Ethical and anthropological status of artificial intelligence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31207/colloquia.v12i1.187Keywords:
Things, dignity, applied ethics, artificial intelligence, personAbstract
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday life for more people around the world: from students who use it to do their homework and elderly people who use it to combat loneliness, to business owners who implement robots to improve factory productivity and office workers who use chatbots for daily tasks.
That it is part of “our world” is an indisputable fact. The question, recalling Scheler's famous book, is its place in that world, that is: What is artificial intelligence in the context of “the human”?
In this article, we design a “theory of theories” to analyze the question of the ethical and anthropological status of artificial intelligence. We believe this is the first step on the road to regulatory norms governing the relationship between artificial intelligence and human beings.
References
Allen, C., Varner, G., & Zinser, J. (2000). Prolegomena to any future artificial moral agent. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 12(3), 251–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528130050111428
Asimov, I. (1941). I, robot. Street & Smith.
Bertolini, A., & Aparicio, G. (2018). Robot companions: A legal and ethical analysis. The Information Society, 34(3), 130–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2018.1444249
Bostrom, N. (2023, 13 de abril). Nick Bostrom says AI chatbots may have some degree of sentience. Futurism. https://futurism.com/the-byte/nick-bostrom-ai-chatbot-sentience
Bostrom, N., & Yudkowsky, E. (2011). The ethics of artificial intelligence. En W. Ramsey & K. Frankish (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of artificial intelligence (pp. 316–334). Cambridge University Press.
Brey, P. (2008). Do we have moral duties towards information objects? Ethics and Information Technology, 10, 109–114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-008-9170-x
Bro?ek, B., & Janik, B. (2019). Can artificial intelligences be moral agents? New Ideas in Psychology, 54, 101–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2018.12.002
Bryson, J. J., Diamantis, M. E., & Grant, T. D. (2017). Of, for, and by the people: The legal lacuna of synthetic persons. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 25, 273–291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-017-9214-9
Bueno, G. (1953). Para la construcción de la idea de persona. Revista de Filosofía, 12(47), 503–563.
Bueno, G. (1978). Sobre el concepto de “espacio antropológico”. El Basilisco, 1(5), 57–69.
Bueno, G. (1996). El sentido de la vida: Seis lecturas de filosofía moral. Pentalfa.
Bueno, G. (2023). El animal divino: Ensayo de una filosofía materialista de la religión (3a ed.). Pentalfa.
Cerrillo Martínez, A., & Peguera Poch, M. (Coords.). (2020). Retos jurídicos de la inteligencia artificial. Thomson Reuters Aranzadi.
ChatGPT. (2025, 20 de mayo). Conversación sobre moralidad y agencia artificial [Conversación de IA]. https://chatgpt.com/c/6931cb24-0608-832e-b015-1e465b0e4c22
Coeckelbergh, M. (2012). Growing moral relations: Critique of moral status ascription. Palgrave Macmillan.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2021). Should we treat Teddy Bear 2.0 as a Kantian dog? Four arguments for the indirect moral standing of personal social robots, with implications for thinking about animals and humans. Minds and Machines, 31, 337–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-020-09554-3
Coeckelbergh, M. (2023). La filosofía política de la inteligencia artificial. Ediciones Cátedra.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Putnam.
Damasio, A. R., Tranel, D., & Damasio, H. (1991). Somatic markers and the guidance of behavior: Theory and preliminary testing. En H. S. Levin, H. M. Eisenberg, & A. L. Benton (Eds.), Frontal lobe function and dysfunction (pp. 217–229). Oxford University Press.
Danaher, J. (2020). Welcoming robots into the moral circle: A defence of ethical behaviourism. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26, 2023–2049. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-019-00119-x
Dennett, D. C. (1997). When HAL kills, who's to blame? Computer ethics. En D. G. Stork (Ed.), HAL's legacy: 2001's computer as dream and reality (pp. 351–365). The MIT Press.
Floridi, L., & Sanders, J. W. (2004). On the morality of artificial agents. Minds and Machines, 14(3), 349–379. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:MIND.0000035461.63578.9d
Garapon, A., & Lassègue, J. (2021). La giustizia digitale. Il Mulino.
God in a Box. (2025). https://godinabox.co/
Goertzel, B., & Pennachin, C. (Eds.). (2007). Artificial general intelligence. Springer.
