I'm going to argue for a view on which moral status is contingent, so in my view,
whether a particular being has moral status is often a contingent matter.
All the beings that have moral status are such that they might have lacked moral status,
and many of the beings that lack moral status are such that they might have had moral status.
It will emerge in the discussion that the view or in my presentation that the view that I offer may seem to face a serious objection,
but this objection can be addressed by recognising how harm based moral reasons arise.
Where do we find the harm based moral reasons? And I'm going to start the talk by arguing for an account of how harm based moral reasons arise.
So this is an account of how harm based moral moral reasons arise that we should recognise
is correct sort of independently of anything about my particular view of moral status.
So part of what I want to do today is just draw together.
A view that I have that I've argued for about how harm based moral reasons arise and a defence of my view of moral status,
which I haven't drawn together before.
So that's part of what I'm doing today. All right, so let me jump in in section two on page one of the handout.
What is moral status? How to harm based and benefit based moral reasons arise.
There are some natural ways of thinking about what moral status is that I think are misleading.
They lead us to bad views of how our moral status based reasons work.
So consider the following claims something has moral status just in case harms and benefits to it matter morally.
Something has moral status just in case it matters morally.
Something has moral status, just in case it has rights, the beings that have the moral status or the beings that need to be taken into account.
Morally, I think that these views may suggest what I think is a bad method of finding harm based and benefit based reasons.
So I call it the bad method just so that we are all on the same page that I think it's not correct.
And so according to the bad method, what we should first do is ask which things have moral status?
And then we got a list of all the things that have moral status, and then we should ask for each of my options.
I'm just trying to decide how to act. I have various options, various ways I could act.
We next ask for each of my options.
We're taking that option harm any of those things, the things that were on the list, the list of things that have moral status.
We're taking that option benefit any of those things. OK, now, why is this a bad method of finding our reasons?
And I'm not talking about all the moral reasons we face, but just in particular the harm, the harm based on benefit based reasons.
It's a bad thing, it's a bad method by considering the following case, suppose that I made a promise to you,
I promise that I would do a particular thing, but then I find myself in this tricky situation.
If I keep the promise to you, then it turns out I'm going to end up creating a being who will have a brief delay of serious suffering.
This being what exists briefly suffer horribly and die.
If I break the promise to you, I can prevent myself from creating this being.
Now it's clear that in this case, I have a good moral reason for breaking my promise to you and suppose that they do break my promise and I'm able
to prevent myself from creating the person who would have for the being who would have a brief life of suffering.
Now you see, to me, Liz, you promised, is there, did you have a good reason for breaking your promise?
Well, if we use the bad method, we won't be able to see that I did have a reason.
So when we ask which are the things that have moral status, none of those things is such that it would have been harmed by my keeping the promise you.
In fact, had I kept the promise to you, I would have brought into existence a being who would have suffered, I would have caused that being to suffer.
I would have thereby harmed that being. But since I didn't bring it into existence and it doesn't exist,
it's not on the list of beings that actually have moral status to see the harm based reason that I faced against keeping my promise to you.
We need to use what I will call the good method of finding harm based and benefit based reasons.
And of course, I call it the good method because it's the one that I think is correct.
We first ask for each of my options when this option harm things with this option, benefit anything.
We then ask. Would that thing have moral status?
And so what we're after are reasons against doing things which, if done,
would be affirming of something that has moral status and reasons in favour of doing things which,
if done, would be a benefit or something that has moral status.
And so now we can say, well, in the case where we break the promise to you had I kept the promise to you,
I would have brought into existence this person who would have had a miserable, brief existence.
This being me would have had a miserable, brief existence. That being would have had moral status.
So and so I would have been harming it, being with moral status, and that there's a reason against doing that.
So when we use the good method, we can see the reason that does clearly exist.
Cases like this show that we need to use the good method and not the bad method.
Now I just want to note an assumption of the argument that I just made, and the assumption is that causing harm to a being harmed,
that being, um, even if they're being wouldn't have existed had you not done what you did.
And I argue for that in some of my work, but I'm not going to argue for it now.
All right, let's turn the page.
I'm going to argue for a view that I call the ever conscious you, but let's not look at the handout yet to motivate the view.
I want to think about someone who's torn about what to say about the moral status of early foetuses.
Let's use the term early foetus to talk about any foetuses that are not yet conscious.
