interest might be sufficient for having a moral right.

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So why might that be the case? Well,

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one reason it might be the case is that it might be the case that having a certain kind of interest in something is what grounds your moral rights.

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This is, I think, what proponents of the so-called interest theory of rights would claim, but they might also be other reasons why I'm having it.

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Having a certain kind of interest is sufficient sufficient for having a moral right.

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So, for example, it might be that moral rights and interests have some common source.

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So it might be, for example, that my having an interest in self-determination implies that I had the capacity for self-determination

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and maybe my capacity for self-determination is what gives me a moral right to self-determination.

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In any case, I'm not I'm not going to agree for this view that interests are sufficient for my rights.

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I'm just going to now sort of take this as an assumption.

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The correct area of moral status will say that if you have a certain kind of interest, then you have a moral right.

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And I'm going to explore how this might affect how we think about the protective value of moral status or moral rights.

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OK, so in suggesting that our legal rights have particular value,

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I implicitly compared a situation in which I have a legal right to something to a situation in which I let that legal right,

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but I still have the interest that in the actual situation is protected by that right?

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So I compared a situation, an actual situation in which I have an interest and a right to self-determination.

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So a case where I didn't have the legal right to self determination, but I still have the interest in self-determination.

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So this is a kind of this is like comparison one on the end handout. And when we made this comparison,

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it looked as though I'd be better off in the actual situation than in the counterfactual situation because my interest

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would be less likely to be set back if it was accompanied by this right than if it was not in company by now.

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I think this kind of comparison makes sense in the legal case because as I pointed out earlier,

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I could well be in the situation in this kind of fiction situation in which I have an interest in self-determination,

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but I don't have a legal right to self-determination, someone a lawmaker could easily put me in that situation.

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But I don't think that the same kind of comparison makes much sense in the moral case.

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And because it allows us to imagine a counterfactual situation that actually no

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one could bring about a situation in which I have an interest in something,

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but I don't have the right that in fact, according to the correct, their own moral status would always come along with that interest.

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So I don't think this comparison of type one kind of makes no sense in the case of moral rights, I mean,

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it's probably logically and made it physically possible for me to have an interest in self-determination without having a moral

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right to self-determination because morality could have been otherwise a different type of moral status could have been correct.

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But but it's kind of practically irrelevant comparison because no one can put me in that situation.

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No one has the power to change morality in that way, given morality is as it is,

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the only way that someone can deprive me of my moral right to something will also involve depriving me of my interest in it.

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So, for example, I suspect it's possible that the only way that someone could derive any of my moral right

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to self-determination would be by extinguishing my capacity for self-determination.

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And that would also, I think, take away my interest in self-determination. So,

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so this suggests that the kind of sort of evaluative question that's really a practical relevance here is whether whether

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I'm better off with some rights and interests that it protects than I would be without both the interests and the rights.

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So this is a comparison to on that. And I think that the answer to this question is just really going to depend on the nature of interest

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and probably actually the nature of the underlying capacities and the protection provided by the right.

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And it is going to be a secondary consideration.

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So me kind of motivate that suggestion with a couple of cases, so in the first case, I, of course, own pleasure.

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We were to imagine that through some form of cognitive enhancement,

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a pig acquires the capacity for some kind of higher pleasure that can currently only be enjoyed by a cognitively more sophisticated beings.

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Let's say the pleasure of appreciating the beauty of nature.

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So maybe it will say that this pig has acquired a new interest in being exposed to natural beauty say,

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and maybe would also want to say that it's acquired a new fundamental moral right against being deprived of such exposure.

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And in this case, it seems to me that we're going to have to say that pig is at least in one way better off with this new capacity,

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this capacity for this higher form of pleasure and the associated interest and rate than

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it would have been without the capacity and thus without the interest in the right.

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So with this capacity, this pig has presumably at least some chance of experiencing this higher pleasure.

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Without this capacity, there's no chance it will get to experience it. But now let's compare this to a case.

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This is the higher porcine suffering case in which through some form of cognitive enhancement,

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a pig acquires the ability to experience some higher form of suffering but no higher form of cases.

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And maybe the pig acquires the ability to experience humiliation when previously

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this was a form of suffering only available to more sophisticated creatures.

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So again, we might think that this pig has acquired a new interest and interest in not being humiliated.

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Maybe also a new fundamental moral right and moral right not to be humiliated.

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But in this case, it seems that sort of other things being equal,

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the pig is going to be worse off with this new capacity and renew interest in the new right than it would have been without them.

