moral weight
Conscience's heavy burden
Moral weight is the degree of ethical consideration owed to a being or action.
In philosophy, it often concerns which creatures deserve moral concern: Do insects have moral weight?
The moral weight of animal suffering.
The term also applies to competing ethical claims: The moral weight of keeping a promise versus preventing harm.
Something with greater moral weight commands more serious ethical attention.
- ethicalConforming to moral principles
- gravityMutual mass attraction
- conscienceInternal moral sense
- significanceQuality of mattering
- valueImportance or price
intrinsic value · burden · responsibility · soul · sentience · harm · do no harm · suffering · dignity · worth · consideration · judgment · good and evil · stakes · consequence · obligation · heaviness · culpability
- conscience in literatureguilt, inner voice, remorse, inner struggle, soul-searching
moral weighttriviality
Unimportant small matter
insignificance · inconsequentiality · pettiness · frivolity · unimportance
moral, weight, morals, morality, morally, moralize, moralizing, immoral, immorality