And let's assume and I think this is a very plausible assumption that foetal consciousness arises sometime after the first trimester of pregnancy.
So by early phoenixes, we at least I mean, all the first trimester this.
So consider someone who is torn about what to think about the moral status of early foetuses.
When she thinks about early abortions, she thinks early abortions are completely fine, there's no moral problem with early abortions.
It's not a morally big deal to go ahead with an early abortion, you know,
which includes any first trimester abortion, perhaps time after that as well.
There's just no moral reason against early abortions. When she thinks about early abortions, she thinks.
There's no more reason against them, there's no need to justify an early abortion.
Thinking about those cases, she thinks early foetuses don't have moral status, but then she thinks about other early foetuses.
She thinks about.
A woman who is pregnant who is planning to continue her pregnancy, who is excited to be a parent to the living being in her body and she thinks.
I'm often a woman in that position starts to feel love for the living being in her body.
Well, that's a perfectly reasonable and appropriate attitude to all this living being in the woman's body is an early stage of her child.
But if something is an appropriate object of love, then surely it has some moral status.
She also thinks, again, thinking about a pregnant woman who's planning continue her pregnancy, who's excited to become a parent.
She thinks about a pregnant woman who is making choices.
That involve being careful of the well-being of the foetus, so a pregnant woman who is choosing not to drink excessively,
a pregnant woman who is choosing not to smoke excessively and who's doing it for the sake of the foetus
and our imagined person who is trying to figure out the moral status of early foetuses thinks to herself.
It does it makes sense to be careful not to harm, but really figures because the early foetus matters, it's because the early foetus has moral status.
The early foetus is the source of reasons not to smoke excessively or drink excessively during early pregnancy.
So now we have someone who who seems to face a conundrum. And if?
The belief that early foetuses are the appropriate objects of love and the belief that early
foetuses are the source of reasons not to smoke or drink excessively during pregnancy,
if those beliefs are strong enough, then they'll win out.
And though we're not in the following way, and this is the first argument at the top of Page two, so I call this a natural thought process.
So the next person that I'm describing, I think a lot of people at times find themselves with this set of commitments.
And I think it's natural. I think many people end up thinking along these lines.
First, some early human foetuses are appropriate objects of love.
Second, some early foetuses, human foetuses are the source of plant based reasons against action.
Pregnant women should not smoke excessively or drink excessively during pregnancy because those foetuses matter morally.
But if those early foetuses have moral status, then the foetus is the dying.
Early abortions have moral status. Therefore, the foetus is the dying.
Early abortions have moral status.
Therefore, there's a harm based reason against early abortion, and early abortion requires at least some moral justification.
So I think this is a natural thought process that someone who's torn in the way I was describing might go through.
And in general, I think that there are some people who are really drawn to a very liberal view about abortion,
but you get pushed off of it by worrying that the very liberal view about abortion dictates a cold attitude towards all early foetuses,
which seems unwarranted when we think about those early foetuses that are on their path to becoming persons.
Well, I think that this argument is attractive, it seems compelling.
I think it can be resisted. And in particular, claim three can be denied.
So Claim three might seem obvious. It says that if, if if the early foetuses whose mothers are planning to continue the pregnancies have moral status,
then the foetuses that die in early abortions must also have moral status. That can be denied to see that it can be denied.
I want to first identify two myths that I think lie behind that claim.
So one myth is that any being that has moral status necessarily has moral status.
So one thing that will notice when we think about the foetus is the dying early abortions and the foetuses that
will become persons is foetuses in either category could have been could easily have been in the other category.
So those foetuses that will become persons could have been aborted and those foetuses that are aborted could have been in pregnancies that continued.
And so if you think that moral status is held necessarily,
then then you've got to think that either both categories of foetus have moral status or neither does.
The second myth is that if two beings are such that just considering their intrinsic properties,
they are qualitatively identical now and their histories are qualitatively identical, then either both have moral status or neither has moral status.
So the second myth? Involves the claim that whether a being has moral status is a matter of its intrinsic properties,
its current intrinsic properties and perhaps its past intrinsic properties, but that.
And when we think about this are two categories of early foetuses, those that die in early abortions and those that don't.
They are the same in terms of their current and past intrinsic properties.
But as I say, I think these are both myths. I think both of these claims are false.
So I offer you instead of you that I call the ever conscious for you.
A living being has moral status just in case it is ever conscious.
So unless you are a living being has moral status throughout its life, just in case there's any time in its life in which it is conscious.