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So with with this new capacity, there's maybe some chance that the pig will in fact suffer humiliation without them.

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There would have been no chance of suffering humiliation. So, I mean,

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the point of these kind of these cases is just to suggest that it seems like it's

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that it's the value of underlying capacity that's doing all the work in these cases.

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And whether the pig is better off with or without some capacity is going to depend on whether it's a capacity for suffering harm,

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in which case it would be bad to have the capacity or whether it's a capacity for enjoying some good,

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in which case it will be good to have the capacity.

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The protection provided by the moral rights in these cases seems to be just most a kind of parasitic,

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secondary considered consideration and consideration that might amplify the value of having some

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good capacity because it makes it more likely that that capacity will in fact be exercised.

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Or that might mitigate the value of having a bed capacity because it reduces the chances that will.

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In fact, one will in fact suffer a harm that one is not capable of suffering.

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So I think that if we focus on comparison to then.

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The protection provided by a more right is not functioning as a sort of value in the sense of something that we can plug into a

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moral calculus as a factor that counts in favour of bringing about an enhancement of moral status or against bringing about it.

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This enhancement of moral status or the right of doing is kind of modifying the

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amount of value or just value that bringing about a good or bad capacity might have.

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OK, so that's all I want to say about and protect the value,

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and I want to move on to talk about a possible kind of discovery that I think moral scientists might have.

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And again, this is a kind of instrumental value.

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And I'm going to call it vulnerability to you,

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so the thought here is that having moral status might be a bit like having a fragile or needy disposition.

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It might make it harder for others to avoid harming you and therefore increase the chances that one will in fact be harmed.

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So why might moral status be bad for you in this way? Well, I suppose that you have some moral right against being harmed in some way,

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I suppose you have a moral right to bet against being caused to suffer pain and suppose that someone some moral agent in fact,

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causes you to suffer pain and thus infringes this right? So in this kind of case, you're being harmed by being caused to suffer pain.

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I think it's also plausible that you have suffered another how much is the harm of having your rights infringed?

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So I think it's plausible that it's kind of known instrumentally bad for you to have your rights infringed.

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So why do I think that I don't have an argument for this view about just the motivation I think it was going to be?

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Maybe you can help to explain some intuitions that might be somewhat widely held.

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So, for example, I think many of us would probably prefer to suffer pain as a result of some natural misfortune,

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like a random genetic mutation or some kind of natural disaster than to suffer pain as a result of the intentional actions of another moral agent.

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And one way of explaining that intuition, if you have it, would be to say that in the case where your pain is caused by another moral agent,

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you suffer any additional harm, which is the harm of having your right symptoms.

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I think that this kind of view that right infringements are bad for you and may also

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help to account for some of our intuitions about cases or moral status enhancement.

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So this is the porcine self-determination case on the handout.

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Suppose that we enhance the moral status of all pigs. So they acquired something like the moral right to self-determination enjoyed by persons.

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But suppose we kept treating them in the same ways that we treat, treat them currently,

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we keep subjecting them to factory farming practises of the sort that we employ today.

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So I think it seems intuitively plausible to think that these pigs have been made worse off in some way.

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And I think that one way to account for this is certainly not the only way, but one way to account for this would be to say, Well,

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we've made these pigs worse off because now we're not only harming them by inflicting all kinds of suffering on the suffering of the sort,

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in fact, by factory farming practises. But we're also systematically infringing their right to self-determination.

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And that's a further harm. OK, so let's suppose that I'm writing that having your rights infringed is bad for you,

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then it seems like having moral status is going to be instrumentally bad for you in the sense that it makes you vulnerable to a new kind of harm,

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a kind of harm that you weren't susceptible to previously.

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Well, it makes it more likely that you will be subject to this form of harm increase in more states.

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It involves acquiring more and more rights. Then it becomes more difficult for other people to avoid infringing your rights

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and more likely that they're going to harm you by infringing your rights. And that's what I'm calling vulnerability discouraging.

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Now, how bad is this this value? How bad is it?

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Is it to be more vulnerable to rights infringements? I don't really have a clear view about this.

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I mean, I think this I've said intuitions that have pushed me towards the view that think would suggest that it's not very bad at all.

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I mean, I think most of us probably don't care that much about of our rights and terms as compared to other kinds of harm.

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Most of us probably care much more about not suffering pain than we care about not having our rights against being caused to suffer pain infringed,

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for example. But on other hand, I think there are some kind of theoretical views,

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and I'm thinking here mostly of our views about dignity according to which and certain kinds of rights infringements, at least, are very bad.

