The Ant You Can Save

This chapter addresses the question of how we should treat beings whose moral status remains uncertain, ranging from the common ant to emerging artificial intelligence systems. Against the background of the historical tension between exclusionary and inclusive views on sentience and moral status, the chapter proposes a middle-ground probabilistic approach. This framework allows moral concern to scale proportionally with the likelihood of a being&s;s sentience and moral status, rather than requiring binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to the question of whether some individual matters morally for their own sake.