# Contested concept: moral duty

_**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**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The disagreement masks a conflict regarding the temporal scope of moral obligations: do we owe more to the billions alive now or the potential trillions in the future?
- **Canonical**: `/concept/moral duty` (data: `/concept/moral duty.json`)

## Senses in use
- **An obligation to optimize the long-term state of the world, including duties toward future versions of oneself and future populations.** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **A negative obligation to cease harming or to provide relief to those currently suffering under unjust systems.** — used in 1 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Fulfilling negative duties to not harm the global poor requires seeking a permanent end to the harmful systems themselves, rather than mere…](/claim/claim_4b79ff8634ad.md) _(sense: A negative obligation to cease harming or to provide relief to those currently suffering under unjust systems.)_
- [If an individual expects to maintain their current moral values into the future, they have a duty to care for their future self by performi…](/claim/claim_96bd8a7f85d0.md) _(sense: An obligation to optimize the long-term state of the world, including duties toward future versions of oneself and future populations.)_
- [If a person or society has a moral duty to protect newborns, they have a concomitant duty to dismantle any systemic cause of harm (analogiz…](/claim/claim_eb9ce16a62fa.md) _(sense: An obligation to optimize the long-term state of the world, including duties toward future versions of oneself and future populations.)_