Moral agency
Definition
Moral agency denotes someone with a capacity for making moral judgments and for taking actions that comport with morality.
Development and analysis
Most philsophers suggest that only rational beings, people who can reason and form self-interested judgments, are capable of being moral agents. Some suggest that even people with limited rationality (for example, people who are mildly mentally handicapped) have some basic moral capabilities.
Determinists would argue that all of our actions are the product of antecedent causes, there is no free will, and that we have no real control over our actions. Immanuel Kant argued that whether or not or real selves can choose, we have no choice but to believe that we choose freely when we make a choice. This does not mean that we can control the effects of our actions.
It is useful to compare the idea of moral agency with the legal doctrine of ''mens rea'', which means guilty mind, and states that a person is legally responsible for what he does as long as he should know what he is doing, and his choices are deliberate. Some theorists discard any attempts to evaluate mental states and, instead, adopt the doctrine of ''strict liability'', whereby one is liable under the law without regard to capacity, and that the only thing is to determine the degree of punishment, if any. Moral determinists would most likely adopt a similar point of view.
Distinction between moral agency and eligibility for moral consideration
Many, perhaps even most philosophers, tend to view morality as a transaction among rational parties, that is, among moral agents. For this reason (e.g., Kant), they would exclude other animals from moral consideration. Others state that one must draw a distinction between moral agency and being subject to moral considerations, and that too much emphasis is placed on rationality as a requirement for being part of what Michael E. Berumen calls the "moral realm." Berumen argues that the key to being eligible for moral consideration is not rationality, for if that were the case, we should have to exclude disabled people, infants, fetuses, and so forth, and that we even ought to distinguish among the degrees of rationality among otherwise normal adults. He says the real object of morality is to avoid or prevent suffering or dying (loss of consciousness), which thereby extends the moral realm to other animals. This is not dissimilar to the views of the animal rights philosopher, Peter Singer. Neither philosopher believes animals and humans need to be treated equally, but in some proportion to their capacity for suffering.