This is a view in which whether it being has moral status, super and its intrinsic properties,
but it's not just its current and past intrinsic properties, the future intrinsic properties are also relevant to whether it being has moral status.
The central idea behind the ever country's view, as it applies to early foetuses,
is that when we think about our two categories of foetuses, we really have to radically different kinds of beings.
On the one hand, we have some beings through live and die without ever being conscious.
There are a lot like plans. Then we have some beings that are alive and are not conscious at first,
but then go on to have conscious experience, many of them live lives as persons.
That's a very different kind of entity.
And the clean up claim behind the ever conscious view is that what kind of entity of being is can depend on its future.
And because beans might have had different futures, they might have had different moral status,
it might have been different whether they had morals set.
OK, so now that we've seen the possibility of the ever conscious view, we can also see an argument for the ever conscious fear,
and this is in the bottom half of Page two argument for the ever conscious view.
Some early human foetuses are appropriate objects of love.
Some early human foetuses are the source of harm based reasons against actions.
Pregnant women should not smoke excessively or drink excessively during pregnancy because these foetuses matter morally.
Early abortion requires no moral justification, and nothing bad happens in an early abortion.
Therefore, the foetus is the dying. Early abortions lack moral status, but some early foetuses have moral status.
So the ever conscious view is true. The ever conscious view is a view that can accommodate all of the initial thoughts of
our imagined person who was trying to figure out the moral side of their foetuses.
But I think that the argument here would be compelling to many people.
I think many people are in similar situations to that imagine to a person.
OK, so that's my argument for the ever conscious view.
And let me turn to some objections to it, so let's turn to Page three.
The first objection holds that on the ever contentious view, a person who falls into permanent unconsciousness would still have moral status,
and then we'd be obligated to keep that person alive because you shouldn't kill a being that has moral status.
But we shouldn't keep that person alive. All right.
So my response to the objection is to agree that the ever conscious view does imply that a person
who lives a full life and then falls into permanent unconsciousness would still have moral status.
So a living human being who has lived a full life but has fallen into permanent unconsciousness would have moral status on my view.
But it doesn't follow from that that we ought to keep them alive.
It may well be that the right way to honour their moral status to treat them well is to end their lives.
That might be better for them. It may be better for them because that's what they asked for.
Or we may think it's better for them, even independently of what they ask for.
OK, the second objection goes as follows.
Compared to foetuses, each lives for several months, one dies without ever being conscious, the other has one moment of consciousness before dying.
The first foetus was lack moral status throughout its life.
The other would have moral status throughout its whole life.
But they're so similar. Surely it can't be right that they differ in moral status.
So here again, I want to agree with the objector account of the implications of my view.
It is true that on my view, these two foetuses would differ in moral status in just the way it describes.
But I embrace this implication of the view. I think that when we look at the life of the foetus that dies without ever being conscious.
Well, the death of that foetus is very bad for that foetus. It's losing out on life as a person and there's no moral tragedy that happens there.
On the other hand, the being that has a moment of consciousness.
Is a member of the moral community, and there's a great tragedy and it's living in this very brief life.
It's a very different kind of thing. I maintain even though it's a moment of consciousness, a supreme.
OK, the third objection that I want to discuss. Goes this follows.
According to the ever conscious view, whether abortion is permissible turns on whether when actually abort,
if one abort, then the foetus lacks moral status, so it's just fine to abort.
But if one doesn't abort, then the foetus has moral status, so abortion is wrong.
So abortion turns out to be self-justifying on this view, but surely that's a bad view.
OK. The right response to this objection is that this objector has misunderstood the view and has the implications of the view wrong.
Even a foetus that has moral status, and my view is nevertheless such that there is no moral reason against aborting a.
I think the right way of diagnosing where the objectors going wrong is that the
objector is assuming that the bad method of finding the harm based reasons is correct.
I've already argued that the good method is correct and using the good method will avoid this worry.
OK? Just see what I'm saying. Let's turn back to Page one, where we saw the bad method and the good method.
So the bad method is let's first ask which things have moral status and then ask Would this action harm any of those things?
So the bad method is the method that raises this third objection.
So the so on the bad method. So if I actually abort, then we ask, well, which things have moral status?
The foetus is not on the list because I abort the foetus, so the foetus doesn't have moral status and look well.
The abortion harms the foetus, but the foetus isn't on the list of things with moral status, so we're good.
