Category: Ethics

https://dukeroboticsys.com/

Taking the obvious step in done technology, Duke Robotics developed a small armed drone called the Tikad. Israel also developed a sniper drone that it is using in Gaza. These drones differ from earlier armed drones, like the Predator, in that they are small and relatively cheap. As with many other areas of technology, the main innovations are in ease of use and lower cost. This makes the small armed drones more accessible than previous drones, which is both good and bad.

On the positive side, the military and police can deploy more drones and reduce human casualties (at least for the drone users). For example, the police could send a drone in to observe and possibly engage during a hostage situation and not put officers in danger.

On the negative side, the lower cost and ease of use means that armed drones are easier to deploy by terrorists, criminals and oppressive states. The typical terrorist group cannot afford a drone like the Predator and might have difficulty in finding people who can operate and maintain such a complicated aircraft. But smaller armed drones can be operated and serviced by a broader range of people. This is not to say that Duke Robotics should be criticized for doing the obvious as people have been thinking about arming drones since drones were invented.

Inexpensive gun drones do raise the usual concerns associated with remotely operated weapons. The first is the concern that operators of drones can be more aggressive than forces that are physically present and at risk of the consequences of engaging in violence. However, it can also be argued that an operator is less likely to be aggressive because they are not in danger and the literal and metaphorical distance will allow them to respond with more deliberation. For example, a police officer operating a drone might elect to wait longer to confirm that a suspect is pulling a gun than they would if they were present. Then again, they might not as this would be a training and reaction issue with a very practical concern about training officers to delay longer when operating a drone and not delaying too long in person.

A second concern is accountability. A drone allows the operator anonymity and assigning responsibility can be difficult. In the case of the military and police, this can be addressed by having a system of accountability. After all, military and police operators would usually be known to the relevant authorities. That said, drones can be used in ways that are difficult to trace to the operator and this would be true in the case of terrorists. The use of drones would allow terrorists to attack from safety and in an anonymous manner, which are matters of concern.

However, it must be noted that while the first use of a gun armed drone in a terrorist attack would be something new, it would not be significantly different from the use of a planted bomb or other distance weapons. This is because such bombs allow terrorists to kill from a safe distance and make it harder to identify the terrorist. But, just as with bombs, the authorities would be able to investigate the attack and stand some chance of tracing a drone back to the terrorist. Drones are in some ways less worrisome than bombs as a drone can be seen and is limited in how many targets it can engage. In contrast, a bomb can be hidden and can kill many in an instant, without a chance of escape or defense.  A gun drone is also analogous in some ways to a sniper rifle in that it allows engagement at long ranges. However, the drone does afford far more range and safety than even the best sniper rifle.

In the United States, it is currently not legal to arm your drone. While the people have the right to keep and bear arms, this does not extend to operating armed drones. The NRA does not seem interested in fighting for the right to arm drones, but that could changes.

In closing, there are legitimate concerns about cheap and simple gun drones. While they will not be as radical a change as some might predict, they will make it easier and cheaper to engage in violence at a distance and in anonymous killing. As such, they will make ideal weapons for terrorists and oppressive governments. However, they do offer the possibility of reduced human casualties, if used responsibly. In any case, their deployment is inevitable, so the meaningful questions are about how they should be used and how to defend against their misuse. The question about whether they should be used is morally interesting, but pragmatically irrelevant since are being used.

Since the US is experiencing a drone panic as this is being written, I’ll close with a few rational points. First, of course people are seeing drones. As comedians have pointed out, you can buy them at Walmart. Drones are everywhere. Second, people are regularly mistaking planes and even stars for drones. Third, as has been pointed out and as should be obvious, if a foreign power were secretly operating drones in the US, then they would turn the lights off. Fourth, no harm seems to have been done by the drones, so it is a panic over nothing. But it is reasonable to be concerned with what drones are being used for as corporations and the state are not always acting for the public good.

While there are ongoing efforts to revise the Confederate States of America story from one of slavery to one of state’s rights, secession from the Union was because of slavery. At the time of succession, the leaders explicitly said this was their primary motivation. This is not to deny there were other motivations, such as concerns about state’s rights and economic factors. The Confederacy’s moral and economic foundation was slavery. This is a rejection of the principle that all men are created equal, a rejection of the notion of liberty, and an abandonment of the idea that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent of the governed. In short, the Confederacy was an explicit rejection of the professed values of the United States. Other than white supremacy.

While the Confederacy lost and the union was reformed, its values survived and are now manifested by the alt-right and increasingly the right. This is shown by their defense of Confederate monuments, their use of Confederate flags, and their racism. They are aware of the moral foundations of their movement.

While the value system of the Confederacy embraced white supremacy and accepted slavery as a moral good, it did not accept genocide. That is, the Confederacy advocated enslaving blacks rather than exterminating them. Extermination was something the Nazis eventually embraced.

The Nazis took over the German state and plunged the world into war. Like the Confederate states, the Nazis embraced the idea of white supremacy and rejected equality and liberty. The Nazis also made extensive use of slave labor. Unlike the Confederate states, the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort to exterminate those they regarded as inferior. This does mark a moral distinction between the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. This is a distinction between degrees of evil.

While the Nazis were once regarded by most Americans as a paradigm of evil, many in the alt-right embrace their values and some do so explicitly and openly, identifying as neo-Nazis. Some claim they do not want to exterminate what they say are other races but want to have racially pure states. For example, some on antisemites on the right support Israel because they see it as a Jewish state; a place where all the Jews should be. In their ideal world, each state would be racially pure. This is why the alt-right is sometimes also known as the white nationalists. The desire to have pure states can be seen as morally better than the desire to exterminate, but this is a distinction in evils rather than one between good and bad.

