The Desirability of Legal Rights for Novel Beings

Jowitt, Joshua

doi:10.1017/s096318012000105x

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…An ethical rationalist argues that reason alone can establish the rights of, and duties to, other agential beings 17 ; and prospectively, we do not have the same duties towards non-agents (although we may have other obligations). 18 In this regard, the social effects of dehumanization (regardless of a being's humanity) are loss of freedom and wellbeing, to the extent that rights are claims made to develop a personalist morality of the good life. A thinking chimera, like all of us, is entitled to a beneficent world that is conductive for the development of capacities leading to an existence well-lived.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Chimeras Think About?

Capps

2023

Camb Q Healthc Ethics

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Non-human animal chimeras, containing human neurological cells, have been created in the laboratory. Despite a great deal of debate, the status of such beings has not been resolved. Under normal definitions, such a being could either be unconventionally human or abnormally animal. Practical investigations in animal sentience, artificial intelligence, and now chimera research, suggest that such beings may be assumed to have no legal rights, so philosophy could provide a different answer. In this vein, therefore, we can ask: What would a chimera, if it could think, think about? Thinking is used to capture the phenomena of a novel, chimeric being perceiving its terrible predicament as no more than a laboratory experiment. The creation of a thinking chimera therefore forces us to reconsider our assumptions about what makes human beings (potentially) unique (and other sentient animals different), because, as such, a chimera’s existence bridges our social and legal expectations about definitions of human and animal. Society has often evolved new social norms based on different kinds of (ir)rational contrivances; the imperative of non-contradiction, which is defended here, therefore requires a specific philosophical response to the rights of a thinking chimeric being.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Chimeras Think About?

Capps

2023

Camb Q Healthc Ethics

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Assessing contemporary legislative proposals for their compatibility with a natural law case for AI legal personhood

Jowitt¹

2020

AI & Soc

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The question of the moral status of AI and the extent to which that status ought to be recognised by societal institutions is one that has not yet received a satisfactory answer from lawyers. This paper seeks to provide a solution to the problem by defending a moral foundation for the recognition of legal personhood for AI, requiring the status to be granted should a threshold criterion be reached. The threshold proposed will be bare, noumenal agency in the Kantian sense. Agency has been identified by Alan Gewirth as the source of the rights claims of our own species and, at risk of contradiction, is a foundation that must be expanded to all agents or else we contradict the foundation of our own rights. This is something that ought to be recognised through the granting of legal personhood to all noumenal agents by any system that requires such personhood for the enforcement of rights, or else the rule restricting legal personhood cannot be seen as a valid legal norm. Having laid out the case, the paper will move on to defend this natural law conception against the narrower definition of legal personhood proposed by Bryson et al. with regards to AI. It will argue that bare agency is a sufficient, though not necessary, criterion for the ascription of legal personhood in any system that sees the status as necessary for the ascription of legal rights. The paper will conclude by analysing the proposals currently making their way through the legislatures of the UK and European Union. They will be assessed for their compatibility with the claim that a functioning legal system necessarily must recognise the legal personhood of all noumenal agents regardless of their origins, and whether they are future-proofed for the possibility that AI may meet this threshold.

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On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

Jowitt¹

2023

Camb Q Healthc Ethics

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This paper will ask whether the legal status presently afforded to nonhuman animals ought to influence regulatory debates concerning human cerebral organoids. The New York Courts recently refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Happy the Elephant as she was property rather than a legal person while at the same time accepting that she is a moral patient deserving of rights protection. An undesirable situation has therefore arisen in which the law holds a being with moral status to be incapable of benefitting from legal redress due to their legal status as property. The author argues that this is something that we ought to avoid when designing the regulatory framework which will govern the use of human cerebral organoids. Yet, a difference exists in that, whereas the judges already accept Happy is a moral patient, there is presently no consensus around the moral status of organoids. This paper will consider whether human cerebral organoids have passed the moral threshold of sentience. If they have, or are close to doing so, regulators ought to consider their legal status in advance so as to ensure that adequate limitations are placed on this usage so as to avoid unethical practices.

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The Desirability of Legal Rights for Novel Beings

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

What Do Chimeras Think About?

What Do Chimeras Think About?

Assessing contemporary legislative proposals for their compatibility with a natural law case for AI legal personhood

On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law

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