Robots make ethics honest

Abstract

This paper revisits major revolutions in human self-perception, and pursues their insights to their logical conclusions, using robots as conceptual archetypes for fully naturalistic, talking, walking and thinking agents. Doing so, humans are reconsidered as bio-bots and ontologically not of significant difference from techno-bots; morality is stripped of metaphysical remnants of the past and updated to a preference-utilitarian morality 2 , and moral agency re-examined in light of a determinism and the non-existence of free will. Taken together, this robot-catalysed level of philosophical honesty provides a sound foundation for the task of making robots ethical.