Based on the above, the modern alt-right (and increasingly the American right) is the inheritor of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. While this might seem a matter of mere historic interest, it has important implications. One is that it provides grounds that the members of the alt-right should be regarded as on par with members or supporters of ISIS or other enemy foreign terrorist groups. This is in contrast with seeing the alt-right as being entirely domestic.

Those who join or support Isis (and other such groups) are seen as different from domestic hate groups. This is because ISIS (and other such groups) are foreign and conflict with the United States. This applies even when the ISIS supporter is an American who lives in America. This perceived difference has numerous consequences, including legal ones. It also has consequences for free speech. While advocating the goals and values of ISIS in the United States would be a threat and could result in criminal charges, the alt-right is protected by the right to free speech. This is illustrated by the fact that the alt-right can get permits to march in the United States, while ISIS supporters and similar groups cannot. One can imagine the response if ISIS or Hamas supporters applied for permit or engaged in a march.

While some hate groups are truly domestic in that they are not associated with foreign organizations at war with the United States, the alt-right cannot make this claim. At least they cannot to the degree they are connected to the Confederate States of America and the Nazis. Both are foreign powers who were at war with the United States. As such, the alt-right should be seen as on par with other groups that affiliate themselves with foreign groups engaged in war with the United States.

An obvious reply is that the Confederacy and the Nazis were defeated and no longer exist. On the one hand, this is true. The Confederacy was destroyed, and the states rejoined the United States. The Nazis were defeated and while Germany still exists, it is not controlled by the Nazis. At least not yet. On the other hand, the Confederacy and the Nazis do persist in the form of groups that preserve their values and ideology here in the United States. To use the obvious analogy, the defeat of ISIS and its territorial losses did not end the group. It will persist as long as it has supporters, and the United States has not switched to a policy of tolerating ISIS members and supporters simply because ISIS no longer has territory.

 The same holds true for those supporting or claiming membership in the Confederacy or the Nazis. They are supporters of foreign powers that are enemies of the United States and are thus on par with ISIS supporters and members in that they are agents of the enemy. This is not to say that the alt-right is morally equivalent to ISIS in terms of its actions. Overall, ISIS is worse. But what matters in this context, is the expression of allegiance to the values and goals of a foreign enemy—something ISIS supporters and alt-right members who embrace the Confederacy or Nazis have in common.

Briefly put, right-to-try laws give terminally ill patients the right to try experimental treatments that have completed Phase 1 testing but have yet to be approved by the FDA. Phase 1 testing involves assessing the immediate toxicity of the treatment. This does not include testing its efficacy or its longer-term safety. Roughly put, passing Phase 1 just means that the treatment does not immediately kill or significantly harm patients.

On the face of it, no sensible person would oppose the right-to-try.  This right is that people who have “nothing to lose” are given the right to try treatments that might help them. The bills and laws use the rhetorical narrative that the right-to-try laws would give desperate patients the freedom to seek medical treatment that might save them and this would be done by getting the FDA and the state out of the way. This is powerful rhetoric that appeals to compassion, freedom and a dislike of the government. As such, it is not surprising that few people dare oppose the right-to-try. However, the matter does deserve proper critical consideration.

One way to look at it is to consider an alternative reality in which the narrative is spun with a different rhetorical charge, a negative spin rather than positive. Imagine, for a moment, if the rhetorical engines had cranked out a tale of how the bills would strip away the protection of the desperate and dying to allow predatory companies to use them as Guinea pigs for their untested treatments. If that narrative had been sold, people would probably be opposed to such laws. But rhetorical narratives, positive or negative, are logically inert and are irrelevant to the merits of the right-to-try. How people feel about the proposals is also logically irrelevant as well. What is needed is a cool examination of the matter.

On the positive side, the right-to-try does offer people the chance to try treatments that might help them. It is hard to argue that terminally ill people do not have a right to take such risks. That said, there are still some concerns.

One concern is that there is an established mechanism allowing patients access to experimental treatments. The FDA already has as system that approves most requests. Somewhat ironically, when people argue for the right-to-try by using examples of people successfully treated by experimental methods, they are showing that the existing system already allows such access. This raises the question about why the laws are needed and what they change.

The main change is usually to reduce the role of the FDA. Without such laws, requests to use experimental methods must go through the FDA (which seems to approve most requests).  If the FDA routinely denied treatments, then such laws would seem needed. However, the FDA does not seem to be the problem as they generally do not roadblock the use of experimental methods for the terminally ill. This leads to the question of is limiting patient access.

The main limiting factors are those that impact almost all treatment access: costs and availability. While the right-to-try grants the negative right to choose experimental methods, they do not grant the positive right to be provided with those methods. A negative right is a liberty, and one is free to act upon it but is not provided with the means to do so. The means must be acquired by the person. A positive right is an entitlement, and the person is free to act and is provided with the means of doing so. In general, the right-to-try does little or nothing to ensure that treatments are provided. For example, public money is usually not allocated to pay for them. As such, the right-to-try is like the right-to-healthcare: you are free to get it if you can pay for it. Since the FDA does not roadblock access to experimental treatments, the bills and laws would seem to do little or nothing new to benefit patients. That said, the general idea of right-to-try seems reasonable and is already practiced. While few are willing to bring them up in public discussions, there are some negative aspects to the right-to-try. I will turn to some of those now.

