open access

https://doi.org/10.14943/ouyourin.13.18

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/86432

ロボットの道徳的地位をめぐる近年の議論 : 道徳的なものの概念についての中間所見

日本語

2022-06-30

Center for Applied Ethics and Philosophy, Hokkaido University

応用倫理

13

18-33

There is a considerable amount of contemporary literature in ethics which discuss the moral status of robots and AI, or“ robot rights”. It seems natural to wonder what the significance of this topic, and whether it could stand as a proper ethical/philosophical issue at all. This paper does not mean to directly answer to the question. Instead, as a preliminary sketch, I take up and clarify some of prominent approaches in that topic, and try to give an overview of the controversy occurring there. First, I introduce a broader picture of AI/robot ethics and machine ethics, and situate the topic of moral status of robots into this picture. The idea of robot’s moral status/standing was initially proposed in terms of the moral agency of robots: （how） can we ascribe moral responsibility to a robot itself? But some ethicists in turn inquire the moral patiency of robots, that is, moral considerations on robots or “robot rights”. Secondly, I focus on the “relational approach” that constituted turning point of the debate on the topic and track its derived form of applying virtue ethics. This type of thinking is designed to determine robot’s status by indirect, mediated ways which emphasize our experience of interacting with robots and how it effects moral life of individual or community, while detouring hopeless inquiry into ontological fact of robot’s（ potential） sentience, consciousness and so on. Finally, I scrutinize implicit theoretical grounds of each approach concerning moral status of robots, so that we can sherpen their position and clearly see configuration of present controversy about this superficially odd topic.

紀要論文

Version of Record

1883-0110