But then when we think about the case, rape, don't abort, we ask which things have moral status.
The foetus is on the list, it has moral status. And then we ask, Well, what if I bought?
What if I were to abort? Well, if I were to abort, if I had aborted, then I would have been harming this being.
But it does have moral status. So there is this strong reason against avoiding using the bad method.
It does look like if I don't abort, sorry, if I do abort abortion, it's morally permissible.
If I don't abort, abortion is morally wrong. But we already saw that the bad method is incorrect.
Now, let's consider what the good methods says, the good method says.
First, we ask about in action what it harmony things. And then we ask, would those things have moral status?
So in the case, we're at a board and we're talking about my abortion. We ask, Well, what would my abortion does to my abortion?
Or many things? Yes, it harms the foetus. When the foetus, does the foetus have moral status?
No. So there's no harm based reason against abortion. And then we consider the case of the foetus that is not aborted.
And we say, Well, what if we had aborted the foetus when that abortion have harmed any things?
Yes, it would have harmed this foetus. Would this foetus have had moral status?
No, it would not.
So in my view, abortion is not wrong, and for any particular foetus, it is such that it's permissible to abort it even if you don't actually import.
What's wrong? What? Sorry, what has a moral status based,
harm based reason against it is doing something which we're done would be affirming of
something that would have moral status and even for the foetuses that have moral status.
Abortions of them don't have that future.
Abortions of them are not such that had that action been performed, would have been a hard thing or something that would have had moral status.
OK, so turning back to Page three. We can see that the contingency of moral status is a feature of the ever conscious view,
if the ever conscious view is true, then moral status is contingent.
Each being that has moral status might have laughed at because each being that has
moral status has some phase of its existence in which it's not yet conscious.
Had it died during that phase, it would have lacked moral status. Many beings that lack moral status might have had moral status.
Foetuses of humans and animals, if they die before becoming conscious, they're such that they lack moral status but might have had more steps.
OK, let's turn to Page four. In the final substantive section of the paper, I'm going to defend the gate method against an objection,
so the good method holds that the way that we find turn based on benefit based reasons, the way that these reasons arise is as follows.
We first ask for each of my options with this option.
How many things would this option benefit any things? And then we ask, would that thing have moral status?
An objection comes from a claim that people sometimes call the asymmetry, and I'm going to call it the reasons asymmetry.
While we have reasons to avoid creating lives of pure suffering, we have no reasons to create happy lives.
So this is a claim that a lot of people have found plausible, and it raises an objection to the good method because.
Have you created a happy life you would have caused someone to have all these happy things in their life
and so you would have benefited them and they would have had moral status and so on the good method.
There are reasons to create happy lives. That's a way that you could benefit someone.
Now, my response to this worry is to deny the reasons asymmetry, I think that the reasons asymmetry is false.
I think that we do have reasons to create happy lives. But I think that these are merely reasons to provide positive benefits.
There are a way that we could do something morally good creating a happy life, it's doing a morally good thing,
but we can fail to do something morally good without thereby doing anything morally wrong.
I also think it's important that when it comes to our reasons to benefit people, there are two different kinds of benefiting to think about.
And again, I benefit. I mean, provide clear benefits. I don't mean prevent harm.
So when we provide benefits in creating people versus when we provide benefits to people who exist independently of our action,
in both cases, benefiting other people causes them to have the benefit, but only in the latter case.
In the case of independently existing people does failing to benefit deprive someone of a benefit.
It's only with the independently existing people that when you fail to benefit them, there they sit without the benefit.
Because of this difference,
I think that our reasons to benefit people and creating them are weaker than our reasons to benefit people who exist independently of our action.
To sum up. Well, I think that farming is protons are wrong.
I don't think that providing pure benefits is proton to required.
So the true asymmetry claim, I think, is the requirement asymmetry.
While we are morally required to avoid creating lives of pure suffering, even at some cost to ourselves,
there's no moral requirement to create happy lives, even if it would come with little or no cost to ourselves.
In conclusion, I've argued for the ever conscious view on which moral status is contingent.
I've argued for a good method of finding the home based and benefit based reasons for action.
I've shown that the good method helps us see why an apparent objection to the ever conscious view fails.
That was the third objection, and I'm defending the good method in the face of a worry.
Based on the reasons asymmetry, I've argued that the reasons asymmetry is false, while the requirement is symmetry is true based.