The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

In a well written and organized theory of moral status, Mary Ann Warren first asks: "Why Do We Need a Concept of Moral Status?" There is certainly a tension between idealistic theories concerning nature and the environment that advocate refraining from any sort of harm to animals or the environment, and normal practices of daily living in contemporary western culture. How should one reconcile the idea that all living things deserve respect and the fact that the need to kill a mosquito or use antibiotics arises? In her book Moral Status, Mary Anne Warren offers a theory to determine the moral status of living things, persons and the environment. If an entity has moral status then we have certain obligations towards it, we may not treat it as we please, use it for our own purposes while harming it and inflicting pain. Raising the question of whether entities possess moral status is an intelligent way of asking to what extent are we entitled to inflict harm on animals or to the environment for our own benefit, or whether it is permissible to harm persons. The subject matter of this book is a philosophical analysis of criteria for moral status and their applications. The book is written in two parts: in the first part Warren offers her theory of moral status and in the second part she applies it to three issues: euthanasia, abortion and animal rights.

Warren’s approach to the analysis of moral status is that an adequate theory of moral status should be "multi-criterial." A multi-criterial account of moral status applies several considerations in determining whether an entity should be accorded moral status as opposed to uni-criterial accounts that focus on one property only (such as life, sentience or personhood). A multi-criterialaccount of moral status establishes moral status as a complex notion as opposed to a reductive application of a single property as is the case with uni-criterial theories. Using a wide range of considerations to determine moral status, allows one to establish degrees of moral status and a sliding scale of considerations that can be applied to different species. A spider, for instance, may not warrant the same respect as a monkey. In addition, a multi-criterial approach is better equipped to deal with the full range of contemporary moral problems including environmental concerns. Warren presents and criticizes several uni-criterial theories first and then proceeds to present her seven principled approach. At the expense of simplicity, which Warren argues is not necessarily a virtue in a philosophical position, she holds that a moral theory should be useful and easily applied, and claims that her premises are based on common sense morality. In examining theories of moral status, Warren is interested in practicality and consistency with common sense convictions.

Warren first examines three uni-criterial theories that are based on a single intrinsic property for the establishment of moral status. She examines life, sentience and personhood in the theories of Albert Schweitzer, Peter Singer and Tom Regan respectively. She then examines uni-criterial theories of moral status that are based on relational properties; ecological (being a member of a particular biological species) and social (caring or having an emotional connection to other people). Here Warren considers J. Braid Callicott and Nel Noddings’ views. Warren shows how the use of one property, whether intrinsic or relational, to define moral status has implausible consequences.

According to Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life View, life is the only basis for moral status. All living things deserve the same reverence for life. It is a view of biological egalitarianism; any attempt to create a hierarchy of different moral status, he argues, is dangerous. Warren argues that even though respecting all life equally is a morally lofty goal, adhering to this principle is practically impossible not to mention the amount of guilt that would result just from tending to one’s survival. Many ordinary human activities would turn out to be immoral sincefarming, cooking, cleaning, bathing and even brushing one’s teeth destroys insects, micro-organisms and bacteria. Food preparation, medical care and personal hygiene would turn out to be the moral equivalent of mass murder. In addition, Schweitzer’s approach, by condemning all activities that involve harm to living creatures, offers no moral code that can be upheld. How should one distinguish between killing bacteria and performing abortion? Warren argues that since it is always necessary to harm some living creatures in order to survive, a theory of moral status is needed to determine when it is permissible to harm living things and when it should be condemned. Instead of Schweitzer’s Life Only View, Warren offers the Life Plus View. With her multi-criterial approach, more considerations are needed to determine moral status. It is important to know whether an entity is also sentient, conscious, or rational or is a member of a social or biological community. We can see how complex analysis of moral status results in a sliding scale of moral status. This is a strength of Warren’s multi-criterial approach. By adding other considerations, such as the ability to feel pain or to have a conscious experience, one could argue that not all living things should have equal moral status and it is possible to harm others for good reasons. In addition, Warren is interested in a theory that could attribute moral status to non-living things as well, which would result in a theory that extends to include environmental ethics. Obviously, on the Life Only View one cannot attribute moral status to non-living things such as rivers and oceans.

Peter Singer’s Sentience Only View states that sentience should be the basis for moral status. Sentience is basically defined as the ability to feel pleasure and pain. Peter Singer argues that moral considerations towards others should be derived from the principle of equal considerations of interests attributed to all sentient beings. All sentient beings have an interest in not suffering or feeling pain. Considering sentience does not allow for a distinction between humans and animals. Such a distinction would be arbitrary and prejudicial, Singer labels it a form of prejudice called "speciesism". Since sentience, rather than species is a valid criteria for moral status, Singer argues for vegetarianism and against medical experiments on animals.

Singer’s requirement that we extends equal consideration of interest to all sentient beings leaves us with moral obligations towards living beings that we could not fulfill. Warren asks us to consider:

what happens when a field is ploughed, planted, and harvested. These disruptions are bound to cause death or injury to an enormous number of spiders, insects, mites, snails, slugs, worms, or other small invertebrates. This is particularly true if heavy equipment is used; but even one person pushing a wooden plough is likely to inadvertently harm many sentient invertebrates. (p. 79)

The principle of equal consideration of interests, if applied consistently would prohibit the cultivation of crops. One can not conclude with certainty that a spider is not sentient or does not possess self-awareness. A spider is likely to have a significant capacity for pain, since feeling pain mildly would have not much survival value. Spiders also manifest sophisticated behavior, they seem purposeful alert and skilled. They seem to approach problems, such as repairing their web, in a way that seem to be beyond mere reflexes. Above all, a spider certainly has an interest in not being smashed.

