Universalism, Pluralism, and the Moral Status of Social Robots: a Reply to Jecker

This reply address two issues raised by Nancy Jecker’s commentary, “Robots With and Without Sophisticated Cognitive Capacities: Are They Persons?”. The first issue concerns the criteria for ascribing moral personhood to social robots. Whereas standard property-based accounts of personhood claim that sophisticated cognitive capacities are necessary conditions for personhood, Jecker contends that personhood is a cluster concept that may include various configurations of sufficient, but not necessary, conditions. While I am sympathetic to aspects of this proposal, I suggest that it potentially conflicts with some of Jecker’s other stated theoretical commitments. The second issue concerns how to best characterize relational approaches to moral personhood. Elsewhere, I have argued for a constrained moral relationalism which accepts that non-moral properties can play a limited role in justifying moral status ascription. Jecker contends that this intervention is unnecessary because relational views are already suitably constrained. In response, I suggest that moral relationalism is best described as a family of theoretical positions, some of which do not make sufficient room for appeals to properties in moral reasoning.