The art of thinking · Mind and moral status
Moral patient
Also known as: Moral patienthood, Moral status
In moral philosophy, a moral patient is a being whose interests count morally for its own sake, so that what is done to it can wrong it; a moral agent, by contrast, is a being that can act morally and be held responsible for what it does.
- Thinking models
- Philosophy
- Ethics
In one sentence
A moral patient is a being whose interests count morally for its own sake; a moral agent is one that can be held responsible. Both terms explained.
Example
An infant is a moral patient but not a moral agent: it can be harmed and wronged, but it is not held responsible for what it does.
Explained in context
Context cards connect this term with others to answer one question. Also in British English and German.
How it applies
- A moral-legal claim, not a finding: A statement that a being is or is not a moral patient answers the question of what is owed to it. It is not an empirical result, even when it rests on one, such as evidence about sentience or about interests.
- Grounds of moral status: Positions differ on what makes a being a moral patient. Common candidates are sentience (the capacity for experiences that feel good or bad) and robust agency (having goals and acting on them). Which ground a text assumes should be stated.
- The AI welfare debate: The report “Taking AI Welfare Seriously” (2024) argues that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be moral patients in the near future and that developers should prepare under that uncertainty. Others reject the premise; see model welfare. The concept itself takes no side.
- In documentation and policy texts: Mark a passage about moral patienthood as a moral or legal position, name whose position it is and keep it apart from evaluation results, design rules and model-generated self-reports.
Moral patient vs. moral agent
A moral agent can be praised, blamed and held responsible; a moral patient can be wronged. Every moral agent is usually also a moral patient, but not the other way round: infants and many animals are widely regarded as moral patients without being moral agents. In the AI debate the two questions are separate: whether a system could be wronged, and who is responsible for what it does. Responsibility for an AI system's outputs lies with people and organizations under current law, whatever one thinks about patienthood.
External references
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