What Are the Criteria of Personality in Artificial Intelligence in Relation to Moral Status?

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی- پژوهشی

نویسندگان

1 دانشجوی دکتری فلسفه اخلاق، دانشگاه ادیان و مذاهب، قم، ایران.

2 استادیار، گروه فلسفه اخلاق، دانشگاه ادیان و مذاهب، قم، ایران

3 استاد گروه اخلاق، دانشگاه قم، قم، ایران.

4 دانشیار، گروه هوش مصنوعی و رباتیک، دانشگاه صنعتی امیرکبیر، تهران، ایران.

چکیده

The present article examines the possibility of attributing personhood to artificial intelligence agents, a concept central to determining moral status. The debate on personhood has long been central in applied ethics, particularly in discussions on abortion, where philosophers such as Mary Anne Warren proposed five criteria—consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity for communication, and self-awareness—as key indicators of personhood. The present study applies these criteria to artificial intelligence systems and asks whether their cognitive and functional capacities are sufficient for moral consideration. While certain features such as memory, goal-directed behavior, and limited moral interaction are identifiable in some AI systems, the absence of self-awareness and subjective experience remains a fundamental obstacle to full personhood. The article further engages with the views of Kant, Locke, DeGrazia, and Searle, assessing the possibility of AI’s moral standing—whether direct or indirect—through ethical frameworks such as deontology and virtue ethics. It concludes that although attributing personhood to AI remains highly problematic in its current state, addressing this issue is an urgent necessity for contemporary moral philosophy.

کلیدواژه‌ها

موضوعات

عنوان مقاله [English]

What Are the Criteria of Personality in Artificial Intelligence in Relation to Moral Status?

نویسندگان [English]

  • Saeid karimi 1
  • morteza Tabatabaie 2
  • Mohsen Javadi 3
  • Saeedeh Momtazi 4
1 PhD Candidate of Moral Philosophy, University of Religions and Denomenations, Qom, Iran
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Moral Philosophy, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran
3 Professor, Department of Ethics, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
4 Associate Professor, Department of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
چکیده [English]

The present article examines the possibility of attributing personhood to artificial intelligence agents, a concept central to determining moral status. The debate on personhood has long been central in applied ethics, particularly in discussions on abortion, where philosophers such as Mary Anne Warren proposed five criteria—consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity for communication, and self-awareness—as key indicators of personhood. The present study applies these criteria to artificial intelligence systems and asks whether their cognitive and functional capacities are sufficient for moral consideration. While certain features such as memory, goal-directed behavior, and limited moral interaction are identifiable in some AI systems, the absence of self-awareness and subjective experience remains a fundamental obstacle to full personhood. The article further engages with the views of Kant, Locke, DeGrazia, and Searle, assessing the possibility of AI’s moral standing—whether direct or indirect—through ethical frameworks such as deontology and virtue ethics. It concludes that although attributing personhood to AI remains highly problematic in its current state, addressing this issue is an urgent necessity for contemporary moral philosophy.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Personhood
  • Moral Status
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Kantian Deontology
  • Virtue Ethics
  • Consciousness

مراجع

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DeGrazia, D. (2021). An interest-based model of moral status. In S. Clarke, H. Zohny, & J. Savulescu (Eds.), Rethinking moral status (pp. 35–56). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192894076.003.0003
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Warren, M. A. (1997). Moral status: Obligations to persons and other living things. Oxford University Press.
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