Document Type : Original Article
Highlights
Virtue Ethics is one of the three main theories of ethics. The roots of virtue ethics could be traced back to the ancient era in Aristotle’s works and religious doctrines. By the beginning of the modern age, virtue ethics had been eclipsed by Utilitarian and Deontological theories of ethics. However, in recent decades, due to the emergence of non-human world ethical issues (i.e., animal rights, environmental ethics, and ethics of technology), Virtue ethics has again returned to the scene of ethical debates. Advocates of Virtue ethics find novel and unique capacities in its doctrines for articulating a moral framework that involves non-human entities.
Utilitarian theory assesses actions based on the amount of pleasure and pain they create. Actions toward entities that are not sentient neither cause pleasure nor pain, hence, can’t be morally evaluated on this consequentialist basis. On the other hand, Deontological Ethics presupposes a system of rights and duties, which in turn determines the moral value of actions. Again, we can’t attribute rights and duties to non-human entities as we do for human beings. But in Virtue ethics, actions are evaluated based on their impact on the character and flourishing of the agent. It doesn’t matter whether one is acting toward a human being or a non-human. The only important thing is the effect of the action on the character of the actor. This feature of Virtue ethics provides it with the capacity for developing ethical prescriptions for human-artifact interaction.
In this paper, we explore the implications of Virtue ethics for human interactions with artifacts when the artifact appears to us as a social being or quasi-other. First, we consider arguments of virtue theorists in favor of the moral patiency of social artifacts. Then, we examine these views against two challenges: the originality of Virtue ethics’ implications, and the Anthropomorphizing while Dehumanizing Robots Paradox.
Are our actions toward social robots, virtual avatars, or Chatbots morally evaluable? And if yes, how can it be? There are two major approaches for answering these questions: the standard approach and the relational approach. According to the standard approach, the moral status of each entity depends on the existence of some properties in it. Hence, the question about the moral status of an entity amounts to the question of its properties. On the other hand, from the relational point of view, entities are defined based on their relations to other social and natural entities and how they appear for them (Coeckelbergh, 2014, p. 62-6).
Due to some difficulties and deficiencies of the Standard view, philosophers like Cockelbergh and Cappucio et al. admitted the relational approach for analyzing the moral status of artifacts. Also, they located this approach in the framework of Virtue ethics (Coeckelbergh, 2014; Cappuccio et al. 2019).
According to Coeckelbergh, the moral status of an entity is constructed through its interaction with other entities. These interactions occur in material and social relations which include various patterns of behavior, thinking, interpretation, and evaluation. Our moral experience of another entity, therefore, is both personal and dependent on the culture that gives meaning to our interactions (Coeckelbergh, 2014, p. 69)
Based on different ways of experiencing an entity, it can have a different moral status. Despite the standard model, in the relational view, the moral status of an entity isn’t objective. Questioning about the moral status of an artefact is not either a scientific or a philosophical question; it is a practical question about how to confront an entity and behave with it (Coeckelbergh, 2014, p. 65-66). Thus, our tacit knowledge acquired through interacting with an entity enables us to answer the question (Coeckelbergh, 2014, p. 70-71)
Cappucio et al. also admit the relational approach toward moral status and emphasize on the consonance of this view with doctrines of Virtue ethics. According to Virtue ethics, for moral evaluation of an action, we don’t need to examine the properties of the action’s receiver to calculate the amounts of pleasure and pain, or consider its rights. What matters is the impact of the action on the agent, which in turn depends on the material and social background in which the interactions take place (Cappuccio et al., 2019, p. 13-14).
According to virtue theorists, if our relation with an artefact resembles our relations with human beings sufficiently to make similar impacts on us, then interacting with it affects our personality. Based on this, one can divide various artefacts according to their degree of anthropomorphism. Cockelbergh thinks that by increasing the entanglement of human and technological worlds, we will need more accurate moral categories for describing the moral status of artefacts (Coeckelbergh, 2010, p. 239)
For example, artefacts which are designed in order to be social and emotional would be perceived more like humans, therefore, have a moral status closer to humankind (Cappuccio et al., 2019, p. 18). As an instance, violent computer games are designed to simulate a world as indiscernible from the real world as possible, to immerse the player. The player perceives the other avatars in the game much like real social agents, while the game encourages her and increases her score for doing violent actions against those quasi-real avatars. In this situation, the player’s behavior with the avatar has impact on her character and fosters the vice of lacking empathy. Hence, we can evaluate violent action against the game’s avatar as immoral (Coeckelbergh, 2007, p. 24-25).
