“The Moral Circle” by Jeff Sebo
Reviewed by STEVEN G. KELLMAN
In his 2004 essay “Consider the Lobster,” novelist David Foster Wallace asks readers to ponder whether lobster, a culinary delicacy routinely boiled alive, merits moral consideration. Do crustaceans feel pain, or are they merely insensate objects that a voracious gourmet need not fret about? If we start to consider the lobster, what about pigs, dolphins, and chimpanzees?
In his short, provocative new book, Jeff Sebo examines whether it is appropriate to enlarge what he calls “the moral circle” – “the set of beings who matter for their own sakes.” They exist as subjects rather than just objects. For centuries, the moral circle was quite narrow, limited to one’s own family, nation, or race. People with fair complexions, for example, felt no qualms about enslaving and otherwise abusing dark-skinned Africans. But by 1948, with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, conventional wisdom affirmed that “. . . recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Is it time now to look beyond just that family and abandon human exceptionalism?
Sebo, who teaches environmental studies at New York University, offers this challenging thought experiment: What if you have been sharing a house amicably with Carmen and Dora, and what if you all decided to take a DNA test? If the test proved that Carmen is a Neanderthal and Dora a robot, would you behave differently toward them? Would you immediately expel them from the moral circle?
Examining how to determine inclusion within the moral circle, Sebo weighs the claims of numerous carbon-based and silicon-based beings based on probabilities of possessing consciousness. He seems a bit too quantitative and precise in suggesting that the chances of sentience are 34 percent in flies, 24 percent in worms, and 7.23 in plants. But he also warns against the delusion of absolute truth in ethical thinking, insisting that: “Moral certainty is an elusive ideal.” What is undeniable is that human beings have an impact on a vast variety and number of other species and it behooves us to consider that impact.
If in doubt, perhaps we should err on the side of inclusiveness. Since we are each trapped within our own consciousness, we can never be certain of what exactly goes on within the mind even of another human being. Yet we each readily adopt the social fiction that other people think and feel. If it is reasonable, if not irrefutable, to assume that other humans experience pain, would it hurt to assume the same for fish? “Given ongoing uncertainty about both facts and values,” Sebo argues, “a vast number of beings merit at least some consideration, even if only a tiny amount.” That consideration ought to mean refusal to cause them unnecessary distress. It ought also to induce some uncertainty about human exceptionalism.
As Sebo notes: “Humans are intentionally killing more than one hundred billion captive animals and hundreds of billions of wild animals per year for food, research, and other purposes.” Since some of the consequences are deforestation, pandemic, and climate change, even a modest reduction in the slaughter would benefit everyone, especially the animals. Sebo speculates that at some point soon artificial intelligence will dominion. Will AI then include us within its moral circle? Similarly, if an extraterrestrial alien suddenly arrived that is as superior to Homo sapiens as we believe we are to other earthly organisms, we would surely not want it to exploit us for experimentation, entertainment, and alimentation.
Enlarging the moral circle does not necessitate giving zebras the right to vote and calling elephants to jury duty. It does mean acknowledging their subjectivity and minimizing harmful intrusions into their lives. However, because everything within the circumference has equal status, “moral circle” is an imprecise metaphor. While acknowledging their moral claims, we relate differently to turtles, eagles, and sperm whales. Instead of a moral circle, imagine a series of interlocking rings – which constitute the chain of life.
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“The Moral Circle” by Jeff Sebo; W.W. Norton 2025;$24