Jeff Sebo (W. W. Norton US: on sale; UK: March)
Should chimpanzees have rights? What about elephants? Or ants? Or microorganisms? And how about artificial intelligence?
These questions are at the heart of The Moral Circle: Who matters, what matters, and why, a crisply argued little book by philosopher Jeff Sebo. Based at New York University, Sebo has spent years arguing that consciousness is widespread in the animal kingdom and that we should extend our moral circle to encompass many more types of creature than we do at present. His work builds on that of ethicist Peter Singer, author of the classic book Animal Liberation.
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Sebo was one of the authors of a legal brief arguing that two captive chimpanzees called Kiko and Tommy should be considered “persons” instead of “things”. In April 2024, he was a signatory to The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which said there is “strong scientific support” for conscious experience in mammals and birds, and “a realistic possibility of conscious experience” in many invertebrates, notably insects and cephalopods.
In The Moral Circle, Sebo sets out to demonstrate that we should take animal consciousness seriously when we decide how to treat other creatures. The scientific evidence for animal consciousness is growing, from reports of monkeys and dolphins apparently calling each other by “name” to our improved understanding of when animals are (or appear to be) happy, as well as evidence of vivid dreams in octopuses – and even in pigeons.
However, Sebo’s aim isn’t to convince us that particular species are conscious – that remains scientifically contentious. Instead, he makes a point that is both simple and profound: waiting for absolute certainty is a mistake.
Extending rights to animals seems very far away. But perhaps we need wider empathy in times like these
We can never be 100 per cent sure if another being is conscious, even our fellow humans. But most of us still act as if other people are conscious beings with feelings and rights. Right now, we aren’t entirely sure whether chimps or elephants are conscious and we are very uncertain about ants – but in all three cases, it is a distinct possibility. That means we must treat them with some degree of moral concern.
This probabilistic argument is both refreshing and commonsensical. It reflects the truth of our experience of animals, and it encourages a degree of kindness and consideration without imposing dogmatic standards. Sebo isn’t saying that we should necessarily treat a chimpanzee or an ant as equivalent to a human, but even if we don’t, there is plenty of room for us to extend them more care than we do at the moment.
Much of his book is devoted to thought experiments, for instance exploring when it is and isn’t permissible to release pollutants into a lake. One fascinating what-if imagines an animal welfare charity that must decide whether to save a small number of elephants or a large number of ants: at what point does the suffering of numerous but “simple” ants equal that of the “complex” elephants? These sections are a workout for your brain, in the best sense: Sebo writes with great clarity, so you can follow the knottiest problems.
Inevitably, he also explores AI consciousness, taking the same probabilistic approach. While there is no good reason to think any existing AI is conscious, there is also no good reason to think AI could never be conscious, so he argues we have to prepare for the possibility that future AIs will be.
My one concern is that Sebo may simply be writing at the wrong time. We live in an age where many of our leaders are trying to take rights away from many people, ranging from transgender people and migrants to women in Afghanistan and Uighur Muslims in north-west China. The prospect of extending rights to animals like chimps and elephants, let alone squids and flies, seems very far away. But perhaps it is in times like these that we need calls for wider empathy most of all.
Michael Marshall is a writer based in Devon, UK
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