Investigating moral status
What sorts of beings have moral status, mattering morally for their own sake? Is tradition right to favour human beings or persons? Are progressive views right to include not only sentient animals but insentient life? Might brain organoids or AI acquire moral status?
These and related questions are pursued in depth by David DeGrazia, a prominent contributor to the literature on this topic, in his new book, Investigating Moral Status. In his presentation, Professor DeGrazia will introduce the concept of moral status and seven criteria for evaluating competing accounts, argue that any viable account will have sentience at its core, and sketch three ethical theories that build from this core in distinct ways. He will then discuss implications for meat-eating, animal research, brain organoids, and AI. Following the presentation, a panel will explore and debate central ideas from the book.
Meet our speakers and chair
David DeGrazia is an Elton Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University. From July 2013 through June 2021 he was also Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health. His research interests focus primarily in applied ethics and ethical theory, with special emphasis on moral status and methodology in ethics. He is widely published across Cambridge and Oxford University Press and in leading journals.
John Adenitire is a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. He completed his PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge. He is co-author of Animals and the Constitution and co-editor of Fundamental Rights for Non-Humans. He co-directs the Forum on Decentering the Human at QMUL. He has held visiting research positions at Yale, Oxford, NYU, Fordham, and Chicago.
Angie Pepper is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, working as a moral and political philosopher. Her research centres on what we owe to other animals - including questions about animal agency, sentience, and the ethics of zoos, animal shelters, and pet-keeping. She holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2026-2028) for her project Pets and Power and is an Associate Editor of the Society & Animals, and co-editor of The Ethics of Animal Shelters.
Jonathan Birch is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the new Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE. In 2021, he led a "Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans" that led to invertebrate animals including octopuses, crabs and lobsters being included in the UK government's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. In 2024, he published The Edge of Sentience: risk and precaution in humans, other animals, and AI, an Open Access book.
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The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience is dedicated to improving the lives of non-human animals through interdisciplinary, impact-oriented research across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. It is a research unit within the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, with this event being part of the departmental 'Philosophy Live' series
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