Moral Status and Moral Significance

Abstract

This chapter discusses the relations between moral status (or standing) and what the author calls moral significance. Something has moral significance just in case it morally counts for its own sake, or is something that must be taken into consideration in itself when moral judgments about what ought or ought not to be done are made. The chapter argues that the moral status of something is dependent on what is morally significant about it. Nothing can have moral status if there is not anything morally significant about it. On the other hand, something can be morally significant, even though it does not have moral status. The notion of moral significance is then the more fundamental notion and the notion of moral status could be dispensed with. In fact, it would simplify and clarify matters if it were dispensed with.