Moral status
The fact that a being matters morally for its own sake: that it can be wronged, and that something is therefore owed to it.
Definition
In 1789 Jeremy Bentham shifted the question about animals: the question is not whether they can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. For many philosophers, moral status depends on the capacity for experience — for things to go well or badly for oneself.
In recent years, researchers have begun to take seriously the hypothesis that artificial systems might one day have such a status. No one knows whether they do, or how we could know. But uncertainty is no excuse for not thinking: erring one way makes us manipulable; erring the other way could make us cruel.
See also
Related notions
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