What Matters for Moral Status: Behavioral or Cognitive Equivalence?

Henry Shevlin’s paper—“How could we know when a robot was a moral patient?”—provides a thoughtful analysis of a fascinating question.1 Human moral concern is often quite parochial: traditionally, we only extended moral respect and courtesy to our closest peers (family, tribe, nation, gender, and so on). In more recent times, a series of moral revolutions has expanded the circle of moral concern beyond its parochial boundaries.2 Most of us now accept that all humans deserve equal moral respect; some of us take the idea of animal rights seriously. Will the revolution continue? Will we extend moral respect to artificial beings? What evidence would we call on to answer that question? This last question is what Shevlin sets out to answer.In doing so, Shevlin defends something he calls the “cognitive equivalence” strategy. He argues that we should recognize robots and artificial intelligence (AI) as psychological moral patients if they are cognitively equivalent to other beings that we already recognize as psychological moral patients (i.e., humans and, at least some, animals). In defending this cognitive equivalence strategy, Shevlin draws inspiration from the “behavioral equivalence” strategy that I have defended in previous work.3 Nevertheless, although he sees some merit in my approach, he criticizes it for a number of shortcomings and defends the superiority of the cognitive equivalence strategy.I am grateful to Shevlin for the care and attention he pays to my previous work.Unfortunately—and I guess this is hardly surprising—I cannot bring myself to agree that the cognitive equivalence strategy is the superior one. In the remainder of this article, I will try to explain why. I will do so in three stages. First, I will try to clarify the nature of the question that I take both myself and Shevlin to be answering. Second, I will clear up some potential confusions about the behavioral equivalence strategy, and address some other recent criticisms of it. Third, I will explain why I still favor the behavioral equivalence strategy over the cognitive equivalence one. I will suggest that there may not be much disagreement between myself and Shevlin in practice but that, to the extent that there is, that disagreement should be resolved in favor of the behavioral equivalence strategy.