Robots and the Limits of Morality

摘要

In this chapter, the author urges whether people can coherently conceive of robots as moral agents and as moral patients. He also argues that that day is not today and that if that day ever comes, these robots would indeed be so similar to people that the decision to bring them about would be almost as ethically significant as the decision to bring human beings into the world. The author shows that biology/psychology poses certain constraints on what can count as a moral norm. He also urges whether robots can have any of the interests that are intelligible to people from human perspective. The biology and psychology pose limits to human morality in two important respects: by excluding from the realm of non-derivative objects of moral attention anything incapable of humanly recognizable interests, and by excluding from the realm of moral agents anything incapable of feeling a certain range of emotions.