Intersectionality & Sexual harassment as a Minority Ethnic Female Surgeon

As a trainer, I have even taught women from certain cultures (who may find this level of contact difficult), that this is ‘normal’ in surgery. After reading the editorial and letter of response, in the Royal College of Surgeon’s Bulletin, [1] I have to think again about what I teach. I have taken for granted that surgeons have some sort of moral standing. Maybe I should be explaining also what they should not be tolerating. Even as a female surgeon, often at cultural gatherings, I feel I am perceived differently by women from my cultural or ethnic background, even if they are medical professionals themselves. I feel ostracised as being the woman who is playing with the men at their game. The younger generations however do applaud it, and I see more and more young women have a fervour for surgery. I feel now I want to protect them from this misogyny and sexual harassment more than ever.

Empathizing and Sympathizing With Robots: Implications for Moral Standing

This paper discusses the ethical nature of empathetic and sympathetic engagement with social robots, ultimately arguing that an entity which is engaged with through empathy or sympathy is engaged with as an “experiencing Other” and is as such due at least “minimal” moral consideration. Additionally, it is argued that extant HRI research often fails to recognize the complexity of empathy and sympathy, such that the two concepts are frequently treated as synonymous. The arguments for these claims occur in two steps. First, it is argued that there are at least three understandings of empathy, such that particular care is needed when researching “empathy” in human-robot interactions. The phenomenological approach to empathy—perhaps the least utilized of the three discussed understandings—is the approach with the most direct implications for moral standing. Furthermore, because “empathy” and “sympathy” are often conflated, a novel account of sympathy which makes clear the difference between the two concepts is presented, and the importance for these distinctions is argued for. In the second step, the phenomenological insights presented before regarding the nature of empathy are applied to the problem of robot moral standing to argue that empathetic and sympathetic engagement with an entity constitute an ethical engagement with it. The paper concludes by offering several potential research questions that result from the phenomenological analysis of empathy in human-robot interactions.

Kantian Perspectives on the Rational Basis of Human Dignity

Kant made the dignity of humanity central in his moral philosophy. This essay sketches a broadly Kantian understanding of his position, noting occasionally alternative interpretations. The main questions are these: (1) What is human dignity? (2) By virtue of what do human beings have dignity? (3) Why believe in human dignity? (4) What are the practical implications? The Kantian view is that human dignity is an innate worth or status that we did not earn and cannot forfeit, which we have by virtue of our rational autonomy. A Kantian argument for this belief turns on how we must understand ourselves from practical standpoint. We must strive to make our individual choices worthy of this moral standing, which elevates us above animals and mere things, by never treating persons as mere means and by honouring and promoting humanity positively.

The Kantian System of Duties

Beginning with Kant’s infamous “derivation of duties” problem, the chapter argues that the Groundwork’s categorical imperative (as principle or test) was never intended for duty-generation. By contrast, the two parts of the Metaphysics of Morals set out a system of duties, with priority given to duties of Right. Answerable to innate right, juridical duties secure persons’ moral standing. The institutions of Right create new moral powers that enable persons to obligate others, resolving the moral impossibilities of human life in a state of nature. Examples of self-defense and duties of free communication show how a value that first appears as a juridical duty descends to and is completed by ethical duties, here concerning truthful speech and integrity of the body. The chapter concludes with an argument for the idea of “provisional universal right” that marks a moral standard and source of duties even where legitimate juridical conditions are absent.

The Trouble with Anthropocentric Hubris, with Examples from Conservation

Anthropocentrism in Western (modern industrial) society is dominant, goes back hundreds of years, and can rightly be called ‘hubris’. It removes almost all moral standing from the nonhuman world, seeing it purely as a resource. Here, we discuss the troubling components of anthropocentrism: worldview and ethics; dualisms, valuation and values; a psychology of fear and denial; and the idea of philosophical ‘ownership’. We also question whether it is a truly practical (or ethical) approach. We then discuss three troubling examples of anthropocentrism in conservation: ‘new’ conservation; ecosystem services; and the IPBES values assessment. We conclude that anthropocentrism is fuelling the environmental crisis and accelerating extinction, and urge academia to speak out instead for ecocentrism.

Challenging the Neo-Anthropocentric Relational Approach to Robot Rights

When will it make sense to consider robots candidates for moral standing? Major disagreements exist between those who find that question important and those who do not, and also between those united in their willingness to pursue the question. I narrow in on the approach to robot rights called relationalism, and ask: if we provide robots moral standing based on how humans relate to them, are we moving past human chauvinism, or are we merely putting a new dress on it? The background for the article is the clash between those who argue that robot rights are possible and those who see a fight for robot rights as ludicrous, unthinkable, or just outright harmful and disruptive for humans. The latter group are by some branded human chauvinists and anthropocentric, and they are criticized and portrayed as backward, unjust, and ignorant of history. Relationalism, in contrast, purportedly opens the door for considering robot rights and moving past anthropocentrism. However, I argue that relationalism is, quite to the contrary, a form of neo-anthropocentrism that recenters human beings and their unique ontological properties, perceptions, and values. I do so by raising three objections: 1) relationalism centers human values and perspectives, 2) it is indirectly a type of properties-based approach, and 3) edge cases reveal potentially absurd implications in practice.

On the Social-Relational Moral Standing of AI: An Empirical Study Using AI-Generated Art

The moral standing of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems has become a widely debated topic by normative research. This discussion, however, has primarily focused on those systems developed for social functions, e.g., social robots. Given the increasing interdependence of society with nonsocial machines, examining how existing normative claims could be extended to specific disrupted sectors, such as the art industry, has become imperative. Inspired by the proposals to ground machines’ moral status on social relations advanced by Gunkel and Coeckelbergh, this research presents online experiments (∑N = 448) that test whether and how interacting with AI-generated art affects the perceived moral standing of its creator, i.e., the AI-generative system. Our results indicate that assessing an AI system’s lack of mind could influence how people subsequently evaluate AI-generated art. We also find that the overvaluation of AI-generated images could negatively affect their creator’s perceived agency. Our experiments, however, did not suggest that interacting with AI-generated art has any significant effect on the perceived moral standing of the machine. These findings reveal that social-relational approaches to AI rights could be intertwined with property-based theses of moral standing. We shed light on how empirical studies can contribute to the AI and robot rights debate by revealing the public perception of this issue.

How the Moral Community Evolves

Moral reasoning is modulated by emotions and other cognitive biases. How do these covert biasing mechanisms shape perceptions of more fundamental moral categories, such as moral standing and moral status (together, “MSS”), out of which specific moral attitudes and behaviors flow? This chapter explains the centrality of MSS to human evolution, and examines several evolved biases that distort MSS ascription. These include tendencies to deny moral standing, or to attribute lower moral status, to beings that elicit feelings of disgust or fear, as well as to those that are perceived as less similar, less attractive, less individualized, and less disposed toward reciprocal cooperation. These adaptive mechanisms may have served human groups well in the evolutionary past, but in the modern world they pose an obstacle to moral progress and play a key role in moral regression. The chapter argues that these biases have also influenced philosophical and scientific research on animal minds. The aim is to develop a richer, biocultural understanding of how conceptions of the moral community evolve.