The Moral Problem of Other Minds

Sebo, Jeff

doi:10.5840/harvardreview20185913

Cited by 34 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…An ethical behaviourist would reject this approach to understanding sentience on the grounds that for sentience to work as a ground for moral status it would have to be knowable through some outward sign of sentience. For a longer discussion of sentience and moral uncertainty see Sebo 2018.…”

Section: Defending Premise (1): the Case For Ethical Behaviourismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The problem with this argument is that normative uncertainty regarding moral status is usually thought to warrant over-inclusivity rather than under-inclusivity (Lockhart 2000;Guerrero 2007;Moller 2011;Neely 2014;Sebo 2018). Several philosophers have argued that normative uncertainty regarding the status of animals and foetuses should cause us to err on the side of including them within the circle of moral concern, not excluding them (Moller 2011;Sebo 2018). Erica Neely (2014) has defended this same view with respect to robots.…”

Section: Defending Premise (2): What's the Performative Threshold?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a comprehensive discussion of the potential metaphysical grounds for moral status, see Jaworska and Tannenbaum 2018. For specific discussions of consciousness, preference-satisfaction and personhood as grounds of moral status seeSebo 2018;Singer 2009;Regan 1983;and Warren 2000. For a discussion of the moral foundations of rights seeSumner 1987 and, as applied to robot rights, Gunkel 2018b.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism

Danaher

2019

Sci Eng Ethics

152

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Can robots have significant moral status? This is an emerging topic of debate among roboticists and ethicists. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it presents a theory-'ethical behaviourism'-which holds that robots can have significant moral status if they are roughly performatively equivalent to other entities that have significant moral status. This theory is then defended from seven objections. Second, taking this theoretical position onboard, it is argued that the performative threshold that robots need to cross in order to be afforded significant moral status may not be that high and that they may soon cross it (if they haven't done so already). Finally, the implications of this for our procreative duties to robots are considered, and it is argued that we may need to take seriously a duty of 'procreative beneficence' towards robots.

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Section: Defending Premise (1): the Case For Ethical Behaviourismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defending Premise (2): What's the Performative Threshold?mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism

Danaher

2019

Sci Eng Ethics

152

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“…11 The precautionary principle is well recognised amongst various ethical traditions. For a full defence of the desirability of acting according to a precautionary principle when the moral status of a being is uncertain, seeSebo (2018).12 Gewirth, Reason and morality (n 3) 27-37, 43.13 Beyleveld, The dialectical necessity of morality (n 4) 44-45.…”

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confidence: 99%

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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“…While this paper was in production, I came across a similar article comparing the precautionary principle and the expected utility function by Jeff Sebo. Though the papers have different methodologies and different aims, I highly recommend also taking a look at his insightful paper[15].…”

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confidence: 99%

The Role of Neuroscience in Precise, Precautionary, and Probabilistic Accounts of Sentience

Shriver

2020

Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals

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Given that there is currently no consensus as to exactly which animals are sentient, how should we make moral decisions when we are uncertain as to which of the animals influenced by that decision are sentient? And how relevant is evidence from the neurosciences for making these decisions? In this chapter, I outline three different approaches toward incorporating uncertainty about sentience into moral decision-making: what I call precise, precautionary, and probabilistic approaches to sentience. I suggest that neuroscientific evidence has different relevance for each of these accounts. Precautionary approaches should be adopted to provide basic protections for animals even when we are uncertain about their sentience, but probabilistic accounts are more relevant for decisions where we need to carefully weigh positive and negative consequences of different possible decisions. Precise accounts can be useful for providing guidance but are not directly relevant for making decisions or guiding policy.

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The Moral Problem of Other Minds

Cited by 34 publications

References 3 publications

Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism

Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism

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

The Role of Neuroscience in Precise, Precautionary, and Probabilistic Accounts of Sentience

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