Artificial Consciousness and Moral Personhood
Oxford Intersections: AI in Society May 7, 2025 Kestutis Mosakas
Phenomenal consciousness is a necessary condition for machine moral status and personhood, despite significant epistemic challenges and ethical objections. The article establishes two necessity links: moral status is necessary for moral rights and personhood, and consciousness is required for moral status. It relates these implications to artificial entities, highlighting the moral significance of artificial consciousness, engaging with the epistemic difficulty of determining consciousness in machines and the alternative view that robots could have moral status without being conscious. The article maintains that epistemic challenges do not undermine the consciousness criterion but constrain its application, and alternative criteria fail to meet the threshold for moral rights and personhood.