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Some people think that certain kinds of rights infringements,

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the kinds of rights infringements they tend to get described as kind of insults to dignity, things like.

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Degrading and humiliating treatment are actually kind of incompatible with having even even a minimally decent life,

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so these people seem to think that certain kinds of rights infringements are extremely bad.

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Well, that's one interpretation of what you're saying, and I don't have any argument against that view.

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So I'm just going to leave open the question of how bad the rights infringements might be and therefore how bad this vulnerability,

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this value of moral status is. OK, so the final possibility I want to consider is that.

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Moral status might just possess not instrumental value for you,

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it might be a constituent of your wellbeing like pleasure, as most people accept your pleasure as well, or,

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like many objective various therapists about well-being,

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would think that achievements or meaningful relationships or knowledge perhaps have this kind of not instrumental value.

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So this seems to me to be a kind of reasonably plausible view that moral status might be a constituency of your well-being,

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but it's not that close and you want the kind of positive argument for it would be.

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And what I want to do in the rest of the time is just to think about some different ways

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in which you might try to argue that moral status is not instrumental you could feed.

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So, so one way you might try to execute this, it would just be to invoke some existing objective list theory of well-being,

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which includes moral status as one of the items on the list.

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But as far as I'm aware, I'm or isn't on any of the standard list, so I don't think that's a very promising way to go.

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Another possibility would be to appeal indirectly to some objective list value,

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so you might argue that moral status is partly constitutive of some other good.

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That, according to some objective list theory, is a constituent of well-being. So one possibility here, I think, might be to.

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To appeal to this concept of dignity, their dignity is sometimes spoken of as something that's that's good for you to have some.

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Some people think that possessing dignity is in fact necessary for living even a minimally decent life,

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and dignity is sometimes equated with possessing a particular level of moral status.

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The level of moral status enjoyed characteristic enjoyed by cognitively normal adult humans formal statement from more personal.

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So perhaps our moral status is kind of constitutive of our dignity, which is in turn a constituent of our well-being.

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So I think that when when people speak of dignity as being necessary for a minimally decent life,

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they must mean not that having dignity is necessary for people living a minimally decent life,

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but that being treated with dignity is necessary for a minimally decent life.

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And being treated with dignity seems to mean something more like being treated in a way that is appropriate to your moral status.

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Not having a lower status. So being figurative, they might just mean on my kind of account tomorrow if they is not having your rights infringed or

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maybe not having your rights systematically infringed or not having certain of your rights infringed.

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The very important rights, for example, and having moral status isn't going to do anything to ensure that you are treated with dignity.

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In this sense, it's not going to do anything to ensure that your rights are in fact not infringed.

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In fact, I just argued in the previous section that in most cases is going to make you more likely to have your rights infringed.

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Another possibility, I think, would be that to argue that moral status is partly constitutive of self-respect.

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So I think it seems plausible to think of self-respect as consisting in rightly viewing yourself as having full moral status.

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So self-respect because this in the conjunction of having full moral status and recognising the Okumura status.

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And I think it seems reasonably plausible to think that self-respect is something

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that might belong on a on on a kind of objectively very well being institution,

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the stature in the well being. But if few a few comments about this kind of argument that, first of all,

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invokes a good that is going to be available only to a very limited range of beings as beings that are in fact capable of recognising demoralisation.

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So it's not going to be available to non-human animals,

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at least in the absence of very extreme forms of cognitive enhancement that's going to have practically kind of limited relevance.

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The second thing to note about this suggestion is that as well as being a constituent constituent of self-respect,

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moral status could also be a constituent of self disrespect itself.

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And I'm thinking of self disrespect as being something like wrongly viewing oneself as lacking moral status.

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So, so that's the conjunction of having four more stages, but taking yourself not take four months.

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So I think, again, it's sort of plausible that having self disrespect is bad for you,

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and this seems to be a kind of bad that is enabled, in fact, by having moral status away from high moral status.

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But I think that the most important problem with this kind of approach is self-respect, is that once we distinguish self respect and self disrespect,

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it's no longer very clear that self-respect has prudential value over and above the absence of self disrespect.

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So I think it's plausible that self disrespect is going to positively bad for you.

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But I think it's not very clear that self respect is positively good for you.

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So consider the case of a Jewish person living in Nazi Germany who comes to accept the kind

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of prevalent view in this society that Jewish people have less than full moral status.

