Operationalising Moral Status: Approaching a Pragmatic Spectrum

Legal and ethical frameworks remain dominated by a broadly binary conception of moral status as the primary organising idea: entities are typically treated either as persons, with extensive rights, or as things, with at best limited protections. While many jurisdictions now recognise animal welfare and anti-cruelty duties, these measures generally stop short of acknowledging independent full moral status. This landscape is ill-suited to the diversity of entities whose capacities challenge existing categories, from nonhuman animals to unprecedented beings. This article proposes a pragmatic spectrum of moral status, conceptualised as a continuous gradient on which entities can be located according to their morally relevant capacities. Grounded in a triangulation of established ethical theories, the framework is structured by three anchor thresholds-sentience, consciousness, and sapience-allowing graduated protections to "kick in" at different points. The spectrum is applied using a multimodal approach to measurement, demonstrating how it can guide governance where current law leaves a vacuum. By moving beyond the person/thing distinction with a capacity-based continuum, this approach offers a flexible, anticipatory tool for recognising and responding to the moral claims of diverse entities while avoiding both overreach and neglect.