Danaher's Ethical Behaviourism: An Adequate Guide to Assessing the Moral Status of a Robot?
This paper critically assesses John Danaher's 'ethical behaviourism', a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot's moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to...
| Publicado en: | Science & Engineering Ethics Vol. 26; no. 5; pp. 2849 - 2867 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Oct2020
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=146390927&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 146390927 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13533452 GNI jtl: Science & Engineering Ethics issn: 13533452 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Oct2020 vid: 26 iid: 5 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 146390927 10.1007/s11948-020-00230-4 ppf: 2849 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 602KB tig: atl: Danaher's Ethical Behaviourism: An Adequate Guide to Assessing the Moral Status of a Robot? aug: au: Smids, Jilles affil: Philosophy & Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Medical Ethics, Philosophy and History of Medicine, Erasmus MC, University Medical Centre Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands su: Robots Human biology Idea (Philosophy) Robot design & construction sug: subj: Robots Human biology Idea (Philosophy) Robot design & construction keyword: Ethical behaviourism Inference to the best explanation Moral status Robot Robot ethics ab: This paper critically assesses John Danaher's 'ethical behaviourism', a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot's moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to some entity that has moral status, such as a human or an animal, then we should ascribe the same moral status to the robot as we do to this human or animal. The paper argues against ethical behaviourism by making four main points. First, it is argued that the strongest version of ethical behaviourism understands the theory as relying on inferences to the best explanation when inferring moral status. Second, as a consequence, ethical behaviourism cannot stick with merely looking at the robot's behaviour, while remaining neutral with regard to the difficult question of which property grounds moral status. Third, not only behavioural evidence ought to play a role in inferring a robot's moral status, but knowledge of the design process of the robot and of its designer's intention ought to be taken into account as well. Fourth, knowledge of a robot's ontology and how that relates to human biology often is epistemically relevant for inferring moral status as well. The paper closes with some concluding observations. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Science & Engineering Ethics is a copyright of Springer, 2020. All Rights Reserved. item: Science & Engineering Ethics holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2020 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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