Greenemeier, L. (2011, 14 de junio). Piece of mind: Is the internet replacing our ability to remember? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/internet-transactive-memory/
Groth, O., Nitzberg, M., & Esposito, M. (2018). Rules of robots: The digital future. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=1a5564f5-77ea-a5bc-228b-279d885c313b&groupId=252038
Gunkel, D. J. (2018). Robot rights. The MIT Press.
Gutiérrez Gutiérrez, E. (2024). ChatGPT en el espacio antropológico. El Basilisco, 3(59), 55–63.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814
Herrera Triguero, F., Peralta Gutiérrez, A., & Torres López, S. (Coords.). (2022). El derecho y la inteligencia artificial. Editorial Comares.
Khan, S., Chanchal, D. K., Singh, G., & Gupta, S. (2022). Artificial intelligence as an essential tool for the development of medicine requirement. Research Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy, 1(1), 1–13.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trad.). Duquesne University Press.
Levy, D. (2007). Love and sex with robots: The evolution of human-robot relationships. Harper.
Linares-Peralta, R., & Llorca Albareda, J. (2024). Repensar l’antropologia digital: Estructurisme, mediació tecnològica i implicacions epistèmiques i morals. Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason, 73, 165–194. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/enrahonar.1577
Liu, B. (2023). Arguments for the rise of artificial intelligence art: Does AI art have creativity, motivation, self-awareness and emotion? Arte, Individuo y Sociedad, 35(3), 811–822. https://doi.org/10.5209/aris.83808
Madrid Casado, C. M. (2024). Filosofía de la inteligencia artificial. Pentalfa.
Moor, J. H. (2006). The nature, importance, and difficulty of machine ethics. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(4), 18–21. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.80
Mori, M. (1970). The uncanny valley. Energy, 7(4), 33–35.
Morioka, M. (Ed.). (2023). Artificial intelligence, robots, and philosophy [Número especial]. Journal of Philosophy of Life.
Müller, V. C. (2020). Ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics. En E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-ai/
Müller, V. C. (2021). Is it time for robot rights? Moral status in artificial entities. Ethics and Information Technology, 23, 579–587. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-021-09596-w
Müller, V. C. (2025). Philosophy of AI: A structured overview. En N. A. Smuha (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook on the law, ethics and policy of artificial intelligence (pp. 40–58). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009367783.004
Peguero Alfonseca, A. E. (2024). Implicaciones éticas de la automatización: Desempleo, oportunidad o gobernanza. La Barca de Teseo, 2(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.61780/bdet.v2i1.28
Pérez Álvarez, M. (2011). El mito del cerebro creador: Cuerpo, conducta y cultura. Alianza Editorial.
Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2016). Artificial intelligence: A modern approach (3a ed.). Pearson.
Santana-Soriano, E. (2023). Ética y filosofía de la inteligencia artificial: Debates actuales. La Barca de Teseo, 1(1), 47–64. https://doi.org/10.61780/bdet.v1i1.5
Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–457. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005756
Stone, C. D. (1972). Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights for natural objects. Southern California Law Review, 45(2), 450–501.
Torrance, S. (2011). Machine ethics and the idea of a more-than-human moral world. En M. Anderson & S. L. Anderson (Eds.), Machine ethics (pp. 115–137). Cambridge University Press.
Van Wynsberghe, A., & Robbins, S. (2019). Critiquing the reasons for making artificial moral agents. Science and Engineering Ethics, 25, 719–735. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-0030-8
Yaben, M. (2023, 15 de febrero). Luces y sombras del ChatGPT, la IA de la que todo el mundo habla. El Independiente. https://www.elindependiente.com/futuro/inteligencia-artificial/2023/02/15/luces-y-sombras-del-chat-gpt-la-ia-de-la-que-todo-el-mundo-habla/
Zafar, M. (2024). Normativity and AI moral agency. AI and Ethics, 5(3), 2605–2622. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-024-00566-8
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors publishing in our Journal comply to the following terms:
1. Authors keep their work's copyrights, but they guarantee Colloquia to be the first publisher of their papers. They grant the Journal with a Creative Commons Attribution License, under which their work can be shared with the condition that it is appropriately cited.
2. Authors can establish further clauses for non-exclusive distribution, such as publication on a separate book or placing in an institutional data-base. Nevertheless, a note should be always added to explain that the paper was originally published in Colloquia.
This Journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a file distributed among participating libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent archives of the Journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More information...