One obvious concern is that terminally ill patients do have something to lose. Experimental treatments could kill them earlier or they could cause suffering. As such, it does make sense to have limits on the freedom to try. At least for now it is the job of the FDA and medical professionals to protect patients from such harms even if the patients want to roll the dice.

This concern can be addressed by appealing to freedom of choice, provided patients can provide informed consent. This does create a problem: as little is known about the treatment, the patient cannot be well informed about the risks and benefits. But, as I have argued often elsewhere, I accept that people have a right to make such choices, even if these choices are self-damaging. I apply this principle consistently, so I accept that it grants the right-to-try, the right to get married, the right to eat poorly, the right to use drugs, and so on.

The usual counters to such arguments from freedom involve arguments about how people must be protected from themselves, arguments that such freedoms are “just wrong” or arguments about how such freedoms harm others. The idea is that moral or practical considerations override the freedom of the individual. This can be a reasonable counter, and a strong case can be made against allowing people the right to engage in a freedom that could harm or kill them. However, my position on such freedoms requires me to accept that a person has the right-to-try, even if it is a bad idea. That said, others have an equally valid right to try to convince them otherwise and the FDA and medical professionals have an obligation to protect people, even from themselves.

A philosophical problem is determining what can, and perhaps more importantly cannot, be owned. There is considerable dispute over this subject and an example is the debate over whether people can be owned. A more recent example is the debate over ownership of genes. While each dispute needs to be addressed on its own merits, it is worth considering the broader question of what can and what cannot be property. It must be noted that this is not just about legal ownership.

Addressing this subject begins with the foundation of ownership, which justifies the claim that one owns something. This is the philosophical problem of property. Most people are probably unaware this is a philosophical problem as people tend to accept the current system of ownership, though people do criticize its particulars. But, to simply assume the existing system of property is correct (or incorrect) is to beg the question and the problem of property needs to be addressed without simply assuming it has been solved.

One practical solution to the problem of property is to argue property is a convention. This can be formalized convention (such as laws) or informal convention (such as traditions) or a combination of both. One reasonable view is property legalism, that ownership is defined by the law. On this view, whatever the law defines as property is property. Another reasonable view is that of property relativism, that ownership is defined by cultural practices (which can include the laws). Roughly put, whatever the culture accepts as property is property. These approaches correspond to the moral theories of legalism (that the law determines morality) and ethical relativism (that culture determines morality).

The conventionalist approach seems to have the virtues of being practical and of avoiding mucking about in philosophical disputes. If there is a dispute about what (or who) can be owned, the matter is settled by the courts, by force of arms or by force of persuasion. There is no question of what view is right as winning makes the view right. While this approach does have its appeal, it is not without problems.

Trying to solve the problem of property with the conventionalist approach does lead to a dilemma: the conventions are either based on some foundation or they are not. If the conventions are not based on a foundation other than force (of arms or persuasion), then they are arbitrary. If this is the case, the only reasons to accept such conventions are practical, such as to avoid harm (such as being killed) or to profit.

If the conventions have a foundation, then the problem is determining what it might be. One approach is to argue that people have a moral obligation to obey the law or follow cultural conventions. While this would provide a basis for a moral obligation to accept the conventions, these conventions would still be arbitrary. Roughly put, those under the conventions would have a reason to accept whatever conventions exist, but no reason to accept a specific convention over another. This is analogous to the ethics of divine command theory, the view that what God commands is good because He commands it and what He forbids is evil because He forbids it. As should be expected, the “convention command” view of property suffers from problems analogous to those suffered by divine command theory, such as the arbitrariness of the commands and the lack of justification beyond obedience to authority.

One classic moral solution to the problem of property is offered by utilitarianism. On this view, the theory of property that creates more positive value than negative value for the morally relevant beings would be the morally correct practice. It does make property a contingent matter since radically different conceptions of property can be thus justified depending on the changing balance of harms and benefits. So, for example, while a capitalistic conception of property might be justified at a certain place and time, that might shift in favor of a socialist conception. As always, utilitarianism leaves the door open for intuitively horrifying practices that manage to fulfill that condition. However, this approach also has an intuitive appeal in that the view of property that creates the greatest good would be the morally correct view of property.

A classic attempt to solve the problem of property is offered by John Locke. He begins with the view that God created everyone and gave everyone the earth in common. While God does own us, He is cool about it and effectively lets each person own themselves. As such, I own myself and you own yourself. From this, as Locke sees it, it follows that each of us owns our labor.

For Locke, property is created by mixing one’s labor with the common goods of the earth. To illustrate, suppose we are washed up on an island owned by no one. If I collect wood and make a shelter, I have mixed my labor with the wood, thus making the shelter my own. If you make a shelter with your labor, it is thus yours. On Locke’s view, it would be theft for me to take your shelter and theft for you to take mine.

This labor theory of ownership quickly runs into problems, such as working out a proper account of mixing of labor and what to do when people are born on a planet on which everything is already claimed and owned. However, the idea that the foundation of property is that each person owns themselves is an intriguing one and does have some interesting implications about what can (and cannot) be owned. One implication would seem to be that people are owners and cannot be owned. For Locke, this would be because each person is owned by themselves, and ownership of other things is conferred by mixing one’s labor with what is common to all.