Warren points out that Peter Singer is not particularly interested in small invertebrate animals, his main concern is abuse of vertebrate animals. However, for the Sentience Only View to be plausible, it should be able to address the problem of small invertebrate animals. If sentience is the only criteria that invertebrates meet, and if their sentience is not enough for full moral status, than the Sentience Only View cannot be right. It is not possible to follow the principle of equal consideration of interests and still survive. Human beings cannot exist without putting their own interests first.

Warren claims that Singer’s theory does not hold at the point of small invertebrates. It is true that Singer is weak on the point of spiders and other insects, but in his own theory he does draw the line at survival. When it comes to the question of Eskimos and the necessity of eating meat in order to survive in their environment, Singer does not condemn this practice (Warren herself makes a reference to this point). I believe, that in the same spirit, if given a chance to respond, Singer would draw the line at survival with regards to cultivating crops and would notclaim that it is morally wrong.

Both Albert Schweitzer and Peter Singer present a serious challenge to any form of justification for harming other creatures for our own purposes. What gives us the right? Warren addresses this challenge mainly by proving that theories that advocate complete respect for life and pain are inconsistent, impractical or incompatible with human survival. Yet, the philosophical challenge remains unanswered since Warren does not disagree with the actual idea of extending full moral considerations to all living things. Her contention is that it is practically impossible not theoretically wrong. By her own recognition, our moral principles will affect our practices. If we accept the view that the moral goal should be not to harm other creatures, then we will inflict as little harm as possible, probably close to what is necessary for survival. It is a morally lofty goal that involves a tremendous amount of sacrifice. Of course it is possible to live in a way that involves attributing full moral status to all living things, (Warren provides the example of the Jain tradition) but it is inconvenient for a member of modern western culture. Warren opts for practical moral guidance that can accommodate many contemporary invasive practices.

Warren’s multi-criterial theory for moral status involves seven principles. Each principle reflects a property, intrinsic or relational, that is relevant to the attribution of moral status. The first criteria for moral status is The Respect for Life Principle. The premise is that it is basically morally undesirable to harm living things. We have a prima-facia obligation to respect all life. However, there could also be morally sound reasons for overriding this principle and inflicting harm. Justification for harming another living being would stem from the applicability of the rest of the principles, for instance, is this being sentient, or a moral agent, or a member of a social community. Warren avoids Schweitzer’s impractical universal reverence for life, by attempting to provide a justification for harming life when absolutely necessary.

The second criteria is The Anti-Cruelty Principle. As with respect for life, being cruel, as by inflicting unnecessary pain, should be avoided. However, here too, Warren recognizes that there would be cases in which cruelty towards sentient beings could be necessary, hence ajustification is needed. The justification would stem from consistency with the rest of the principles.

At the heart of her theory, lies her third principle The Agent’s Rights Principle, "Moral agents have full moral and equal basic moral rights, including the rights to life and liberty." (p. 156) In this section Warren asks who is a full moral agent that deserves the right to life and liberty. All other principles that offer some protection or attribution of some moral status can be over ridden with good and compelling reasons. The third principle, however, asks which entities are included under the strongest protection and cannot be treated with cruelty. Since Warren’s view is that only moral agents deserve full moral status, who is a moral agent is an important question in this book. Although Warren is by no means a Kantian (she embraces a pluralistic approach), like Kant she finds a way to draw a sharp distinction between humans and all other species based on a distinct human capacity. Ultimate moral agency rests on the capacity for language, hence only humans are moral agents. "Without a language that is capable of representing moral concepts and principles, real moral agency is not possible". (p.161)

Although she criticizes Kant’s principle of rationality for moral agency as being too narrow, excluding infants and disabled adults, her own assertion of the capacity for language as the basis for moral agency provides a similarly narrow criterion. There is not a vast difference between pointing to language as opposed to rationality as a basis for moral agency.

Warren includes a fourth criteria, The Human Rights Principle, to extend rights to children and mentally disabled adults advantage. This move provides an advantage over Kant’s principle of rationality by including non-rational humans.

With principles five through seven we can see how Warren’s multi-criterial system works to extend considerations to non-living things and to tie relational properties to moral status. The fifth principle, The Ecological Principle, entails that living things that are a part of an ecological system be accorded stronger moral status than would result from considering their intrinsic properties alone. The sixth, The Interspecific Principles, accords moral status to animals that havea social relation to human beings (pets for instance). Under the seventh principle, The Transitivity of Respect Principle, we are asked to consider other people’s attribution of moral status. For instance, if a specific stone is sacred to certain people, it would receive moral status from the attitudes that those people possess towards it. It would be wrong for us to destroy it.

In part two of the book, Warren shows how her principles can be applied to euthanasia, abortion and animal rights. In addressing these three issues she demonstrates how her multi-criterial theory can be used to analyze complex issues. Warren provides an in depth analysis of euthanasia and abortion. She also offers a philosophical justification for sometimes killing animals by claiming that animals are not moral agents. I regret, however, that she does not take up the issue of medical experimentation on animals. Apart from being a complicated and controversial issue, she does set up animal experimentation at the beginning of the book as an important issue and the reader expects to return to this topic at the end.

Anyone who is interested in issues such as euthanasia, abortion or animal rights, should pay attention to Warren’s arguments. She provides a theory that is consistent with common sense convictions such as valuing human life above the rest of nature, and ends up with tolerant positions. At the heart of her theory lies a genuine attempt to extend as much respect as possible, within the context of modern western civilization, to all living creatures as well as to the environment. Warren endorses a position of respect and care when possible, and claims that we should inflict as little harm as possible and only when it can be justified by good reasons.

The book is well written and accessible. The argument is detailed, methodic and carefully presented.