What sorts of beings have moral status, mattering morally for their own sake? Is tradition right to favor human beings or persons? Are progressive views right to include not only animals but insentient life? Might brain organoids or AI acquire moral status? In this book, David DeGrazia presents a thorough investigation of this topic. After introducing the concept of moral status and seven criteria for evaluating competing accounts, he examines humanism, personhood-based accounts, and progressive alternatives that focus on life, agency, and sentience. He contends that any viable account will have sentience at its core, and sketches three ethical theories that build from this core in distinct ways. He then explores implications for meat-eating, animal research, human-animal chimeras, brain organoids, and AI. His novel and philosophically penetrating exploration will be of strong interest to moral philosophers, scientists, and policymakers.

‘David DeGrazia has long been one of our most careful and humane thinkers about moral status. This book is years of work on display. His treatment of who matters and why is philosophically serious, empirically informed, and refreshingly even-handed. This book should become the standard reference on the topic.'

Bob Fischer - Texas State University