Abstract

This Commentary critiques Paul Showler’s combination view of robot moral status, which combines sophisticated cognitive capacities like consciousness with highly valued machine-human relationships. Showler holds that a combined approach carries the advantage of more fully accounting for ordinary folk psychology views about of what it means to have moral standing and be a person. This commentary paper is largely sympathetic to Showler, but argues for a stronger view: being a person is a cluster concept that can include a combination of different possible sufficient conditions, none of which is necessary. What must be constrained, then, is the strong claim that a quality is necessary for personhood. Since most approaches that appeal to sophisticated cognitive capacities make the strong claim, they require constraint. Since most approaches that appeal to highly valued relationships, do not make the stronger claim, they generally do not require constraint.