It could be contended that people create other people by their labor (literally in the case of the mother) and thus parents own their children. A counter to this is that although people do engage in sexual activity that results in the production of other people, this should not be considered labor in the sense required for ownership. After all, the parents just have sex and then the biological processes do all the work of constructing the new person. One might also play the metaphysical card and contend that what makes the person a person is not manufactured by the parents but is something metaphysical like the soul or consciousness (for Locke, a person is their consciousness and the consciousness is within a soul).

Even if it is accepted that parents do not own their children, there is the obvious question about manufactured beings that are like people such as intelligent robots or biological constructs. These beings would be created by mixing labor with other property (or unowned materials) and thus would seem to be things that could be owned. Unless, of course, they are owners like humans.

One approach is to consider them analogous to children. It is not how children are made that makes them unsuitable for ownership, it is what they are. On this view, people-like constructs would be owners rather than things to be owned. The intuitive counter is that people-like manufactured beings would be property like anything else that is manufactured. The challenge is, of course, to show that this would not entail that children are property. After all, considerable resources and work can be expended to create a child (such as IVF, surrogacy, and perhaps someday artificial wombs), yet intuitively they would not be property. This does point to a rather important question: is it what something is that makes it unsuitable to be owned or how it is created?

 

While there are many moral theories, two of the best known are utilitarianism and deontology. John Stuart Mill presents the paradigm of utilitarian ethics: the morality of an action is dependent on the happiness and unhappiness it creates for the morally relevant beings. Moral status, for this sort of utilitarian, is defined in terms of the being’s capacity to experience happiness and unhappiness. Beings count to the degree they can experience these states. A being that could not experience either would not count, except to the degree that what happened to it affected beings that could experience happiness and unhappiness. Of course, even a being that has moral status merely gets included in the utilitarian calculation. As such, all beings are means to the ends of maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness.

Kant, the paradigm deontologist, rejects the utilitarian approach.  Instead, he contends that ethics is a matter of following the correct moral rules. He also contends that rational beings are ends and are not to be treated merely as means to ends. For Kant, the possible moral statuses of a being are binary: rational beings have status as ends, non-rational beings are mere objects and are thus means. As would be expected, these moral theories present two different approaches to the ethics of slavery.

For the classic utilitarian, the ethics of slavery would be assessed in terms of the happiness and unhappiness generated by the activities of slavery. On the face of it, an assessment of slavery would seem to result in the conclusion that slavery is morally wrong. After all, slavery typically generates unhappiness on the part of the enslaved. This unhappiness is not only a matter of the usual abuse and exploitation a slave suffers, but also the general damage to happiness that arises from being regarded as property rather than a person. While the slave owners are clearly better off than the slaves, the practice of slavery is often harmful to the happiness of the slave owners as well; one might argue they deserve such suffering and could avoid it by not being slave owners. As such, the harms of slavery would seem to make it immoral on utilitarian grounds.

For the utilitarian the immorality of slavery is contingent on its consequences: if enslaving people creates more unhappiness than happiness, then it is wrong. However, if enslaving people were to create more happiness than unhappiness, then it would be morally acceptable. A reply to this is to argue that slavery, by its very nature, would always create more unhappiness than happiness. As such, while the evil of slavery is contingent, it would always turn out to be wrong.

An interesting counter is to put the burden of proof on those who claim that such slavery would be wrong. That is, they would need to show that a system of slavery that maximized happiness was morally wrong. On the face of it, showing that something that created more good than bad is still bad would be challenging. However, there are numerous appeal to intuition arguments that aim to do just that. The usual approach is to present a scenario that generates more happiness than unhappiness, but intuitively seems to be wrong or at least makes one feel morally uncomfortable. Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is often used in this role, for it asks us to imagine a utopia that exists at the cost of the suffering of one person.  There are also other options, such as arguing within the context of another moral theory. For example, a natural rights theory that included a right to liberty could be used to argue that slavery is wrong because it violates rights, even if happened to be a happiness maximizing slavery.

A utilitarian can also “bite the bullet” and argue that even if such slavery might seem intuitively wrong, this is a mere prejudice on our part, most likely fueled by examples the unhappy slaveries that pervade history. While utilitarian moral theory can obviously be applied to the ethics of slavery, it is not the only word on the matter. As such, I now turn to the Kantian approach.

As noted above, Kant divides reality into two distinct classes of beings. Rational beings exist as ends and to use them solely as means would be, for Kant, morally wrong. Non-rational beings, which includes non-human animals, are mere objects. Interestingly, as I have noted in other essays and books, Kant argues that animals should be treated well because treating them badly can incline humans to treat other humans badly. This, I have argued elsewhere, gives animals an ersatz moral status.

On the face of it, under Kant’s theory the very nature of slavery would make it immoral. If persons are rational beings and slavery treats people as objects, then slavery would be wrong. First, it would involve treating a rational being solely as a means. After all, it is difficult to imagine that enslaving a person is consistent with treating them as an end rather than just as a means. Second, it would also seem to involve a willful category error by treating a rational being (which is not an object) as an object. Slavery would thus be fundamentally incoherent because it purports that non-objects (people) are objects.

Since Kantian ethics do not focus on happiness and unhappiness, even a deliriously happy system of slavery would still be wrong for Kant. Kant does, of course, get criticized because his system relegates non-rational beings into the realm of objects, thus lumping together squirrels and stones, apes and asphalt, tapirs and twigs and so on. As such, if non-rational beings could be enslaved, then this would not matter morally (unless doing so impacted rational beings in negative ways). The easy and obvious reply to this concern is to argue that non-rational beings could not be enslaved because slavery is when people are taken to be property and non-rational beings are not people on Kant’s view. Non-rational animals can be mistreated and harmed, but they cannot be enslaved.

