| dc.description.abstract | Moral status is an often-discussed concept in deliberating on the ethics of marginal cases: those who are regarded as less cognitively sophisticated as the average adult human. Non-human animals are considered to be such marginal cases, and moral status is used as a conceptual tool to defend certain obligations humans may have towards animals. Non-consequentialist eudaemonist virtue ethicists, however, have mostly left the concept of moral status unaddressed or have rejected its usefulness as giving us realistic moral guidance.
In this thesis, I consider four virtue ethicists who have written about animal ethics, moral status and the good life: Alvaro, Rowlands, Hursthouse and Hacker-Wright. I argue that these virtue ethicists, in spite of their reservations, should address the concept of moral status. Firstly, because moral status helps us determine who is morally considerable, even in virtuous terms; secondly, because moral status helps us determine who can engage in certain morally important relationships with us; and thirdly, because moral status can be understood as a deontic constraint the virtuous person should consider. Virtue ethicists talking about animals thus may need to develop a conception moral status in order to determine who or what is the appropriate object of our virtuous conduct. | |
