Conditions for moral status/consideration

Hi.

What conditions does a thing need to meet in order to receive moral status/consideration?

I have been considering the moral status of things that are non-human. artificial life, artificial intelligence ... things like that.

Any thoughts on the matter?

 

Non-human animals definitely deserve moral consideration, they're clearly able to feel pain and suffering (well, unless you believe Descartes in that animals are actually machine-like automatons, which doesn't really seem to stand up with how closely some animals are related to us structurally and genetically).

If we don't have any consideration for other species we have to decide why not, what it is that makes humans worthy of moral consideration and not other animals? Is it just that we should give special status to our own species? If so does that mean if we were to meet an extraterrestrial species with similar characteristics as us in terms of intellect, emotion and ability to feel physical pain it would be alright for us to enslave them, use them for food, etc just because they are of a different species? Would we think it was moral for them to do that to us?

If it's our advanced intellect compared to other species does that mean it would be OK to give humans of diminished mental capacity fewer rights and the highly intelligent special privileges? A sort of intelligence-based caste system? Plato did argue for something a bit like this, with an "aristocracy" of philosophers as the ruling class, but I think most believe in equal rights without regard for the level intelligence, barring a few of the rights of some mentally disabled people for their own good (like freedom of movement if they are incapable of safely crossing roads by themselves). It's impossible to find a cut-off point which would allow all humans some special status and not other animals, since some severely mentally retarded people will have lesser intelligence than a chimpanzee certainly. Some have argued that since non-human animals are unable to enter into the social contract it means we have no moral responsibility towards the, but that would also be true of some mentally disabled people.

There is the appeal to nature that says there is a food chain and that other animals have no moral consideration for other species and as human animals we should act in the same way, but they don't seem to use the same reasoning to argue in favour of infanticide of children belonging to other parents to give their own children a better chance which is common in other animals. The fact something is natural to other species doesn't in itself justify the same behaviour in humans, and I think very few people would like live in a society based on the behaviour of most other animals (well, maybe bonobos ).

With this all said this doesn't mean other animals should be given all the same rights as humans as some people arguing against this sometimes seem to believe I'm suggesting. Humans and other animals obviously don't have all the same desires and so don't need the same rights, but the right not to have unnecessary pain inflicted on them is something that would hold for most animals.

Now, artificial intelligence is something I haven't given as much thought to before and haven't really read up on. I assume you mean "strong" AI. Thinking about it I can certainly conceive of situations in what something we might call AI should be given moral status, but I'm not sure if it would universally apply to all AI yet. Really the problem is since strong AI doesn't exist it means coming up with a coherent definition of what AI is. Would it be AI if a human consciousness were somehow transferred or copied to an artificial medium? I don't know. Anyway, I think the main criterion for AI to be given moral status would be that it must have the ability to have desires. If it doesn't have desires then it's impossible to frustrate its desires so you can do anything you want to it.

Artificial life, I don't really know what that means and how it's distinct from AI. Do you mean an organism that has been engineered in some way from scratch? I don't really think this would differ in any way from non-artificial life providing it had the same properties which give some living things moral status, that is the ability to have desires. So an artificial plant wouldn't have moral status beyond any importance it might have to conscious beings, but an artificial animal would.