Journal article
The Mind that Matters
- Abstract:
- What kind of mind is necessary and sufficient for moral status—for having interests that matter morally in and of themselves? This paper defends Affective Sentientism, the view that moral status requires the capacity for affective experiences such as pleasure, pain, and emotion. I argue that affective consciousness is what makes an entity a welfare subject, and that all and only welfare subjects have moral status. The connection between affect and welfare is systematic: I show that every major candidate welfare good has an affective component, often because such goods require the capacity to care. I also argue that even if the properties of being phenomenally conscious, being autonomous, or having a neutral level of welfare could come apart from affective consciousness, none of them could ground moral status in its absence. I conclude by exploring the implications for the moral status of animals and artificial intelligence systems.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 518.7KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/pq/pqag035
Authors
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- The Philosophical Quarterly More from this journal
- Article number:
- pqag035
- Publication date:
- 2026-06-26
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1467-9213
- ISSN:
-
0031-8094
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Source identifiers:
-
4270431
- Deposit date:
-
2026-06-26
- ARK identifier:
This ORA record was generated from metadata provided by an external service. It has not been edited by the ORA Team.
Terms of use
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record