# Contested concept: moral agency

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: The disagreement over whether marginal humans qualify is partly verbal. It also masks a deeper dispute over whether moral standing is individual or kind-based.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/moral agency` (data: `/concept/moral agency.json`)

## Senses in use
- **A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind** — used in 5 claim(s)
- **A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost** — used in 5 claim(s)
- **A presently exercised capacity, which sleeping or comatose people lack at times** — used in 3 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Classifications are not something rigid but something reasonable.](/claim/claim_0c8dfbe96ee4.md) _(sense: A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind)_
- [[a being that has obtained moral agency by developing a rational capacity], from there on, has full moral agency even if this [rational] ca…](/claim/claim_118120b2f9e5.md) _(sense: A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost)_
- [someone else can step into that blank spot [where the cow-minded human's moral agency is supposed to be] and act as an agent on her behalf](/claim/claim_59915e84affa.md) _(sense: A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost)_
- [Classifications and ascriptions of capacities rely on the good sense of making certain generalizations.](/claim/claim_6580faf3d28d.md) _(sense: A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind)_
- [In general people possess [moral agency], whereas non-people don't.](/claim/claim_8497171fee2f.md) _(sense: A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind)_
- [Members of species whose members are mostly not moral agents, such as non-human animals, do not have the same rights and protections as hum…](/claim/claim_8a311c7f0081.md) _(sense: A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind)_
- [Animals cannot possess rights because they cannot understand the ideas of right and duty.](/claim/claim_9057f83fa25f.md) _(sense: A presently exercised capacity, which sleeping or comatose people lack at times)_
- [in the cow there's no blank spot [where moral agency is supposed to be]](/claim/claim_a4e8c98a2a6c.md) _(sense: A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost)_
- [Children and mentally ill people cannot understand the ideas of right and duty.](/claim/claim_a5d82310dcec.md) _(sense: A presently exercised capacity, which sleeping or comatose people lack at times)_
- [a being can obtain moral agency by developing a rational capacity](/claim/claim_a70aa16b9843.md) _(sense: A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost)_
- [in the case of the cow-minded human [a human being reduced to the mental level of a cow], there's a blank spot where her moral agency is su…](/claim/claim_d7cdcd06d7e0.md) _(sense: A status that persists once acquired, leaving a 'blank spot' filled by a proxy if the capacity is lost)_
- [There are some people who, either for a little or longer while (say when they're asleep or in a coma), lack moral agency.](/claim/claim_da3aa037d27b.md) _(sense: A presently exercised capacity, which sleeping or comatose people lack at times)_
- [If most of a species' members are moral agents then any member [of that species] has the same rights and protections as the species.](/claim/claim_f624bc2b4b73.md) _(sense: A species-typical capacity attributed on the basis of what is generally true of the kind)_