Towards a social-relational approach: appearance and social relations
So far I discussed two sorts of arguments for moral consideration. Direct arguments focus on the moral status of the object, whereas indirect arguments centre on the moral status of the subject. Both accounts of moral status are based on the ontological features of the entity, an approach which invites epistemological scepticism and incurs other problems. The alternative approach I propose attempts to avoid the scepticism by replacing the requirement that we have certain knowledge about real ontological features of the entity by the requirement that we experience the features of the entity as they appear to us in the context of the concrete human-robot relation and the wider social structures in which that relation is embedded. This requires further explanation.
First, moral consideration is no longer seen as being ‘intrinsic’ to the entity: instead it is seen as something that is ‘extrinsic’: it is attributed to entities within social relations and within a social context.
Second, this does not imply that features of the entity are morally insignificant. We will continue to use them as criteria on which we base our moral consideration. However, in this approach they are given a different status: they are
apparent features,
7 features-as-experienced-by-us.
Third, this experience is not context-independent and not subject-independent. It is
context-
dependent: in line with feminist objections to standard moral theories,
8 this approach acknowledges the limitations of argumentation that aims at general and abstract moral principles alone. Instead, it asks more attention for the ways in which moral consideration is granted to entities in various concrete social relations and social contexts. Moreover, the experience is
subject-
dependent: in its response to the epistemological problem the approach learns from the phenomenological tradition in philosophy, which has proposed an interesting answer to the (false) dilemma between idealism and realism. As far as I understand the basic message of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and others, they hold that consciousness is always directed towards objects (for which phenomenologists use the technical term ‘intentionality’
9) and that we can only have knowledge of objects as they appear to us. Applied to moral consideration, it means that moral significance resides neither in the object nor in the subject, but in the relation between the two. Objects such as robots do not exist in the human mind alone (this would amount to idealism); however, it is also true that we can only have knowledge of the object and its features as they appear in our consciousness. There is no direct, unmediated access to the robot as an objective, observer-independent reality or ‘thing-in-itself’.
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The next step I then propose is to see this subject-object relation as being shaped in social relations. What happens between subject and object takes on a form in the concrete social context, which is ‘prior’ to the moral argumentation offered by traditional theories. Deontological and utilitarian reasoning cannot be divorced from the social–historical context in which these theories emerged: modern society with its emphasis on the value of individuals and their preferences. This does not mean that these theories get it wrong or that we have no choice but to accept whatever theory is prevalent in a social context. Instead, recognising this link between theory and practice opens up an additional repertoire of moral vocabulary that helps us to distance ourselves from our usual ways of thinking and doing. In this case, it helps us to better understand the issue of moral consideration of robots by making comparisons with how we treat other non-human entities at different times and different contexts. In contrast to what the term ‘moral status’ suggests, moral consideration must be seen as subject to change. There are also differences within societies and between societies and cultures. Of course we can and must critically evaluate these differences and changes. However, if we do not go beyond the three traditional theories summarized above, then we do not pay sufficient attention to differences and changes since we occupy ourselves with general criteria alone.
On a sub-societal level the approach focuses on moral considerations in human-robot relations rather than on the moral status of humans and robots alone. The implication is that both the human and the robot are not so much considered as atomistic individuals or members of a ‘species’, but as relational entities whose identity depends on their relations with other entities. The idea is that if we live with artificially intelligent robots, we do not remain the same individuals and the same humans as we were before. Thus, the relational theory of moral consideration proposed here must be connected with a relational theory of identity and, in the end, a relational (social) ontology. Let me explain this in the next sub-section.
The relation between individuals and society: social ecology beyond contractarianism, utilitarianism and communitarianism
The alternative approach proposed above may bracket individual ontology by turning to appearance, it still needs a social ontology given its focus on social relations and their social context. A fully developed account would require much more work; however, let me make the following suggestions about where I would like to position my approach in relation to some influential social philosophies.
In social philosophy, the rights approach is connected with a contractarian social ontology. Individuals are prior to the social, which comes only into being by agreement.
11 Utilitarianism has a similar instrumentalist view of society: what counts is the happiness, pleasure, preferences, and interests of the
individual. Society must safeguard and increase the total amount of happiness, pleasure, or other goods. For utilitarians, it is the total amount of happiness that counts, not the good of society. It is, like the contractarian society, a community of (individual) interests.
12 Even Marxism, which is usually seen as a form of collectivism, contains an individualist strand to the extent that it views society in an instrumental way. Marxists argue for collective ownership of the means of production. However, the end-goal remains formulated at an individual level: the unalienated, happy and free individual
13 that remains at the heart of our imagination in modern times from Romanticism to contemporary consumerism. In this sense, real collectivism has never existed in the West. Even the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century (e.g. Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism, Maoism), which promoted the subordination of individuals to the state, did not embrace a radical collectivism given their leadership cults (a phenomenon that is not exclusive to totalitarianism; it can also be seen in current democratic societies). Thus, for a real contrast we must look elsewhere, beyond Western modern liberal society.
