On the Moral Equality of Artificial Agents

2012 ◽  
pp. 70-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wareham
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Ethical Criteria ◽  
High Degree

Artificial agents such as robots are performing increasingly significant ethical roles in society. As a result, there is a growing literature regarding their moral status with many suggesting it is justified to regard manufactured entities as having intrinsic moral worth. However, the question of whether artificial agents could have the high degree of moral status that is attributed to human persons has largely been neglected. To address this question, the author developed a respect-based account of the ethical criteria for the moral status of persons. From this account, the paper employs an empirical test that must be passed in order for artificial agents to be considered alongside persons as having the corresponding rights and duties.

On the Moral Equality of Artificial Agents

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wareham
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Ethical Criteria ◽  
High Degree

Artificial agents such as robots are performing increasingly significant ethical roles in society. As a result, there is a growing literature regarding their moral status with many suggesting it is justified to regard manufactured entities as having intrinsic moral worth. However, the question of whether artificial agents could have the high degree of moral status that is attributed to human persons has largely been neglected. To address this question, the author developed a respect-based account of the ethical criteria for the moral status of persons. From this account, the paper employs an empirical test that must be passed in order for artificial agents to be considered alongside persons as having the corresponding rights and duties.

scholarly journals Parental responsibilities and moral status

2020 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Philip Blackshaw ◽  
Daniel Rodger
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Gestational Period ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Rule Out ◽  
Parent Child

Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the parent–child relation is better understood as an extension of an existing relationship formed during the gestational period. The change in this relation at birth is not sufficient to justify the radical change in moral status required to rule out infanticide while accepting the permissibility of abortion. Given that the moral status of orphans is also problematic under Singh’s account, we conclude that Singh has not shown that a newborn has greater moral worth than a fetus.

scholarly journals War and post-truth: Moral equality of combatants and inculpable ignorance in just war theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Dragan Stanar
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Moral Equality Of Combatants

This paper aims to explain the effect of the post-truth on revisionism in Just War Theory. Revisionism in JWT is based on the claim that Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello cannot be separated and that only combatants who fight on the just side are morally justified in killing. Presupposition of this argument is that combatants can and ought to know the moral status of their side. This paper will demonstrate that it is impossible to demand combatants to know whether their side is just by investigating the implications of post-truth in modern conflicts. By demonstrating the practical impossibility of combatants to know whether their side is just, author will show that the assumption of inculpable ignorance in war must remain the essence of JWT. Posttruth phenomenon only fortifies the necessity of separating Jus ad Bellum from Jus in Bello and upholding the principle of moral equality of combatants in contemporary wars.

scholarly journals Profound Intellectual Disability and the Bestowment View of Moral Status

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMO VEHMAS ◽  
BENJAMIN CURTIS
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Equal Concern

Abstract:This article engages with debates concerning the moral worth of human beings with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMDs). Some argue that those with such disabilities are morally less valuable than so-called normal human beings, whereas others argue that all human beings have equal moral value and that, therefore, each group of humans ought to be treated with equal concern. We will argue in favor of a view that takes points from opposing camps in the debates about the moral worth of humans with such disabilities. Our position, roughly, is this: most humans with PIMDs are persons in the morally significant sense and, therefore, deserve moral consideration equal to that granted to so-called “normal” human beings. Some humans with PIMD may not be persons, but nevertheless deserve moral consideration equal to that of persons because they stand in a special relation to persons.

Can Animals Attain Membership Within a Human Social/Moral Group?

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 429-435
Author(s):  
Eli Kanon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Labor Theory

Justice is illustrated by how humans treat others. Human society can no longer be considered just if it continues to treat animals instrumentally, disregarding the moral worth of each individual creature. Emile Durkheim's division of labor theory offers a groundwork for providing animals limited rights within a human-dominated society. Solidarity can be fostered between animals and humans by internalizing the principle that all organisms are interdependent. This principle is the foundation for granting animals moral status. By recognizing the role animals play in our society, we can acknowledge our obligations to them. Utilizing a mechaorganic solidarity, humans can establish justification for moral treatment of animals.

