Published in 2018 in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31, 369-388. DOI: 10.1007/s10806-018-9730-y, available at link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10806-018-9730-y. 1 Moral Considerability and the Argument from Relevance Oscar Horta University of Santiago de Compostela ABSTRACT The argument from relevance expresses an intuition that, although shared by many applied ethicists, has not been analyzed and systematized in the form of a clear argument thus far. This paper does this by introducing the concept of value relevance, which has been used before in economy but not in the philosophical literature. The paper explains how value relevance is different from moral rele-vance, and distinguishes between direct and indirect ways in which the latter can depend on the former. These clarifications allow the argument to explain in detail how we can make two claims. The first one is that being a recipient of value should be the only criterion for full moral considerability. This follows if we accept that value relevance should determine, directly or indirectly, moral relevance. The second claim is that, given what the main theories of wellbeing imply regarding what entities can be recipients of value, sentience is both a sufficient and a necessary criterion for full moral considerability. The paper argues that this conclusion stands even if we hold views that consider other values different from sentience. INTRODUCTION Many moral decisions have to do with whether and to what extent the interests of some entities should count. In other words, they have to do with whether those entities are to be morally considered, and, if so, how much. If, other things being equal, their interests do not count for less than the similar interests of other individuals, they will be fully morally considerable. If, instead, their interests count for something, but less than if they had been the interests of other individuals, they will be morally considerable, but not fully morally considerable. According to a relatively common view, this would be the case of nonhuman animals. Such a view can be characterized as follows: