Electronic persons: it is premature to grant personhood to machines but never say never
The proposal by the Committee on Legal Affairs (CLA) of the European Parliament to create a specific legal status for robots, aimed at granting the status of ‘electronic persons’ to the most sophisticated autonomous ones, has triggered a discussion on whether machines can achieve self-consciousness...
| Authors: | ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Pontificia Univ. Gregoriana
2020
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| In: |
Gregorianum
Year: 2020, Volume: 101, Issue: 4, Pages: 793-812 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | The proposal by the Committee on Legal Affairs (CLA) of the European Parliament to create a specific legal status for robots, aimed at granting the status of ‘electronic persons’ to the most sophisticated autonomous ones, has triggered a discussion on whether machines can achieve self-consciousness and free will. In particular, several Catholic thinkers have expressed perplexity about this hypothesis. Their criticism is often based on the postulates of Thomistic philosophical anthropology. In this article, after showing the magnitude of the debate by means of scientometric tools, we argue that it is premature to grant personhood rights to intelligent machines, but we also underline that, given the rapid development of artificial intelligence, we should consider the plausibility of this scenario in the future. This is the case because contemporary sciences – in particular biology and computer science – pose a serious challenge to Thomistic anthropology and its modern derivations. We are also persuaded that the Catholic tradition is rich enough to make room for less rigid ideas about personhood and human nature. It seems advantageous to take into account the evolutionary perspective elaborated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in particular, his idea of the ‘Noosphere’, that is, of a thinking planet that emerges thanks to the symbiotic evolution of humanity and machines, opening the door to the recognition of non-human persons and entrusting the mission of co-creators to human beings. |
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| ISSN: | 0017-4114 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Gregorianum
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.32060/Gregorianum.101/4.2020.793-812 |