The doctrines of Virtue ethics have been criticized from various aspects. For example, some philosophers believe that Virtue ethics doesn’t provide us with straight and simple moral prescriptions, or isn’t useful for making decisions in moral dilemmas, or that the list of virtues and vices is arbitrary, vague, and not universal. Putting all these critiques aside, we want to concentrate on another challenge for advocates of Virtue ethics: are the doctrines of Virtue ethics original, or we can derive them from Utilitarian views?
Utilitarians evaluate an action based on its consequences. It seems that in the case of Virtue ethics, we consider the consequence or impact of an action on the agent’s character and her flourishing and eudemonia. So, one can reasonably ask what is the difference between the Utilitarian assessment of consequences and the Virtue ethics’ one?
To answer this question, it is useful to consider the difference between versions of Virtue ethics. There are at least three distinct versions of Virtue ethics: the eudemonist version in which happiness and flourishment are the basic concepts, the agent-based version in which the moral exemplar is the basic concept and actions are examined according to the similarity with actions of moral exemplars in similar situations, and the target-centered version in which virtues and vices are the basic concepts and the morality of actions are measured based on their role in fostering virtues or vices (Hursthouse, 2022, pp. 4-7).
The critique for lack of originality just threatens the eudemonist version, since the definition of eudemonia is very close to the basic concept of happiness in Utilitarian views, and sometimes equals it. But this is not the case for the other two versions. While in the agent-based version of Virtue ethics, the impact of the action on the agent is considered, this impact is far from the categorical properties obtained in the world’s state of affairs, which are measurable. In this version, the action makes differences in the person’s dispositional properties, which in the absence of stimulation may never manifest and change the world’s state of affairs. Therefore, while the agent-based version of Virtue ethics examines the consequences of action, these consequences are metaphysically distinct from the consequences calculated in Utilitarian theories. The same is true about the target-based version of Virtue ethics. Hence, the critique from originality only would be levelled at the eudemonist version of Virtue ethics.
Another problem with Virtue theorists’ views about the moral status of artefacts refers to a phenomenon called by Cappucio et al. as “Anthropomorphizing while Dehumanizing Robots Paradox“(Cappuccio et al., 2019, p. 26).
This paradox refers to situations when an entity is both perceived as human and non-human. According to Cappuccio et al., by interacting with social artefacts, we experience them very similarly to our human fellows; they provoke emotions and behaviors in us just as those we have in our human-human interactions. But on the other hand, we know that they aren’t human. We see them as artefacts that are in our service. Thus, we sell and buy them, turn them on and off, and if needed, we can throw them away. These two aspects are in contradiction.
More than just an emotional confusion, this contradiction has moral importance. Historically, some people, like slaves, and sometimes women and children, were treated like dehumanized humans. This immoral treatment has fostered the masterhood personality in people, which includes the vices of lack of empathy, selfishness, and irresponsibility. The revival of this manner of behavior (this time toward human-like artefacts) can cultivate those vices in the users of these social artefacts.
Coeckelbergh thinks that this contradictory experience results from the standard views, since the contradiction is constituted from the opposition of our propositional knowledge (artefacts aren’t human) and our experiential knowledge (we perceive them like humans) (Coeckelbergh, 2014, p. 64). If we rely on our experiential knowledge, we don’t need to consider the propositional knowledge anymore, and the confusion disappears.
Unfortunately, this solution isn’t promising. Since the dehumanizing side of the paradox is fueled by our experience, too. It is not the case that we just theoretically know that artefacts aren’t human; moreover, we experience them as our properties, which are aimed to be at our service and could be customized as we wish. Therefore, turning from the standard view to the relational one doesn’t seem helpful for overcoming the problem.
In fact, from the Virtue ethics point of view, one can find reasons for elevating the anthropomorphism side of the paradox: if you conceive something like a human, the way you treat it affects your character, so you should treat it morally as a real human. Also, on the same ground, we can elevate the dehumanizing side: it is far from practical wisdom to treat a non-human as a human. Thus, Virtue ethics apparently doesn’t suggest a clear and definite solution for dissolving the paradox.
Relational understanding is a basic concept in Virtue ethics. This implies that if an entity appears to us like a human moral patient, we have to adhere moral obligations in our treatment of it. Since our interactions can have an impact on our moral character and foster vices or virtues, which ultimately affect our eudemonia. This analysis makes it possible to confer the status of moral patient to some artefacts in some relations.
But the Virtue ethics’ doctrines are facing some theoretical challenges. One important challenge questions the originality of this view and the possibility of accommodating its prescriptions to Utilitarian ones. We saw that this challenge only threatens the eudemonist version of Virtue ethics and is not serious for agent-based and target-centered versions. The other challenge refers to the morally problematic status of artefacts which are simultaneously perceived as human and non-human. The anthropomorphism implies that we should treat them morally, while the dehumanizing side implies that they don’t have moral status. It seems that current theorists of Virtue ethics haven’t suggested a convincing answer to this problem.
