Philosophy and Technology 33 (1):9-31 (2019)
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Abstract |
This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face.
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Keywords | Virtue ethics Social recognition theory Social robotics Moral consideration for robots Moral patiency Alienation Habit formation Character |
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Reprint years | 2019, 2020 |
ISBN(s) | |
DOI | 10.1007/s13347-019-0341-y |
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References found in this work BETA
Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error.Gilbert Harman - 1999 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1999):315-331.
On the Morality of Artificial Agents.Luciano Floridi & J. W. Sanders - 2004 - Minds and Machines 14 (3):349-379.
The Other Question: Can and Should Robots Have Rights?David J. Gunkel - 2018 - Ethics and Information Technology 20 (2):87-99.
The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.Andrew Levine - 1998 - Ethics 108 (3):619-622.
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Citations of this work BETA
On the Moral Status of Social Robots: Considering the Consciousness Criterion.Kestutis Mosakas - forthcoming - AI and Society:1-15.
Is It Time for Robot Rights? Moral Status in Artificial Entities.Vincent C. Müller - 2021 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):579–587.
Designing Virtuous Sex Robots.Anco Peeters & Pim Haselager - 2019 - International Journal of Social Robotics:1-12.
Empathic responses and moral status for social robots: an argument in favor of robot patienthood based on K. E. Løgstrup.Simon N. Balle - 2022 - AI and Society 37 (2):535-548.
The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities: A Literature Review.Jamie Harris & Jacy Reese Anthis - 2021 - Science and Engineering Ethics 27 (4):1-95.
View all 8 citations / Add more citations
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