The Undersized Umbrella of Moral Consideration

Where there is morality, there is moral consideration. In order for morality to exist, a rational

being must understand that to some extent other beings are deserving of this consideration, which is to

say that other entities should fall under some sort of protection from unnecessary suffering that could

potentially be caused or prevented by the rational being. Perhaps the best example of an attempt at

large-scale human morality can be seen in the various legal systems around the world built to protect

people from the harmful actions of others. Morality is an important pursuit for rational minds because,

when it is properly implemented, individual lives of all types and backgrounds can be improved.

Morality is essentially the core theme of a functioning civilization.

Unlike the importance of morality however, determining which entities deserve moral

consideration is a bit more ambiguous. Assuming one is not skeptical enough to find the other minds

problem compelling and decide to focus completely on oneself, this ambiguity of moral consideration

poses a serious problem. Trace the history of civilization back within the lifetimes of our older citizens

and there are plenty examples of this problem manifesting; perhaps the best of these is the cruelty of

Nazi Germany in their treatment of whom they considered inferior and therefore not deserving of

moral consideration, but unfortunately this is not the only case of societies being far too restrictive on

which parties should be morally considered.

This dilemma has likely plagued civilization since its beginning and can still be seen today as

modern societies try to determine the rights of captives in current wars or the rights of women and

minorities around the world. One solution to this problem might be the one brought forth by Rene

Descartes centuries ago. Descartes believed in dualism or the idea that humans in particular were

composed of a physical body and a metaphysical mind. In his model it is mind that makes one worthy

of moral consideration, a claim that will not be refuted here. Because humans possess consciousness, it

only makes sense that we should treat a human being with a higher level of consideration than we tend
to treat animals. Humans should be protected by morality and are deserving of some level of dignity.

With this relatively broad measure of moral consideration, not only are the atrocities of the past such as

the Holocaust exposed as immoral and irrational, but we can create a more stable model of civilization

that is no longer plagued with the problem of over-restrictive consideration; that is until one takes into

account that this model conveniently settles on making all beings who speak languages to defend

themselves the focus of moral consideration while abandoning all other possible entities to the abyss of

moral ignorance.

It is important, if we are to call ourselves moral, that all conscious minds are considered, and it

is probably unlikely that consciousness conveniently borders itself on the line drawn by a single species

around itself. So, the dilemma of moral consideration continues until we can find an accurate measure

of mind. In his essay, "Mary and the Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness?", Gary Gutting

argues that the idea that science will one day be able to quantify and understand consciousness is far

fetched. He does this by using David Chalmers' philosophical zombie concept, and Frank Jackson's

Mary scenario, which suggest it is theoretically possible to display elements of consciousness without

being conscious and to understand something factually without having any sensational understanding

of that topic at all. If Gutting is correct and we can never objectively disprove consciousness, and if

based on the atrocities of the past the true moral danger lies in being over-restrictive with our moral

consideration, we can conclude that it is best to treat all apparently sentient beings with moral

consideration.

To test this claim we first have to investigate the truth to the premise that consciousness cannot

be disproven. Proponents of physicalism believe that all of existence and the actions that take place

within it can be explained as physical phenomenon. That can be interpreted to mean that everything

from life to consciousness are the effects of a purely physical world and that consciousness itself is

physical. If this we hold this to be true then that means there is some conceivable scientific test that can
prove whether or not an entity can be considered conscious, which based on the definition of morality

above could be used to determine which entities are worthy of moral consideration. However, there is

at least one problem with relying on physicalism in this matter.

Physicalism suggests that there is no knowledge required outside of our understanding of the

physical world that is required to understand our world completely. In response to this way of thinking

Frank Jackson introduced his thought experiment about a peculiar scholar named Mary. Mary lives in a

home that is black and white and has no colors whatsoever; she has never left this home. Every detail

from the furniture, to the television set that she watches lectures on, to the books that she reads are

completely devoid of color. After completing her education on everything there is to know about the

physical world including color, Mary is allowed to go outside and experience color first-hand for the

first time in her life. If the world were purely physical and Marys education on the physical world

were complete then going outside for the first time should have little novelty. Of course this would

probably not be the case as experiencing the sensation of color for the first time would surely be an

overwhelming experience. Here Jackson proves that there is more to Marys complete understanding of

the world than just information about the physical world, and therefore the world cannot be entirely

physical.