It is, of course, possible to have an account of what it is to be a person that extends personhood beyond rational beings. For example, opponents of abortion often contend the zygote is a person despite its obvious lack of rationality. Fortunately, it would be easy enough to create a modification of Kant’s theory in which what matters is being a person (however defined) rather than being a rational being.

Thus, utilitarian ethical theories leave open the possibility that slavery could be morally acceptable while under a Kantian account slavery would always be morally wrong.

 

While slavery is still practiced around the world, it is now broadly seen as evil. While apologists for slavery are relatively few, there remains the question as to why slavery is evil.

It is tempting to define the wrongness of slavery in terms of exploitation and abuse. While such abuse and exploitation are wrong, they are not adequate in explaining the wrongness of slavery itself. This is because abuse and exploitation can exist apart from slavery, thus showing that these are not sufficient conditions for slavery. Being abused and exploited does not entail that one is a slave. Examples of such abuse and exploitation are, unfortunately, abundant. If you work for a living, you are most likely exploited but you are almost certainly not a slave. Countless people suffer abuse in relationships from the very people who should be kind to them.

Abuse and exploitation are also not necessary conditions of slavery. That is, a person can be enslaved without being abused or exploited. As noted in an earlier essay, there have been slaves who have enjoyed considerable power and status. Despite their status and power, such slavery is still wrong. As such, it is not the abuse or exploitation that makes slavery wrong.

This is not to say that abuse and exploitation do not matter. When present, they compound the basic evil of slavery and make the bad even worse. Slavery is also strongly connected to abuse and exploitation. The belief that enslaved people are property makes it easy for others to justify and get away with abuse and exploitation. While free people are abused or exploited, they usually have more legal protection than the enslaved. So, while the abuse and exploitation matter, slavery serves as an enabler of mistreatment, and this contribute to the wrongness of slavery. 

What makes slavery morally wrong, then, is that it is perceived as transforming people into objects that can be owned. The claim of ownership over another person is the denial of their personhood and all that goes with it. For those with liberal Lockean inclinations, this denial of personhood is a denial of the basic rights to life, liberty and property. Since a slave is supposed to be property, their life supposedly belongs to the owner. Hence, slaveowners usually see themselves as having the right to kill or harm their slaves. I do not deny that slaves are sometimes protected by laws and slavery does come in degrees. But every form of slavery must assume that the owner has ownership over the life of the slave and can use compulsion to maintain slavery.

Slavery, by its very nature, is a violation of a person’s liberty. They are denied freedom of choice and denied agency. As the owner sees it, they have the right to make decisions for their property such as what work they do, who they have sex with, and what faith they might follow. This is not to say that slaves do not have some freedom or that free people are completely free. It is to say that the freedoms of slaves are limited and often restricted to minor decisions. As noted above, slavery does admit of degrees and in the past some favored or high-status slaves might enjoy considerable liberty. For example, a Mamluk ruler might enjoy greater liberty than a non-slave in their empire. It can be objected that such a slave would be a slave in name only. After all, a person of such status and power would be far better off than most despite being a slave. The challenge to those who argue that slavery is inherently wrong is to show that such an exalted slave is still wronged by their slavery. One approach is to appeal to the intuition that however exalted, the slave is still a slave. That is, regarded as property rather than a free person and this is inherently wrong.

Being regarded as property, slaves often cannot own property of their own. After all, being owned entails that their owner owns what they own. There are, of course, exceptions to this and sometimes slaves are paid for their work and can even eventually buy themselves out of slavery. While this does show, once again, that there are diverse types of slavery, the idea that a person should need to buy themselves seems absurd on the face of it.

Thus, while slavery does enable a multitude of evils, the core evil of slavery is the belief that a person can be owned as an object.

 

The term “robot” and the idea of a robot rebellion were introduced by Karel Capek in Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti. “Robot” is derived from the Czech term for “forced labor” which was itself based on a term for slavery. Robots and slavery are thus linked in science-fiction. This leads to a philosophical question: can a machine be a slave? Sorting this matter out requires an adequate definition of slavery followed by determining whether the definition can fit a machine.

In simple terms, slavery is the ownership of a person by another person. While slavery is often seen in absolute terms (one is either enslaved or not), there are degrees of slavery in that the extent of ownership can vary. For example, a slave owner might grant their slaves some free time or allow them some limited autonomy. This is analogous to being ruled under a political authority in that there are degrees of being ruled and degrees of freedom under that rule.

Slavery is also often characterized in terms of forcing a person to engage in uncompensated labor. While this account does have some appeal, it is flawed. After all, it could be claimed that slaves are compensated by being provided with food, shelter and clothing. Slaves are sometimes even paid wages and there are cases in which slaves have purchased their own freedom using these wages. The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were slaves yet were paid and enjoyed a socioeconomic status above many of the free subjects of the empire.  As such, compelled unpaid labor is not the defining quality of slavery. However, it is intuitively plausible to regard compelled unpaid labor as a form of slavery in that the compeller purports to own the laborer’s time without consent or compensation.