Communitarians (and virtue ethicists) have a substantially different view of the relation between individuals and society: opposing liberal individualism, they ascribe value to the community itself and see individuals as members of the community, as being shaped by that community. Authors such as MacIntyre (
1984) and Taylor (
1989) appear to hold a relational ontology: the point of being virtuous is the building of a moral community and there is no fundamental difference between fostering individual morality and fostering the morality of the community. In this way, both the member of the community and the community itself are not mere means to an end but ends in themselves. Thus, communitarians are neither individualist nor collectivist.
14 However, communitarianism typically restricts the boundaries of the moral and social community to the human world. While there have been efforts to connect ‘community’ and ‘ecology’ by authors with ecological concerns
15 and while as said above virtue ethics can employ
indirect arguments for moral consideration of non-humans, following its Aristotelian roots ‘classic’ communitarianism and virtue ethics are directed at the moral quality of humans and their
human communities.
A similar anthropocentric limitation can be found in most social constructionist theories. They move beyond individualist and contractualist theories by understanding individuals as dependent on social interactions and, more generally, on a social order or context that transcends them (see for instance Berger and Luckmann
1966). However, the individuals and the social context in which they shape themselves remain within the boundaries of the human. (An interesting exception is Latour’s work: it attempts to cross the nature/society distinction, the human/non-human distinction, and other conceptual distinctions Latour (
1993,
2004,
2005) attributes to modern thinking by introducing the notion of the collective as a hybrid assembly of humans and non-humans. However, I will not further discuss his work here.)
Other candidates for relationalism may be found in non-modern, non-Western cultures (keeping in mind that ‘pure’ forms of these cultures do not exist, if only because today most of the countries where we would locate them, for instance in Africa or Asia, the societies are soaked with Western, modern values). For instance, it appears that traditionally Chinese and Japanese cultures involve relational ontologies: humans are not ‘individuals’ but are related to other humans and other entities.
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However, perhaps one of the most relational views available to us can be found in current Western societies: ecology. I mean not only ‘deep ecology’, the normative view that challenges anthropocentric approaches, but also ecology defined as a branch of natural science, which studies relations between organisms and relations between organisms and their environment. Both kinds of ecology have usually little to say on the social. Usually they come in the form of a natural ecology which is not, by itself, a social ontology. However, natural ecology can be used as a model to construct a social ontology that includes some artificial entities (which is my interest here) and perhaps a universal ontology (which seems to be Floridi’s aim when he uses ‘ecology’ in relation to the infosphere). Of course I do not have the space to do anything like that in this paper; I limit myself to making some suggestions of what an ecological social philosophy would look like. This exploration is important since within the limited space of this paper I wish to give more substance to the idea of a social-relational approach to moral consideration: if it is not built on an individual-ontological foundation but on a social-relational ontology, then what is this relational ontology?
The concept of ‘relations’ is vague and allows for much variety in the way it informs the construction of an ontology. On the one hand, the emphasis can be put on the relata, here the entities. For example, Platonic and Aristotelian views of the human are only relational in a weak sense given their essentialism, which amounts to the assumption that there are intrinsic, alienable features of the entity. On the other hand, the emphasis can be put on the relations. However, what does this amount to? Does it imply collectivism? Eastern worldviews, though originally very relational, have in practice fused with modern nationalism in a way that has changed their relational character: they put so much emphasis on the collectivity that its ontology looks more like a collectivist version of ontological essentialism: not the individual but the collectivity has intrinsic features and both the relations and their (human and non-human) relata tend to become less important. The nation has essential features and below are only organs, cells, and smaller units. However, does emphasis on relations imply that the relata are less important (morally and ontologically) or even do not exist?
Ecological thinking (deep ecology and ecology as science) does seem to put emphasis on relations. In doing so it is fundamentally different from individualist, essentialist, collectivist, and totalitarian thinking. But what is the status of the relata? One answer is: they do not exist. To explore this direction of thought, we must radicalize existing concepts of natural ecology. Often it still uses early-modern organicist notions: ecology (as a branch of evolutionary biology and natural science) talks about dependencies between ‘organs’ or between ‘organisms’ and their environment. And some deep ecologists see ‘the earth’ as an organism (a misleading term by which they mean all life on earth or the ecosystem). However, if everything is truly related and interdependent, why make such a strict distinction between the border of ‘organisms’ or ‘organs’? A radically relational ecology would not accept such an ontology. There are relations between relata, but these relata have no fixed ontological reality. They might appear to us as wholes; however, this might be only appearance. But that does not matter; we can work and live with appearances. A different answer is that the relata exist, although we cannot give an essentialist definition of them but only a naturalist explanation, using evolutionary theory for example. However, this by itself does not solve the question about the ontological status of that-which-evolves.
