Many attempts at improving the world aim to expand humanity’s moral circle – the circle of sentient beings considered morally important. Movements such as anti-slavery, feminism, and animal rights all involve attempting to expand this circle. Understanding how moral circle expansion occurs, how tractable it is, and to what extent changes persist could be important for improving the welfare of a huge number of present and future beings. Many (plausibly) sentient beings are not considered morally important, or not sufficiently important to prevent great harm potentially occurring to them. Wild animals, insects, and future artificial intelligences are examples of beings whose suffering could be particularly overlooked.
See also this blog post series on the tractability of changing the course of history, and this and this blog post for examples of informal debate about the value of working on moral circle expansion.
Contributors: This profile was last significantly 01/09/2022. Thanks to Matti Wilks and Thomas Moynihan for helpful feedback on this profile. All mistakes remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