Slaves are also often presented as powerless and abused, but this is not always the case. For example, the slave soldier Mamluks were treated as property that could be purchased, yet  enjoyed considerable status and power. The Janissaries, as noted above, also enjoyed considerable influence and power. There are free people who are powerless and routinely abused. Thus, being powerless and abused is neither necessary nor sufficient for slavery. As such, the defining characteristic of slavery is the claiming of ownership; that the slave is property.

Obviously, not all forms of ownership are slavery. My running shoes are not enslaved by me, nor is my smartphone. This is because shoes and smartphones lack the moral status required to be considered enslaved. The matter becomes more controversial when it comes to animals.

Most people accept that humans have the right to own animals. For example, a human who has a dog or cat is referred to as the pet’s owner. But there are people who take issue with the ownership of animals. While some philosophers, such as Kant and Descartes, regard animals as objects, other philosophers argue they have moral status. For example, some utilitarians accept that the capacity of animals to feel pleasure and pain grants them moral status. This is typically taken as a status that requires their suffering be considered rather than one that morally forbids their being owned. That is, it is seen as morally acceptable to own animals if they are treated well. There are even people who consider any ownership of animals to be wrong but their use of the term “slavery” for the ownership of animals seems more metaphorical than a considered philosophical position.

While I think that treating animals as property is morally wrong, I would not characterize the ownership of most animals as slavery. This is because most animals lack the status required to be enslaved. To use an analogy, denying animals religious freedom, the freedom of expression, the right to vote and so on does not oppress animals because they are not the sort of beings that can exercise these rights. This is not to say that animals cannot be wronged, just that their capabilities limit the wrongs that can be done to them. So, while an animal can be wronged by being cruelly confined, it cannot be wronged by denying it freedom of religion.

People, because of their capabilities, can be enslaved. This is because the claim of ownership over them is a denial of their rightful status. The problem is working out exactly what it is to be a person and this is something that philosophers have struggled with since the origin of the idea of persons. Fortunately, I do not need to provide such a definition when considering whether machines can be enslaved and can rely on an analogy to make my case.

While I believe that other humans are (usually) people, thanks to the problem of other minds I do not know that they are really people. Since I have no epistemic access to their (alleged) thoughts and feelings, I do not know if they have the qualities needed to be people or if they are just mindless automatons exhibiting an illusion of the personhood that I possess. Because of this, I must use an argument by analogy: these other beings act like I do, I am a person, so they are also people. To be consistent, I need to extend the same reasoning to beings that are not humans, which would include machines. After all, without cutting open the apparent humans I meet, I have no idea whether they are organic beings or machines. So, the mere appearance of being organic or mechanical is not relevant, I must judge by how the entity functions. For all I know, you are a machine. For all you know, I am a machine. Yet it seems reasonable to regard both of us as people.

While machines can engage in some person-like behavior now, they cannot yet pass this analogy test. That is, they cannot consistently exhibit the capacities exhibited by a known person, namely me. However, this does not mean that machines could never pass this test. That is, behave in ways that would be sufficient to be accepted as a person if it that behavior was done by an organic human.

A machine that could pass this test would merit being regarded as a person in the same way that humans passing this test merit this status. As such, if a human person can be enslaved, then a robot person could also be enslaved.

It is, of course, tempting to ask if a robot with such behavior would really be a person. The same question can be asked about humans, thanks to that problem of other minds.

 

This is the last of the virtual cheating series and the focus is on virtual people. The virtual aspect is easy enough to define; these are entities that exist entirely within the realm of computer memory and do not exist as physical beings in that they lack bodies of the traditional sort. They are, of course, physical beings in the broad sense, existing as data within physical memory systems.

An example of such a virtual being is a non-player character (NPC) in a video game. These coded entities range from enemies that fight the player to characters that engage in the illusion of conversation. As it now stands, these NPCs are simple beings, though players can have very strong emotional responses and even (one-sided) relationships with them. Bioware and Larian Studios excel at creating NPCs that players get very involved in and their games often feature elaborate relationship and romance systems.

While these coded entities are usually designed to look like and imitate the behavior of people, they are not people. They are, at best, the illusion of people. As such, while humans could become emotionally attached to these virtual entities (just as humans can become attached to objects), the idea of cheating with an NPC is on par with the idea of cheating with your phone.

As technology improves, virtual people will become more and more person-like. As with the robots discussed in the previous essay, if a virtual person were a person, then cheating would seem possible. Also, as with the discussion of robots, there could be degrees of virtual personhood, thus allowing for degrees of cheating. Since virtual people are essentially robots in the virtual world, the discussion of robots in that essay applies analogously to the virtual robots of the virtual world. There is, however, one obvious break in the analogy: unlike robots, virtual people lack physical bodies. This leads to the question of whether a human can virtually cheat with a virtual person or if cheating requires a physical sexual component that a virtual being cannot possess.

While, as discussed in a previous essay, there is a form of virtual sex that involves physical devices that stimulate the sexual organs, this is not “pure” virtual sex. After all, the user is using a VR headset to “look” at the partner, but the stimulation is all done mechanically. Pure virtual sex would require the sci-fi sort of virtual reality of cyberpunk: a person fully “jacked in” to the virtual reality so all the inputs and outputs are directly to and from the brain. The person would have a virtual body in the virtual reality that mediates their interaction with that world, rather than having crude devices stimulating their physical body.

Assuming the technology is good enough, a person could have virtual sex with a virtual person (or another person who is also jacked into the virtual world). On the one hand, this would obviously not be sex in the usual sense as those involved would have no physical contact. This would avoid many of the usual harms of traditional cheating as STDs and pregnancies would be impossible (although sexual malware and virtual babies might be possible). This does leave open the door for concerns about emotional infidelity.

