3 S1→S2: Robots Can Have Rights; Robots Should Have Rights

The counterpoint to or flipside of the negative response derives affirmation of the second statement from affirmation of the first: Robots are able to have rights; therefore robots should have rights. This is also (and perhaps surprisingly so) a rather popular stance that has considerable traction in the literature. It typically proceeds from the recognition that a robot, although currently limited in capabilities and status, will (most likely), at some point in the not-too-distant future, achieve the necessary and sufficient conditions to be considered a moral subject—that is, someone who can have rights and not just a mere thing. When this occurs (and in these arguments it is more often a matter of “when” as opposed to “if”), we will be obligated to extend to the robot some level of moral consideration. As Hilary Putnam (1964, 678) describes it in what has become a seminal essay on the subject: “I have referred to this problem [specifically the difficulty of deciding whether robots possess consciousness or not] as the problem of the ‘civil rights of robots' because that is what it may become, and much faster than any of us now expect. Given the ever-accelerating rate of both technological and social change, it is entirely possible that robots will one day exist, and argue ‘we are alive; we are conscious!' In that event, what are today only philosophical prejudices of a traditional anthropocentric and mentalistic kind would all too likely develop into conservative political attitudes.”