Moral Community

All entities that are regarded as moral agents or as having moral worth are said to be members of the moral community and are thus entitled to ethical consideration.  To put it another way, members of the moral community are owed some degree of consideration in our moral deliberation.

What constitutes the boundaries of the moral community is an issue of some dispute.  While some entities clearly fall outside the boundaries of the moral community (non-living entities such as stones and minerals, for example), and other entities clearly lie inside it (human beings), the moral status of a number of entities is unclear.

Fetuses, animals, and (if it exists) extraterrestrial life raise difficulties in delineating the boundaries of the moral community.  Some have argued that animals deserve some ethical consideration.  Some religious traditions hold this view; it has also been argued by philosophers on utilitarian grounds.   The abortion debate in the United States also points to the difficulty in establishing the boundaries of the moral community, with arguments both for and against the inclusion of fetuses in the community.

The debate over the moral status of corporations is also ongoing.  Some argue that corporations are members of the moral community because they are moral agents.  Thus, on this view, corporations both owe ethical considerations to others and are owed ethical consideration by others.

The extent to which corporations can be held morally responsible for their actions in the moral community, and to whom corporations are accountable, is also a contested issue.

Some take the view that corporations are not members of the moral community, and that they cannot be held morally accountable for their actions.  Others argue that corporations are minimally accountable for their actions, and that their moral obligations are limited to the company’s shareholders.   Still others view corporations as fully incorporated (as it were) in the moral community as entities with full moral status.  On this view, corporations are fully morally responsible for their actions, and the consequences that follow from them.