If the virtual experience is indistinguishable from the experience of physical sex, then it could be argued that the lack of physical contact is irrelevant. At this point, the classic problem of the external world becomes relevant. The gist of this problem is that because I cannot get outside of my experiences to “see” that they are really being caused by external things that seem to be causing them, I can never know if there is really an external world. For all I know, I am dreaming right now or already in a virtual world. While this is usually seen as the nightmare scenario in epistemology, George Berkeley embraced this view in his idealism. He argued that there is no metaphysical matter and that “to be is to be perceived.” On his view, all that exists are minds and within them are ideas. Crudely put, Berkeley’s reality is virtual and God is the server. Berkely stresses that he does not, for example, deny that apples or rocks exist. They do and can be experienced, they are just not made out of metaphysical matter but are composed of ideas.

So, if cheating is defined in a way that requires physical sexual activity, knowing whether a person is cheating or not requires solving the problem of the external world. There is the philosophical possibility that there never has been any cheating since there might be no physical world. If sexual activity is instead defined in terms of behavior and sensations without references to a need for physical systems, then virtual cheating would be possible, assuming the technology can reach the required level.  

While this discussion of virtual cheating is currently theoretical, it does provide an interesting way to explore what it is about cheating (if anything) that is wrong. As noted at the start of the series, many of the main concerns about cheating are physical concerns about STDs and pregnancy. These concerns are avoided by virtual cheating. What remains are the emotions of those involved and the agreements between them. As a practical matter, the future is likely to see people working out the specifics of their relationships in terms of what sort of virtual and robotic activities are allowed and which are forbidden. While people can simply agree to anything, there is the deeper question of the rational foundation of relationship boundaries. For example, whether it is reasonable to consider interaction with a sexbot cheating or elaborate masturbation. A brave new world awaits and perhaps what happens in VR will stay in VR.

 

While science fiction has speculated about robot-human sex and romance, current technology offers little more than sex dolls. In terms of the physical aspects of sexual activity, the development of more “active” sexbots is an engineering problem; getting the machinery to perform properly and in ways that are safe for the user (or unsafe, if that is what one wants). Regarding cheating, while a suitably advanced sexbot could actively engage in sexual activity with a human, the sexbot would not be a person and hence the standard definition of cheating (as discussed in the previous essays) would not be met. This is because sexual activity with such a sexbot would be analogous to using any other sex toy (such as a simple “blow up doll” or vibrator). Since a person cannot cheat with an object, such activity would not be cheating. Some people might take issue with their partner sexing it up with a sexbot and forbid such activity. While a person who broke such an agreement about robot sex would be acting wrongly, they would not be cheating. Unless, of course, the sexbot was enough like a person for cheating to occur.

There are already efforts to make sexbots more like people in terms of their “mental” functions. For example, being able to create the illusion of conversation via AI. As such efforts progress and sexbots act more and more like people, the philosophical question of whether they really are people will become increasingly important to address. While the main moral concerns would be about the ethics of how sexbots are treated, there is also the matter of cheating.

If a sexbot were a person, then it would be possible to cheat with them; just as one could cheat with an organic person. The fact that a sexbot might be purely mechanical would not be relevant to the ethics of the cheating, what would matter would be that a person was engaging in sexual activity with another person when their relationship with another person forbids such behavior.

It could be objected that the mechanical nature of the sexbot would matter because sex requires organic parts of the right sort and thus a human cannot really have sex with a sexbot, no matter how the parts of the robot are shaped.

One counter to this is to use a functional argument. To draw an analogy to the philosophy of mind known as functionalism, it could be argued that the composition of the relevant parts does not matter, what matters is their functional role. A such, a human could have sex with a sexbot that had parts that functioned in the right way.

Another counter is to argue that the composition of the parts does not matter, rather it is the sexual activity with a person that matters. To use an analogy, a human could cheat on another human even if their only sexual contact with the other human involved sex toys. In this case, what matters is that the activity is sexual and involves people, not that objects rather than body parts are used. As such, sex with a sexbot person could be cheating if the human was breaking their commitment.

While knowing whether a sexbot is a person would (mostly) settle the cheating issue, there remains the epistemic problem of other minds. In this case, the problem is determining whether a sexbot has a mind that qualifies them as a person. There can, of course, be varying degrees of confidence in the determination and there could also be degrees of personness. Or, rather, degrees of how person-like a sexbot might be.

Thanks to Descartes and Turing, there is a language test for having a mind. If a sexbot can engage in conversation that is indistinguishable from conversation with a human, then it would be reasonable to regard the sexbot as a person. That said, there might be good reasons for having a more extensive testing system for personhood which might include testing for emotions and self-awareness. But, from a practical standpoint, if a sexbot can engage in a level of behavior that would qualify them for person status if they were a human capable of that behavior, then it would be just as reasonable to accept the sexbot as a person. To do otherwise would seem to be mere prejudice. As such, a human person could cheat with a sexbot that could pass this test. At least it would be cheating as far as we knew.

Since it will be a long time (if ever) before a sexbot person is constructed, what is of immediate concern are sexbots that are person-like. That is, they do not meet the standards that would qualify a human as a person, yet have behavior that is sophisticated enough that they seem to be more than objects. One might consider an analogy here to animals: they do not qualify as human-level people, but their behavior does qualify them for a moral status above that of objects (at least for most moral philosophers and all decent people). In this case, the question about cheating becomes a question of whether the sexbot is person-like enough to enable cheating to take place.

