Microbes over people?

Only a philosopher could claim seriously that humans owe significant moral duties to microbes. But NYU bioethicist Jeff Sebo delivers precisely that thesis in his new book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why (W.W. Norton, 192 pp.).

Don’t look for a sanctity of human life argument here. Rather, Sebo takes readers on a step-by-step simplified course in moral philosophy. He writes that moral standing depends on whether duties are owed to the entity or being under consideration. If so, these entities or beings belong in “the moral circle” and possess “intrinsic value.”

The general idea that most life has at least some intrinsic value is unobjectionable. But Sebo takes it to an extreme. He advocates widening the moral circle so radically that it includes virtually all life—mammals, fish, insects, invertebrates, plants, and yes, microbes—but also nonliving things that may appear to be sentient, such as AI computer software programs that he ridiculously labels “silicone-based beings.”

Sebo contends that there are two distinct moral categories: “moral agents,” that is, individuals who owe duties to others, and “moral patients,” beings or entities to whom (or which) duties are owed. Sebo believes that “if you have the capacity to be benefited or harmed,” you are a moral patient, and hence “ matter for your own sake.”

For Sebo, virtually all living things are moral patients. Since human actions result in tremendous suffering to “billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, or even sextillions of morally significant [present and future] beings,” Sebo argues, we “might have a duty to live primarily in service to others”—meaning radically self-sacrificial to virtually anything and everything beyond ourselves.

That’s a heavy burden, to say the least. To get us to shoulder it, Sebo seeks to jettison human exceptionalism as the foundational moral principle of society. Toward that end, he conjures a paltry definition of the term, writing that it means “humans always take priority over nonhumans individually and collectively.”

But that isn’t true. Human exceptionalism, properly understood, has dual aspects. The first is our intrinsic unquantifiable and equal human dignity, sometimes called sanctity of life, which places us at the pinnacle of moral worth. That’s admittedly hierarchical, which conflicts with Sebo’s radical egalitarianism.

The other side of the human exceptionalism coin recognizes that we are also the only species in the known universe capable of bearing moral responsibilities, foremost to ourselves and each other. But that is not the full extent of our exceptional agency. We also have the moral obligation to treat animals humanely and the responsibility to husband the environment responsibly. And contrary to Sebo’s definition, human exceptionalism can require us to sacrifice human benefit for other beings—such as we do with the Endangered Species Act, which protects flora and fauna sometimes at the cost of human thriving.

These moral obligations are as much part of human exceptionalism as is our unique moral worth. Or, to use Sebo’s lexicon, humans are all moral agents by nature and should be held to that standard unless that capacity has not yet developed due to immaturity or has been lost due to illness, injury, psychopathology, or age. That is why it would be ludicrous to bring a tiger that kills a man to trial for murder. The tiger is simply incapable of moral agency and hence cannot commit a crime.

Ironically, in this regard Sebo’s thesis is human exceptionalist in the extreme. He writes that “we can prioritize ourselves to the extent that we need to take care of ourselves,” but that “we should prioritize ourselves less than we do,” and eventually reach a place where “we should not prioritize ourselves at all.”

Upon what other species in the known universe could that burdensome obligation be imposed? The obvious answer is none. That means, by definition, that even Sebo considers humans to be exceptional, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it.

With all the talk of morality, I was particularly struck by a category of moral patients he fails to discuss: gestating human babies. Certainly, unborn babies can be harmed or benefited. They are alive and sentient. And they are human, which means they are us. So should the duty to protect their lives and prevent their suffering be of greater importance than a gestating mother’s desire not to be pregnant? Based on Sebo’s zest for protecting nonhuman moral patients, the answer should be yes. But somehow I doubt he would see it that way.

Sebo writes in the hope of reducing suffering. That’s laudable. But human unexceptionalism would bring about more suffering, not less. By denying that we are made in the likeness and image of God, we would be absolved of moral responsibility. If we ever come to see ourselves as just another animal in the forest, that is precisely how we will act.