Developing a more comprehensive social ecology will have to answer these questions. For the purpose of this paper, let me given a brief definition and description of the social ecology I have in mind, one which could serve as a basis for giving moral consideration to some robots.
A social ecology is about relations between various entities, human and non-human, which are inter-dependent and adapt to one another. These relations are morally significant and moral consideration cannot be conceived apart from these relations. Again, there is a question about the status of the relata. The social relata are individuals, groups, societies, communities, cultures, and indeed some robots provided that they participate in the social life. What is their status? We talk about them in the relata in an individualist and essentialist way since this is how they appear to us. However, the social and natural sciences show us how entities are inter-related and suggest a less individualist and non-essentialist view of the world. We may need our appearances in order to live and in order to live together. But appearances can change; we can change them as much as they change us. And in the end we do not know if these entities are real and if their boundary is fixed. This view is distinct from Buddhist ontology, which assumes that we can answer questions like these, that we can know the ultimate truth about what is and can clearly distinguish between reality and appearance.
17 It is also distinct from ancient Greek essentialism and its contemporary heir: the scientific quest for ‘elementary particles’ which are supposed to be the most elementary relata.
This (social) ontology needs more work. At this point I can only say that making a relational argument cannot avoid such discussions. Arguments for moral consideration always make a jump from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, not in the sense that they mistake the normative for the descriptive, but in the sense that they rest on a view of the world, including the social world. Both relational and non-relational views of moral consideration need to make explicit their ontologies.
What follows from a social-relational ontology for moral consideration of non-human entities? Within relational views, there are no longer a priori and ontological hierarchies between entities like the ancient Aristotelian or modern neo-Aristotelian ones we are used to. This does not imply that we can no longer make moral distinctions; rather, it is not a priori decided what (apparent) moral status we give to entities on the basis of a hierarchical and essentialist ontology. Reasoning about moral consideration of other entities, then, can only be done within a relational context, one which we experience in practice or in imagination and which is always open to change. However, what can be said in addition to this? What does the social-relational approach articulated above mean for the discussion about moral consideration of intelligent robots?
Implications for robots, animals, and humans
Let me list some of the implications:
First, in this approach to moral consideration it no longer makes sense to talk about moral consideration of robots in general, for example robot rights. Such a manner of speaking about robots is not only misleading since it puts all robots into one category but also since it suggests that moral consideration is entirely non-relational. Instead, this approach acknowledges that moral consideration is bound up with social relations between humans and robots. Therefore, it can pay attention to similarities and differences between treatments of robots.
Second, whether or not one day we will have conscious and sentient robots, there will be a long stage in the development of robots during which artificially intelligent robots do not meet ‘high’ or ‘hard’ criteria of standard approaches to moral consideration. This situation leaves us with two options: either we deny any moral consideration to such robots or we grant them
some moral consideration—that is, a
different degree of moral consideration—on a different basis. Within the standard approach, the latter option may imply defining less demanding criteria, such as those proposed by Floridi and Sanders (
2004). However, as a non-relational approach it does not sufficiently take into account the new
social functions of intelligent robots: they appear to us as social entities, not only as machines or systems with certain features. The alternative approach proposed in this paper claims to do that by proposing a relational account of moral consideration based on a social ecology that includes humans and robots. Floridi (
2008) also supports an ecological approach. However, that is an
informational ecology: it is about relations between information (and ‘inforgs’ as carriers or instantiations of information). Such an approach is similar to the ‘elementary’ and essentialist approach of modern physics and ancient Greek metaphysics: it tries to find an elementary reality ‘behind’ the appearances. My approach retains the common sense idea that the world consists of a wide variety of entities—and, of course, relations between these entities—without reducing these entities to information. The implication is that attention can be paid to social relations between humans and robots and to the social structures within which these relations are shaped. This supports reflection on what (degree of) moral consideration we wish to give to those robots. On this basis, we can arrive at a range of forms of moral consideration that will be less strong than robot rights but still imply some obligations towards robots in the context of particular human-robot relations. It is not possible to say what these obligations are a priori, that is, apart from and abstracted from those relations and contexts. This does not mean that one can no longer generalize and compare between different kinds of relations and contexts. Rather, it implies that it is an illusion to think that we can have a moral theory divorced from the social world in which that theory makes sense and in which it is practiced and lived.