One approach is to consider the matter from the perspective of the human. If the human engaged in sexual activity with the sexbot regards them as being person-like enough, then the activity can be seen as cheating because they would believe they are cheating.  An objection to this is that it does not matter what the human thinks about the sexbot, what matters is its actual status. After all, if a human regards a human they are cheating with as an object, this does not mean they are not cheating. Likewise, if a human feels like they are cheating, it does not mean they really are.

This can be countered by arguing that how the human feels does matter. After all, if the human thinks they are cheating and they are engaging in the behavior, they are still acting wrongly. To use an analogy, if a person thinks they are stealing something and takes it anyway, they  have acted wrongly even if it turns out that they were not stealing. The obvious objection to this line of reasoning is that while a person who thinks they are stealing did act wrongly by engaging in what they thought was theft, they did not actually commit a theft. Likewise, a person who thinks they are engaging in cheating, but are not, would be acting wrongly in that they are doing something they think is wrong, but not cheating.

Another approach is to consider the matter objectively so that the degree of cheating would be proportional to the degree that the sexbot is person-like. On this view, cheating with a person-like sexbot would not be as bad as cheating with a full person. The obvious objection is that one is either cheating or not; there are no degrees of cheating. The obvious counter is to try to appeal to the intuition that there could be degrees of cheating in this manner. To use an analogy, just as there can be degrees of cheating in terms of the sexual activity engaged in, there can also be degrees of cheating in terms of how person-like the sexbot is.

While person-like sexbots are still the stuff of science fiction, I suspect the future will see some interesting divorce cases in which this matter is debated in court.

 

As discussed in the previous essays, classic cheating involves sexual activity with a person while one is in a committed relationship that is supposed to exclude such activity. Visual VR can allow interaction with another person, but while such activity might have sexual content (such as nakedness) it would not be sexual activity in the sense that requires physical contact. Such behavior, as argued in the previous essay, might constitute a form of emotional infidelity but not physical infidelity.

One of the iron laws of technology is that any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Virtual reality (VR), in its various forms, is no exception. For the most part, VR is limited to sight and sound. That is, virtual reality is mostly just virtual visual reality (VVR). However, researchers are hard at work developing tactile devices for the erogenous zones, thus allowing people to interact sexually across the internet. This is the start of what could be called “robust” VR that involves more than just sight and sound. This sort of technology might make virtual cheating suitably analogous to real cheating.

Most current research is focused on developing devices for men to use to have “virtual sex.” By the standards of traditional cheating, this sort of activity would not count as cheating. This is because the sexual interaction is not with another person, but with devices. The obvious analogy here is to with less-sophisticated sex toys. If, for example, using a vibrator or blow-up-doll does not count as cheating because the device is not a person, then the same should apply to more complicated devices, such as VR sex suits that can be used with VR sex programs. There is also the question of whether such activity counts as sex. On the one hand, it is some sort of sexual activity. On the other hand, using such a device would not end a person’s tenure as a virgin.

It is worth considering that a user could develop an emotional relationship with their virtual sex “partner” and thus engage in a form of emotional infidelity. An objection is that this virtual sex partner is not a person and thus cheating would not be possible since one cannot cheat on a person with an object.

This can be countered by considering the classic problem of other minds. Because all we have access to is external behavior, one never knows if what seem to be people really are people; that is, they think and feel in the right ways (or at all). Since I do not know if anyone else has a mind as I do, I could have emotional attachments to entities that are not really people at all and never know. So, I could never know if I was cheating in the traditional sense if I had to know that I was interacting with another person. As might be suspected, this sort of epistemic excuse (“baby, I did not know she was a person because of the problem of other minds”) is unlikely to be accepted by anyone (even epistemologists). What would seem to matter is not knowing that the other entity is a person but having the right (or rather wrong) sort of emotional involvement. So, if a person could have feelings towards the virtual sexual partner that they “interact with”, then this sort of behavior could count as virtual cheating because of the one-way emotions.

There are also devices that allow people to interact sexually across the internet; with each partner having a device that communicates with their partner’s corresponding device. Put roughly, this is remote control sex. This sort of activity does avoid many of the possible harms of traditional cheating: there is no risk of pregnancy nor risk of STDs (assuming the equipment is clean). While these considerations do impact utilitarian calculations, the question remains as to whether this would count as cheating or not.

On the one hand, the argument could be made that this is not direct sexual contact as each person is only directly “engaged” with their device. To use an analogy, imagine that someone has (unknown to you) connected your computer to a “stimulation device” so that every time you use your mouse or keyboard, someone is “stimulated.” In such cases, it would be odd to say that you were having sex with that person. As such, this sort of thing would not be cheating.

On the other hand, there is the matter of intent. In the case of the mouse example, the user has no idea what they are doing and it is that, rather than the remote-controlled nature of the activity, that matters. In the case of remote-control interaction, the users are intentionally engaging in the activity and know what they are doing. The fact that is happening via the internet does not matter. The moral status is the same if they were in the same room, using the devices “manually” on each other. As such, while there is not actual bodily contact, the activity is sexual and controlled by those involved. As such, it would morally count as cheating. There can, of course, be a debate about the degrees of cheating. One might argue that cheating using sex toys is not as bad as cheating using body parts. I will, however, leave that to others to discuss.

In the next essay I will discuss cheating in the context sex with robots and person-like VR beings.