Moral Standing

Moral standing is a concept that relates to what ethicists call “moral considerability.” Here, the moral status of an entity is determined by considering whether that entity deserves to have its well-being taken into account within the context of moral decision making. To ask if an entity has moral standing is to ask whether that entity should be considered in the moral judgments that people make and the moral decisions that they take and whether that entity should count as a morally valued being and whether it can make moral claims on other moral beings. Hence, this concept has to do with the value or worth that is bestowed on an entity. Whether the entity under consideration is [Page 2378]determined to have intrinsic or instrumental ...