Questions: Moral Status

Question 1

A philosopher argues that rationality grounds full moral status. A critic presents the case of a severely cognitively impaired adult human, who lacks rationality, but whom almost everyone agrees deserves full moral protection. What type of argument is this?

• A. A slippery slope argument — granting moral status to impaired humans will inevitably require granting it to all animals
• B. The argument from marginal cases — showing that the rationality criterion either excludes some humans or must be extended to cognitively comparable non-human animals
• C. A species-norm argument — appealing to biological membership in the human species as the real basis for moral status
• D. An ad hominem argument against philosophers who hold rationality-based views

Answer: (B)

The argument from marginal cases is a reductio against cognitive-capacity criteria. It points out that the criterion that would exclude non-human animals (rationality, autonomy, sophisticated cognition) would, if applied consistently, also exclude some humans — cognitively impaired adults, infants, people with severe dementia. Since we grant these humans full moral protection, either our criterion is wrong, or we are applying it inconsistently. The argument does not directly prove what the correct criterion is; it shows that species membership is doing hidden work that needs justification.

Question 2

Peter Singer's sentience-based criterion for moral status is designed primarily to:

• A. Restrict moral status to humans who can experience pleasure and pain, excluding non-sentient beings
• B. Establish that sentience is necessary but not sufficient for moral status — cognitive sophistication is also required
• C. Extend moral consideration to all creatures capable of suffering, regardless of species membership or cognitive sophistication
• D. Ground moral status in rational self-governance, following Kant's framework

Answer: (C)

Singer (following Bentham) argues that the capacity for suffering — not rationality, species membership, or any other property — is the relevant criterion for moral consideration. 'The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?' This deliberately includes many non-human animals and excludes no humans (all can suffer). Option B mischaracterizes Singer: he does not add cognitive sophistication as a further requirement. Option D describes Kant's view, which Singer explicitly opposes.

Question 3

Having moral status, according to most serious philosophical accounts, means having equal moral status to most other beings that also have moral status.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Most accounts allow for degrees or tiers of moral consideration based on the complexity of interests, cognitive capacities, or richness of welfare. A mouse, a chimpanzee, and an adult human may all have some moral status — their interests must count for their own sake — without this requiring that their interests count equally. The distinction matters: granting any moral standing to animals does not commit you to treating them identically to humans. Collapsing 'any moral status' with 'equal moral status' is a source of unnecessary polarization in both academic and public debates.

Question 4

The argument from marginal cases demonstrates that rationality-based criteria for moral status are inconsistent when applied across all humans and non-human animals.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

The argument works by showing that if rationality (or any high-level cognitive capacity) is the criterion, then cognitively impaired humans and infants lack it — yet we grant them full moral protection. Either we accept this inconsistency (applying the criterion selectively to exclude animals but not humans who lack the same capacity), or we revise the criterion to something that includes impaired humans but then must also include non-human animals with comparable cognition. The argument does not settle which criterion is correct; it exposes a tension that any species-based view must resolve.

Question 5

Why doesn't the argument from marginal cases settle the question of which criterion grounds moral status? What does it actually establish?

Model answer: The argument from marginal cases is a reductio against inconsistently applied cognitive-capacity criteria; it does not specify which criterion is correct. It establishes that any criterion that excludes non-human animals on cognitive grounds, but includes cognitively impaired humans, is either inconsistent or depends on hidden appeals to species membership that need justification. The argument forces the philosopher to either revise their criterion (e.g., adopt sentience instead of rationality) or provide an explicit justification for treating species membership as morally relevant in itself.

The argument is a dialectical move, not a constructive argument for a specific criterion. Its force is negative: it eliminates or puts pressure on positions. A philosopher who accepts the argument must do additional work — either defending sentience (Singer), subject-of-a-life status (Regan), a relational view, or a species-norm account with explicit justification for why humanness matters. The argument clears the ground but does not tell you what to build on it.