Text

Consciousness and Moral Status

---

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness.
In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status.
This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

---

Availability

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

-

Publisher

London : Routledge., 2018

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781315396347

Classification

-

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Humanities
Behavioral Sciences

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

Joshua Shepherd

Other Information

Cataloger

tedy

Source

-

Validator

-

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315396347

Journal Volume

-

Journal Issue

-

Subtitle

-

Parallel Title

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment