If being a person entails possession of rights, then being a moral person entails possession of moral

rights. What is at stake in the question of whether an entity (say a human embryo, a human fetus, a
brain dead human, an animal, a corporation, or an intelligent machine) is a moral person is whether this
entity has moral rights, and, consequently, whether other moral persons have certain moral duties or
obligations7 towards this entity. (In the movie Bicentennial Man, the robot wanted to be recognized as a
person by the government so he would be recognized as having rights, especially the right to marry the
person he so loved.) But what are moral rights? Or more precisely, what kind of rights are moral rights?
Like legal and positive rights, moral rights impose duties either of non-interference or provision, and are
thus either negative or positive. But unlike legal and contractual rights, moral rights are acquired
through possession of the defining features of moral personhood. Furthermore, as they are used to
justify the acceptance or rejection of legal and contractual rights, moral rights are higher than these two
other kinds of rights. Moral Agents and