Animal Rights and Robot Ethics

Robot Ethics

Robot ethics, in the sense of extending legal and moral rights to social robots, as prominently presented by Kate Darling (Darling, 2016), has its origins in the philosophy of Kant, who asserted that only humans are able to incur liabilities; hence, humans have moral duties only to other humans.¹ Although Kant stresses that only human beings possess moral status, he also maintains that the cruel treatment of animals should be prevented because it would diminish the human ability to feel compassion, which in itself is a precious predisposition essential to a peaceful human community (Kant, 1977, p. 579). Kant believes it’s wrong to abuse animals not because any harm is done to the animals themselves, but because doing so would derogate the moral character of the abuser. Subsequently, one might be tempted to treat humans in a harmful way (Ascione, 2001). According to this moral perspective, harming animals is wrong not because of a duty to the animals themselves but as an indirect protection of humans (Boat, 1995; Kellert & Felthous, 1985).