Of course, to talk of ‘obligations’ we put the emphasis on the giver of moral consideration. This will probably remain so as long as we feel that social robots must be given some moral consideration but not the same degree as humans, who can literally
claim their rights in social contexts. However, such intuitions can and will change when some robots will appear differently to us. If that happens and one then wishes to put the emphasis on the receiver of moral consideration, one could use the language of rights but widen the moral vocabulary. For instance, one could talk about ‘soft rights’: rights given to some robots on account of their participation in the social life. These rights would not be as ‘hard’ as for example human rights given the lower degree of moral consideration
18 and given their social-relational basis. However, to use the terms ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ would suggest that the standard approach to moral status is the best one and/or provides epistemic certainty, two assumptions which I have questioned in this paper. So we might want to create an altogether different vocabulary.
Third, this approach can also be applied to animals and vice versa. We can learn from analogies. First, we might apply the ‘hard’ rights/’soft’ rights vocabulary. We could grant ‘soft’ rights to some animals that participate in the social life. However, if we take this justification seriously we can also try to go beyond the language of rights altogether and adopt an approach that is more radically social-relational. Consider meat production in industrial societies. Instead of asking first what kind of animal a pig is, we must study and evaluate relations between humans and pigs within meat production systems and within industrial society and compare this with other human-animal relations such as human-pet relations. This allows us to understand and question our ideas about moral consideration of animals. Similarly, we must study and evaluate moral consideration of social robots as different from consideration of industrial robots not on account of their intelligence or other features (what kind of robot it is), but on account of the human-robot and other relations within a larger social ecology. In this way we can critically reflect on our current views of moral consideration.
Fourth, this approach can also be applied to moral consideration of humans. Consider the concept of human rights. Of course there have been well-known moderately relational objections to, for instance, human rights, such as the feminist or Marxist critique.
19 In practice, a focus on rights sometimes obscures structural (power) issues (related economic and gender differences) and other reasons why in spite of agreement on the moral-legal concept of human rights there is still much human suffering due to injustice. One could also make a utilitarian argument for alleviating human suffering that is not based on the idea of human rights. One might also employ the capability approach to clarify why human rights do not necessarily
empower people to live their lives in dignity.
20 However, existing (Western) criticisms share a justificatory basis in ontological features of humans. Marxists, utilitarians, and neo-Aristotelians have views of ‘human nature’ that are not relational or not
radically relational. They still assume a human essence that stands apart from the non-human world. As said before, for a more radically relational view one has to learn from natural ecology or perhaps non-Western worldviews if it were possible to purify them from modern-nationalist influences (e.g. ancient East Asian philosophies). These views resist and sometimes do not even
understand the concept of human rights since it is so much linked up with dominant individualist and/or essentialist, non-relational Western worldviews.
21 Thus, if we want to rethink moral consideration of humans and related moral and political concepts such as human rights, we need to engage with different kinds of social ontologies and make explicit our position. We cannot ‘do ethics’ without occupying ourselves with these wider philosophical issues and practical problems.
Finally, note that those who are unwilling to depart from the familiar, non-relational approach to moral consideration could of course try to combine the two approaches. For instance, Warren (
1997) has developed a multi-criteria view of moral status: moral status depends on relational and non-relational properties. However, apart from the fact that her account applies only to living things—a limitation that can be overcome—her account of relational criteria is not systematic. It calls for attention to social relations (which it shares with ethics of care and feminist ethics), but unlike the framework sketched here, it stops there and suggests that its turn to relations has no fundamental consequences for the non-relational account. Warren’s account does too little to avoid the impression that we can have relational and non-relational criteria side by side without further problems, that we can simply
add relational criteria. However, the issue of moral consideration cannot be dealt with by accumulating criteria: multiple criteria as such are acceptable, but there are strong tensions between a more relational approach and a more individual-ontological approach. A combination or ‘synthesis’ seems difficult since both approaches are connected to different views about the social. Instead Warren’s view seems to suggest that we can (and should) avoid choosing one of these moral-social directions, that we can have it all. It asks us to use multiple criteria in order to ‘represent all the relevant considerations’ (Warren
1997, p. 177) but fails to pay sufficient attention to tensions between the ‘criteria’ in terms of their social ontologies. Moreover, her use of the language of ‘properties’ (of the entity), which is common to most existing approaches, tends to deny the nature and potential of the ‘paradigm shift’ offered by a relational approach. Can we speak of ‘properties’ at all once we adopt a relational approach? On the one hand, it seems to me that within a radically relational ontology, relational properties do not exist since one can no longer make sense of the idea of a ‘property’, something that belongs to an entity. One is not conscious in the way one owns a house or a car. What appears to belong to an entity is always open to change and makes only sense in relation to that entity. On the other hand, given the importance of appearance, one could still speak of properties as long as it is understood that we mean properties-as-they-appear-to-us within a social-relational, social-ecological context.