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So this person manifests itself disrespect on my view,

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and I think it's plausible that that's bad for that person, that they have this kind of self disrespect.

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But now compare this person to an area in person living in Nazi Germany who

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rightly takes himself to have full moral status that he manifests self respect.

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Is it good for that person that he has self respect over and above just the absence of the self disrespect that the Jewish person has?

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I don't have a I have it dangerous,

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and that is not good for this person to have self respect as something over and above the absence of self disrespect.

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So I'm inclined to think that self disrespect is as bad here, but not that self respect is good for you.

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So that kind of undermines the view that moral status might be good for you by being a constituent in self-respect.

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OK, so that's what they say about possible sort of theoretical arguments for why we might want to put moral

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status on on a list of constituents and well-being on a kind of objective list theory of our being.

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I know once you just consider a couple of other strategies that you might take besides appearing to kind

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of philosophical theories to justify putting moral status on the list of constituents who are being.

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So, so one strategy would just be to sort of appeal directly to intuitions and just

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sort of reflect on whether having a life with more moral status would be better

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than having a life with less moral status while trying to bracket all the kinds

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of instrumental effects that I was discussing in the previous three sections.

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And I find that when I try to reflect on those cases, I just don't have any clear intuitions I don't have.

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I don't find that a persuasive way of getting to the idea that moral status is a constituent of well-being.

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There's another kind of slightly more direct way in which we might try to appeal to intuitions that bridgework suggested that we might try to

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determine what belongs on an objective list theory of well-being by considering when we felt we felt sorry for someone or feel bad for someone.

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So hooker suggests that if we would say we're glad for some being if we discover that it possessed some property,

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or if we would feel sorry for being if we discovered that it let some property,

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then that might suggest that that property is a constituent of well-being, that you apply that to the kind of moral status.

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That's the place that we were just to discover that neonates or perhaps severely cognitively impaired

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adult humans definitely don't have from our status when previously we were kind of uncertain about that.

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Would we then feel sorry? And it's basically a whole fixed all the instrumental effects you might think that of having moral status.

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So supposing we assume that regardless of whether these beings have moral status,

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they're going to be treated in ways that are compatible with their having full moral status.

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There would be what we then feel bad for these neonates and severely cognitively

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impaired adult humans if we discover that they definitely don't have full moral status.

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I don't have a clear I don't I don't feel bad for them if I could try to imagine this kind of case.

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So I'm not sure that this is going to work. On the other hand, I can think of a case going the other direction.

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Suppose we were to discover that chimpanzees definitely do have full moral status when previously where we were uncertain about this.

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And again, it's hold kind of instrumental effects, fit fix, and it's a surprise regardless.

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Chimpanzees are definitely going to be treated as though they possess for moral status would

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be then so glad for the chimpanzee if we discovered that it actually has formed processes.

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Again, I don't I don't feel that pull of that very strongly.

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So. I might have a decent credit intuitions,

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so maybe you'll tell me that you do have intuitions that suggest that moral status should be on in a kind of objective listener about being,

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but I don't I don't feel that strongly.

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OK, so that's basically the size I've got with thinking about these arguments by way of conclusion.

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And I mean, I don't have, as I say, a firm conclusion about any of these kinds of this value or value.

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The kind of the case that I'm most kind of inclined to be persuaded by is this case of vulnerability values and does seem

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quite possible to me that having moral status as instrument of this value by making you vulnerable to rights infringements,

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which which harm you. Whereas I don't think that the either the argument for a non instrumental value of a particular value was very persuasive.

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So if that turns out to be right, then it seems that.

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From the perspective of someone considering whether to cognitively handsome being and worried

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about the possible effects of this cognitive enhancement on the beings own well-being,

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then it seems like we should say, well,

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the fact that this enhancement is going to cause them of marital status enhancement that gives you a reason not

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to pursue the enhancement is going to cause some prudential just value this kind of vulnerability discovery,

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and it's not going to cause any kind of credential value.

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So the fact that the cognitive enhancement is a moral status enhancement gives you a reason not to pursue that enhancement.

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And as long as we just focussed on the considerations of the well-being of the enhanced individual.

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Now, it might be that that reason is outweighed by other considerations,

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I think it seems to me very plausible that if the capacity that we're thinking of giving this being is itself good for living,

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if it's a has to be for some higher form of pleasure which might actually be realised,

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for example, then that might well outweigh this kind of vulnerability discovery.

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But the the effect on moral status itself would be something that would count against the the more the marque's latest enhancements.

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OK, thanks.