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Artificial moral and legal personhood

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John-Stewart Gordon
John-Stewart Gordon
John-Stewart Gordon
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Abstract

This paper considers the hotly debated issue of whether one should grant moral and legal personhood to intelligent robots once they have achieved a certain standard of sophistication based on such criteria as rationality, autonomy, and social relations. The starting point for the analysis is the European Parliament’s resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (2017) and its recommendation that robots be granted legal status and electronic personhood. The resolution is discussed against the background of the so-called Robotics Open Letter, which is critical of the Civil Law Rules on Robotics (and particularly of §59 f.). The paper reviews issues related to the moral and legal status of intelligent robots and the notion of legal personhood, including an analysis of the relation between moral and legal personhood in general and with respect to robots in particular. It examines two analogies, to corporations (which are treated as legal persons) and animals, that have been proposed to elucidate the moral and legal status of robots. The paper concludes that one should not ascribe moral and legal personhood to currently existing robots, given their technological limitations, but that one should do so once they have achieved a certain level at which they would become comparable to human beings.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
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AI & SOCIETY (2021) 36:457–471
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01063-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Artificial moral andlegal personhood
John‑StewartGordon1
Received: 9 August 2019 / Accepted: 21 August 2020 / Published online: 9 September 2020
© Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
This paper considers the hotly debated issue of whether one should grant moral and legal personhood to intelligent robots
once they have achieved a certain standard of sophistication based on such criteria as rationality, autonomy, and social rela-
tions. The starting point for the analysis is the European Parliament’s resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (2017) and
its recommendation that robots be granted legal status and electronic personhood. The resolution is discussed against the
background of the so-called Robotics Open Letter, which is critical of the Civil Law Rules on Robotics (and particularly of
§59 f.). The paper reviews issues related to the moral and legal status of intelligent robots and the notion of legal personhood,
including an analysis of the relation between moral and legal personhood in general and with respect to robots in particular.
It examines two analogies, to corporations (which are treated as legal persons) and animals, that have been proposed to elu-
cidate the moral and legal status of robots. The paper concludes that one should not ascribe moral and legal personhood to
currently existing robots, given their technological limitations, but that one should do so once they have achieved a certain
level at which they would become comparable to human beings.
Keywords Moral personhood· Legal personhood· Moral status· Legal status· Civil law rules of robotics· EU Parliament·
Robot rights· AI robots
1 Introduction
The concept of personhood is one of the most important
concepts in moral philosophy, but also one of the most con-
troversial. If a being is considered to have moral personhood,
then she necessarily has certain moral rights that others are
obligated to respect (Warren 1997; Kamm 2007). The stand-
ard case is an adult human being. Less controversial but still
a topic of lively debate among scholars in legal philoso-
phy and law is the concept of legal personhood, which is
fundamental to our conceptions of rights and obligations,
morality, and agency. Establishing the legal personhood of
a (human) being is a necessary prerequisite for ascribing
rights and duties to that being. A being who possesses legal
personhood thereby enjoys protection from harm and has a
high moral and legal status, recognised by law.
A typically functioning adult human being has both full
moral and legal personhood. Other human beings such as
children, new-borns, people with severe mental impairments,
and people in a non-responsive state—as well as non-human
beings such as higher-functioning animals—may carry some
degree of moral status, but do not have the same moral and
legal personhood as that granted to a typically functioning
adult human being (Dyschkant 2015). Therefore, they do not
have the same moral and legal rights or obligations.
It is commonly assumed that beings (at least, human
beings) with legal personhood also have moral personhood,
and that beings who possess moral personhood have it,
because they are considered to have sufficient moral sta-
tus.1 In other words, without moral status, there can be no
moral and legal personhood. However, whether corporations
and trust funds, which are commonly considered legal per-
sons, also have moral personhood is debated in the realms
of legal philosophy and law (Koops etal. 2010, p. 517). A
related question is whether moral personhood should also
be ascribed to some ships, idols, and environmental objects
(such as particular rivers) that are seen as legal persons in
some jurisdictions (see Sect.4.3). Certainly, as Matthias
(2008) has suggested, one should not anthropomorphise
* John-Stewart Gordon
johnstgordon@pm.me
1 Faculty ofHumanities, Vytautas Magnus University, V.
Putvinskio g. 23 (R 306), LT-44243Kaunas, Lithuania
1 For an excellent overview of the notion of moral personhood
against the background of moral agency and patiency, see Gunkel
(2012, pp. 39–65).
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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