This brings us to dualism which complicates the issue of determining what is and isnt

conscious. Descartes had an early answer for this question which was that was that only humans are

conscious and all other living creatures are essentially life robots that are purely physical and only react

to the physical world. His reasoning for this human exceptionalism was due to the fact that humans in

his mind displayed characteristics of thought, such as complex language use, that could not be reduced

to purely physical explanations. Now to be fair to the physicalists here, Descartes formulated this

thought long before neuroscience which actually goes very far in explaining the mechanisms of human

thought in physical sense, but if we give the dualists the Mary experiment then neuroscience is still

lacking. So Descartes gives us a seemingly reasonable demarcation line for what could be considered
conscious and what couldnt be with the concept of human exceptionalism, but there is a major

problem with this line: by judging whether or not an entity is conscious based on what is in essence a

rationality test we are essentially agreeing to the idea that somehow intelligence is the source of

consciousness and lacking it to a certain degree can move one beyond the realm of moral consideration.

This problem is apparent when considering that not all humans are fully capable of language,

while some animals like certain types porpoises prove to be very capable of communicating with each

other. This would seem to indicate that the two trade places in regards to the moral plane. Consider as

well that there are extremely intelligent humans that make up the smartest one percent of the world.

One can be sure that at some point the rest of us have seemed less than rational to them at one point or

another which suggests that we rate less moral consideration than they do. The glaring problems with

determining the recipients of moral consideration based on intelligence are one: that there really is no

objective measurement for rationality as one is sure to always find oneself rational, and two it creates a

sort of hierarchy of moral consideration where the intelligent elite are more important than the rest of

us.

What puts the nail in the coffin of rationality is yet another potential problem that Decartes was

not in the right time period to account for. In the modern age humanity is attempting to create artificial

intelligence which if ever successful should theoretically produce a machine that thinks better that

even the smartest humans. Whether or not this entity could be considered conscious outside of the lens

of rationality is a deeper topic for another time, but what one would have a hard time arguing against is

that theoretically we can program a machine that displays intelligence beyond that of human beings.

Given this theoretical possibility from the perspective of a machine humanity deserves about the same

level of moral consideration that Descartes gave the animals; just like animals dont typically use

language, humans arent typically able to count to over one million within a second which is a measure

of intelligence that computers already have over us. From here one can see a dilemma, that there is

potentially no way of actually dividing what is an isnt conscious with logic.

 That leads us to the class other minds problem of which the best example is Chalmers zombie,

an entity that appears to be human in every single quality including behavior that is not actually

conscious. Based on the conceivability argument zombies are conceivable and therefore possible, so

any theory of morality should take into account that perhaps there are people who arent conscious.

With that consideration one is left in a moral vacuum, unable to prove that the other minds exist and

therefore should have their rights protected. When faced with this dilemma there seems to be one very

logical choice that hasnt yet been considered: one could simply overestimate consciousness. Though

not obvious at first there really isnt much of an inherent risk with treating the zombie and the being

with the same moral consideration. The only possible results of this action are that either one has

wasted a limitless resource in the form of moral consideration or one has acted morally. This is

certainly less of a headache than trying to re imagine the nature of reality for the sake of not wasting

that resource.

We have to face to possibility that we may never make it out of the other minds problem and

that skeptics of consciousness will always have a logical counter-argument. With this possibility in

mind and since it is certainly the case today that we have no way of scientifically deriving the source of

consciousness, our best option and perhaps our only option is to assume that any claim to

consciousnesswhether it be verbal or in the expression of sensations like pain or excitementshould

be treated as possible evidence of consciousness. Therefore, our morality should be designed around

not just the protection of what we consider to be rational beings, but all entities whether human or

otherwise that display any sign of consciousness.

Works Cited:

Allen, Colin. The Future of Moral Machines. The Stone Reader. Eds. Peter Capatano and Simon

Critchley. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016.

Gutting, Gary. Mary and the Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness? The Stone Reader. Eds.

Peter Capatano and Simon Critchley. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY: Liveright Publishing

Corporation, 2016.

Jackson, Frank. What Mary Didnt Know. The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 83, Issue 5, May

1986, 291-95.

Kirk, Robert, "Zombies", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward

N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/zombies/>.