Jeff Sebo is associate professor of environmental studies; affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy, and law; director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection; and director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at New York University. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight, Jeff talks about what it means to matter morally, balancing differing ethical traditions, and how to be a productive writer.
What is The Moral Circle about?
The Moral Circle is about which beings morally matter for their own sakes, and what follows for our actions, policies, priorities, and place in the moral universe.
The book argues that humanity should expand our moral circle—our conception of which beings morally matter—much farther and faster than many assume, for two reasons. First, we should be open to the possibility that a vast number of beings can be sentient, agentic, or otherwise morally significant, including insects and, eventually, AI systems. Thus, we should extend at least some moral consideration to these beings accordingly. Second, we should be open to the possibility that our actions can affect a vast number of beings, including beings who are far away in space and time. Thus, we should extend at least some moral consideration to these beings accordingly as well.
The upshot is that we should extend at least some moral consideration to septillions of beings, including and especially future nonhumans, with revisionary implications for our lives and societies. For example, we should rethink how we treat nonhuman animals, how we build digital minds, and how we govern shared physical and, eventually, virtual spaces. It also means challenging human exceptionalism, the idea that humans always matter the most and take priority. The book concludes that we should embrace a more inclusive and egalitarian ethical framework, one that reflects our actual place in the world and our evolving relationships with the beings around us.
How does it fit in with your larger research project?
This book provides a general foundation for my research. In other work, I explore practical implications for different areas of ethics, law, and policy.
One line of research, which I pursue via the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, explores what a broader moral circle means for our relationships with animals and the environment. This includes local policy work about how cities can promote plant-forward diets and wildlife-inclusive infrastructures, in collaboration with the Guarini Center at NYU. It also includes global policy work about how the international community can incorporate animal welfare into sustainable development governance, in collaboration with the Stockholm Environment Institute, and how we can work toward a global ban on industrial animal agriculture by 2050.
Another line of research, which I pursue via the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, explores what a broader moral circle means for our relationships with insects, AI systems, and other nonhumans. In 2024, I co-organized the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which attributes a realistic chance of consciousness to all vertebrates and many invertebrates. I also co-led “Taking AI Welfare Seriously,” which draws a similar conclusion about near-future AI systems. These projects, along with other projects on animal and AI consciousness, welfare comparisons, overlapping minds, and more, help to flesh out ideas that I discuss at a high level in my book.
Why did you feel the need to write this work?
This is a pivotal decade for animals and AI, not only because many risky practices are still underway, but also because many new ones are now coming online.
The rise of insect farming is a clear example of the stakes for animals. This industry already kills over a trillion insects each year—often through practices like boiling, freezing, or shredding—and it could kill as many as 50 trillion per year by the end of the decade. Given the realistic possibility that insects matter morally, this industry is extremely risky. Unlike many other forms of industrial animal farming, industrial insect farming is still on the rise. This means that we have an opportunity to slow or stop a risky practice at an early stage in its development, rather than attempting to intervene only after it has already scaled up and become globally entrenched.
The stakes for AI systems are different but similarly urgent. While the probability that current AI systems are sentient, agentic, or otherwise morally significant may be low, the probability is still not zero, and it will likely increase over time. AI companies continue to make rapid progress, and if we wait for broad agreement that AI systems could matter morally before taking first steps, then we might find that the scale of risk is already high and that the risky practices are already difficult to change. By engaging with this issue now, we can build the knowledge, capacity, and political will needed to ensure that we treat AI systems appropriately when the time comes.
How do you relate your work to other well-known philosophies?
My work aims to be reasonably pluralistic, both for theories of sentience and agency and for theories of moral status and right action; I can focus on the latter here.
In my work on the basis of moral status, I lean toward the sentience view, which focuses on the capacity to experience positive and negative states such as pleasure and pain. However, I express openness to other views as well, including the agency view (which focuses on the capacity to act on beliefs and desires), the life view (which focuses on the capacity to survive and reproduce), and relational views (which focuses on how we relate to each other). I take this approach both because I could be wrong about the basis for moral status and because it helps to consider all reasonable views when designing laws and policies in cases involving disagreement and uncertainty.
Similarly, in my work on the basis of right action, I lean toward a hybrid of Kantianism and utilitarianism, since I think that morality arises from the aspiration to act on principles we can reflectively endorse—and I also think that we can reflectively endorse the principle of promoting the greatest good for the greatest number. However, I also endorse aspects of virtue ethics (which focuses on cultivating virtuous characters), care ethics (which focuses on cultivating caring relationships), and other views. I take this approach because our characters and relationships shape our ability to act well, and because, again, because I value pluralism as a tool for collective action.
What writing practices, methods, or routines do you use, and which have been the most helpful?
Different practices work for different people, but two that work especially well for me are daily writing and collaborative writing.
First, I make writing a daily practice. I write for either two hours or 1,000 words—whichever comes first—every morning, seven days a week. Writing in the morning allows me to feel more focused when I write and more centered as I navigate meetings, teaching, administrative work, and everything else that fills my day. It also allows me to juggle multiple projects at once, make steady progress on my work instead of letting it accumulate, and end writing sessions before I hit diminishing returns. I still feel pressure to meet deadlines, of course, but on the whole I experience writing as a process of exploration and discovery, and I really value that experience.
Second, I do a lot of collaborative writing. Many of the issues I work on are multidisciplinary by nature, requiring engagement with philosophy, sociology, cognitive science, computer science, law and policy, among other fields. Working with co-authors allows me to tackle these issues more thoughtfully, and it also makes the writing process more dynamic. When you work with a strong team, writing can feel a bit like improvisational theater: rather than simply following a script, you generate new ideas together. That spirit of collective exploration often produces richer and more nuanced work, in addition to being more rewarding.
Jeff Sebo
Jeff Sebo is associate professor of environmental studies; affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy, and law; director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection; and director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at New York University.
Richard B. Gibson is Editor of the Current Events in Philosophy and the Bioethics series. He is a bioethicist with research interests in human enhancement, emergent technologies, novel beings, disability theory, and body modification.