Mental-Threshold Egalitarianism

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Ebert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Plausible Candidate ◽  
Insignificant Difference

Mental-threshold egalitarianism, well-known examples of which include Jeff McMahan’s two-tiered account of the wrongness of killing and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, divides morally considerable beings into equals and unequals on the basis of their individual mental capacities. In this paper, I argue that the line that separates equals from unequals is unavoidably arbitrary and implausibly associates an insignificant difference in empirical reality with a momentous difference in moral status. In response to these objections, McMahan has proposed the introduction of an intermediate moral status. I argue that this move ultimately fails to address the problem. I conclude that, if we are not prepared to give up moral equality, our full and equal moral status must be grounded in a binary property that is not a threshold property. I tentatively suggest that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is such a property, and a plausible candidate.

scholarly journals The Chicken Fallacy and the Ethics of Cruelty to Non-Human Animals

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Akande Michael Aina ◽  
Ofuasia Emmanuel
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Suitable Norm ◽  
Moral Implication ◽  
Long Chain

The ideological underpinning that guides our interaction with non-human animals needs revision. The traditional outlook, according to which humans have a higher moral status vis-à-vis non-human animals, is now otiose. If these claims are to be justified, what ideological framework would serve this end? What are the moral implications of endorsing the view that humans possess no higher moral status than non-human animals? This work takes as foundation Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which affirms that humans emerged from the long chain of evolutionary history, where non-human animals have been the carriers of the genes that shaped humans. A revisit to the discourse on the moral implication of humans’ cruelty to their ancestors and neighbours becomes pertinent. This essay goes against the mainstream and dominant perspective that non-human animals exist to serve human ends and as such can be treated with disdain. The thesis of this paper goes beyond Peter Singer’s submission that sentience is the basis for conferring moral worth on non-human animals. It affirms that in addition to sentience, good neighbourliness is a factor in determining the moral worth of non-human animals. It submits that cruelty to reared and domesticated animals may produce violent and wild species of these animals’ kind in a future evolution, thereby endangering the lives of future human generation, through negative alteration of genes. In the end, this paper proposes the principle of biological altruism as a suitable norm for determining the moral worth of non-human animals.

scholarly journals The Moral Equality of Combatants

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Barry ◽  
Lars Christie
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Moral Equality Of Combatants

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered in its favor. We defend a noncategorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view nonculpable combatants are not liable to attack even when they fight for an unjust cause.

Two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Floris
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Short Piece

In his recent book, Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni argues that the principle of moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors insofar as this constitutes an act of social cruelty. In this short piece, I will raise two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality: first, Sangiovanni’s account seems to give rise to disturbing implications as to how those beings that have basic moral status relate to each other. Second, grounding moral equality in the rejection of social cruelty may fail to capture some wrongs qua violation of moral equality.

Tissue section lifting for electron microscopy

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-87
Author(s):  
Adrian F. van Dellen
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Tissue Culture ◽  
Organ System ◽  
Surrounding Tissue ◽  
Paraffin Sections ◽  
Surface Areas ◽  
Specific Determination ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Accuracy And Repeatability

The morphologic pathologist may require information on the ultrastructure of a non-specific lesion seen under the light microscope before he can make a specific determination. Such lesions, when caused by infectious disease agents, may be sparsely distributed in any organ system. Tissue culture systems, too, may only have widely dispersed foci suitable for ultrastructural study. In these situations, when only a few, small foci in large tissue areas are useful for electron microscopy, it is advantageous to employ a methodology which rapidly selects a single tissue focus that is expected to yield beneficial ultrastructural data from amongst the surrounding tissue. This is in essence what "LIFTING" accomplishes. We have developed LIFTING to a high degree of accuracy and repeatability utilizing the Microlift (Fig 1), and have successfully applied it to tissue culture monolayers, histologic paraffin sections, and tissue blocks with large surface areas that had been initially fixed for either light or electron microscopy.

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