You are a space explorer. In your travels you come across all kinds of phenome�na: rocks, rivers, volcanoes, and things that look like animals. In some cases you want to do experiments on the weird entities you encoun�ter. But the question occurs to you: do I have any moral obligations to these beings or can I do anything I want with them?
What qualities would a being need to have for it to be an object of moral concern? Would it be sufficient for it to be �alive�? Would it need to be able to move on its own? To be conscious? To communicate with others? To be capable of fully developed rational thought?
The impartial ethical standpoint requires that we not consider ourselves or our family more than others, but it does not specify who or what counts as an �other.� Some cases are clear: adult human beings count; chairs and tables do not. But many moral questions focus on entities that are in a gray zone:
� If a doctor has to choose between saving the life of a fetus or saving the life of the mother who conceived it, what is the morally correct choice?
� Is it wrong to inflict painful experiments on dogs in order to develop a new shade of lipstick?
� If we could bury toxic wastes using a much less expensive method and we knew for sure that no living person would be harmed but that it would endanger future generations, would it be wrong to bury the wastes cheaply?
� Would it be okay to violate the clear desires in someone�s will if that was the only way to benefit a living person?
� Would it be permissible to destroy the Grand Canyon if, at some future time, there was no person who cared about preserving it?
Fetuses, animals, possible people in future generations, cadavers, and areas of natural beauty are all examples of phenomena whose moral status is debatable. Yet many moral decisions, like those listed above, cannot be made until we decide to what degree each of these kinds of things �count.�
To say that something �counts� ethically is to say that it is the kind of being to which we may have moral obligations. A being which merits this kind of moral attention is morally considerable. It has moral standing, and its welfare cannot be ignored. Notice, however, that we may have moral obligations regarding entities which we have no obligations to. For example, you have an obligation regarding your neighbor�s lawn chair; you cannot do anything you want with it. But the chair itself is not morally considerable, and you have no direct obligations to the chair itself. Rather, you have obligations to your neighbor, and therefore you have obligations with respect to the chair. The question of moral standing only concerns the issue of direct obligation. It asks what things we have obligations to, not for the sake of something else that has moral standing but for the sake of the thing itself.
The question of moral considerability is of equal interest to utilitarians and formalists. If pigs are morally considerable, then utilitarians, who calculate the plus and minus points of each action�s consequences, must include an action�s effects on the pig in their calculations. For a formalist, a being that is morally considerable is the kind of being that can have rights or the kind of being which can be objects of concern for moral rules. For example, if a rights-oriented theorist judged a dog to be morally considerable, this would imply that a dog is the kind of being that can have rights.
It is important to realize that even if we conclude that we have no direct obligations to things like animals and fetuses, that will not mean that we can do anything we want with them. We often have obligations regarding things that in themselves have no moral standing. We are not lone space explorers. Other people probably care about the fate of fetuses and animals, and we have moral obligations to those people even if we do not have obligations to entities judged to be non-persons. But the issue of moral considerability is one with great practical implications nonetheless. If fetuses and animals are judged not to be morally considerable, then the only basis for obligation regarding these beings would be that someone with moral standing cares about them. In that case it might be wrong to torture your neighbor�s dog but okay to torture a stray animal in a dark alley. Or wrong to kill a wanted fetus but all right to do painful experiments on an unwanted fetus, especially if they are done without the knowledge of anti-abortion groups.
If we are committed to a rational approach to ethics, we cannot just decide separately in each instance whether a being has moral standing. We need consistent principles that help us correct for the distortions brought on by our emotions. Psychologically, we are likely to feel more toward cute, cuddly animals than to intelligent but ugly rats. We probably will sympathize more with the life of a fetus if we are shown a picture of it, especially a picture that highlights the fetus�s similarity to a baby. As space explorers, we probably would favor beings that looked like ourselves, even if there were other, more bizarre-looking creatures around whose mental faculties more closely resembled our own. But from a strictly rational point of view these are not relevant considerations. There must be something about a particular being that gives it moral standing, and any other being with that same quality must merit the same moral attention.
We might consistently employ any of several possible principles to judge that something is morally considerable. For example, we could require that the being be �alive.� But that seems to set the standard too low, admitting amoebas and bacteria among the beings to which we have moral obligations. At the other extreme, we could require �rationality,� but that would exclude infants and the mentally retarded. Determining exactly what is needed and what is sufficient for a being to be morally considerable is a daunting task. Some philosophers are content to suggest rough or approximate standards. Others have given up altogether.
A larger issue in the debate on moral considerability is whether we need to be strictly rational in establishing criteria. Some philosophers reject the purely rational approach and claim that the kinds of feelings we have toward a being is a morally relevant consideration. Being philosophers, however, they are then obliged to give reasons for claiming that moral consider�ability can be affected by what kinds of feelings people have toward a certain kind a being. It is important to examine these philosophers� views carefully in order to determine whether they actually advocate making feelings the basis for an ethical judgment or whether they are just utilitarians who are rationally calculating all of an action�s consequences, including among those consequences the feelings of other people. In the latter case, the judgment itself is being made in a purely rational way, in accord with the �standard� approach to ethics, because the judgment is not based on the feelings of the person doing the judging.
The moral standing of the fetus is a topic of heated debate because of its implications both for abortion and for medical experimentation on fetuses. At one extreme are those who regard the fetus as nothing more than a clump of cells, a part of a woman�s body, like a fingernail. At the other extreme are those who view even a one-day-old conceptus as a full person.
Disagreement exists not only about the moral status of the fetus but on a number of related issues as well. Some authors try to draw a sharp line�for example, conception, viability, or birth�before which there is no moral considerability and after which there is full �humanity.� Other authors claim that the gradual development of the fetus, from a conceptus to an organism that resembles a baby, makes impossible any sharp line defining moral considerability.
Abortion and fetal experimentation will obviously be easier to justify if the fetus is not morally considerable. But the importance of the issue of moral considerability is itself an area for debate. Some writers on abortion assume that everything depends on whether or not the fetus is a person: if it is, abortion is always, or nearly always, wrong; if it is not, abortion is always permissible. But others challenge this view and argue that even if the fetus is a person, there will still be a range of cases where abortion is acceptable and even if the fetus is not a person, abortion may still be wrong in some cases.
Medical Ethics class: Notice that this argument could also apply to early infants. Tooley argues that self-consciousness is necessary for personhood and a right to life. Not only do fetuses lack this but early infants lack it as well.