Miriam Gorr // The moral status of robots. Lessons from animal ethics and cognition

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Miriam Gorr

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Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden

Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden

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Research project: The moral status of robots. Lessons from animal ethics and cognition

Subject: Philosophy
Mentoring professor: Prof. Dr. Tamara Jugov, Dr. Carlos Zednik

The concept of moral status occupies a central place in deontological and utilitarian theories of animal ethics. Today, the majority of philosophers agree that certain animals have moral status. In other words, we should not treat them as we please. Rather, we should consider their welfare or interests in our actions for their own sake. As moral agents, humans have moral duties toward (certain) animals.

The new achievements in AI and robotics raise the question whether machines (can) also have moral status. Traditionally, the attribution of moral status is linked to certain (mental) properties and capacities, such as sentience, which is central to many theories in animal ethics. In robot ethics, on the other hand, new conceptions of moral status are being negotiated. Here, human-machine relationships and robot behavior have recently been proposed as grounds for moral status. 

In her dissertation, Miriam Gorr defends the traditional capacity-based notion of moral status against relational and behavior-based conceptions. The aim is to make the traditional approach fruitful for robot ethics.

To this end, in addition to normative questions, epistemological issues and questions from philosophy of science will be explored. The goal is to identify methods that can be used to determine morally relevant capacities in machines. For this purpose, systematic comparisons are made to theories and methods of animal ethics and animal cognition.

The work thus provides, on the one hand, a proposal as to which empirical criteria should be used for the attribution of moral status in machines. On the other hand, it specifies which scientific-theoretical presuppositions should guide research on mental abilities of robots.

CV

Research Interests

• Ethics of AI
• Robot ethics
• Animal ethics
• Environmental ethics
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of Science

Publications

2023

• How We Respond to Robots and Whether It Matters MorallyGorr, M., Jan 2023, Social Robots in Social Institutions: Proceedings of Robophilosophy 2022. Hakli, R., Mäkelä, P. & Seibt, J. (eds.). IOS Press, Vol. 366. p. 498 - 507 10 p.Research output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/report > Conference contribution

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