Should We Treat Teddy Bear 2.0 as a Kantian Dog?

Author(s)

Mark Coeckelbergh

Abstract

The use of autonomous and intelligent personal social robots raises questions concerning their moral standing. Moving away from the discussion about direct moral standing and exploring the normative implications of a relational approach to moral standing, this paper offers four arguments that justify giving indirect moral standing to robots under specific conditions based on some of the ways humans—as social, feeling, playing, and doubting beings—relate to them. The analogy of “the Kantian dog” is used to assist reasoning about this. The paper also discusses the implications of this approach for thinking about the moral standing of animals and humans, showing why, when, and how an indirect approach can also be helpful in these fields, and using Levinas and Dewey as sources of inspiration to discuss some challenges raised by this approach.

Organisation(s)

Department of Philosophy

Journal

Minds and Machines

Volume

31

Pages

337–360

No. of pages

24

ISSN

0924-6495

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-020-09554-3

Publication date

12-2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

603122 Philosophy of technology

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/3badb3b6-bc6c-44a8-b667-52481b2505c3