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The undeserving

All living beings have moral worth according to biocentrism, but what about non-living things such as artifacts? When someone confronts you with the idea that unconscious living beings have moral worth, it might seem absurd. That someone, may follow up on this statement by explaining the reasoning behind it; that a creature doesn’t need to have interests in order to have something in its interest, thus making it worthy of moral consideration, and that one might identify those with moral worth through the constraints we, as moral agents, place in our interactions with them.

You may not be convinced, and furthermore, the question may arise as to why inanimate objects do not possess moral worth by the same applied reasoning. Don’t these arguments imply that non-living things should also be subject to moral consideration?

The goal of a car

When a car is constructed the purpose in mind is to provide a vessel capable of transporting a person or several persons from one place to another, and it should be able to do this with a speed that matches or exceeds the set speed limits. Despite not being able to desire the aid it requires to fulfil its purpose, it is in the car’s interest to keep on functioning. If it got damaged it would not be able to fulfil its purpose and therefore be harmed. Getting a service check on a regular basis and changing worn down parts before they break will be of benefit to the car because it will keep it running longer. Considering the above, shouldn’t we constrain our interaction with these machines in some way or another?

No independent life

Sterba responds by asserting that moral agents only have obligations toward beings who would benefit from non interference. This accounts for the reason why things, such as cars and artifacts, cannot be said to have moral worth; they do not benefit from being left alone. If left alone, the elements will slowly take its toll on them , hereby indicating that they need a sustaining environment to carry on functioning. Moral agents are not under any positive obligation to provide such an environment.

There is yet another reason for why machines and artifacts are not moral subjects beyond their need for positive support. Machines cannot be benefited and harmed except derivatively through their ability to serve the (instrumental) purposes of their creators or owners. It is the human driver who is affected and conceivably harmed if the car crashes, not the car in itself.

Our organs

The same arguments apply to hearts and kidneys as they require a certain kind of sustaining environment. As long as they’re healthy and belonging to oneself there is no real issue in terms of moral considerations according to Sterba, because one would surely want to preserve one’s own heart and kidneys. However, the situation changes if they turn out to be damaged or do not belong to oneself, in which case moral agents have no positive moral obligation to preserve the organs as such.

Intelligent life

Then what about computers? Is it possible to construct machines so self-sufficient and independent that it would make sense to think of them as beings who can be benefited and harmed in their own right, and have a good of their own? If not at present, maybe sometime in the future. Perhaps we’ll be faced with situations similar to those in Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence: AI, a film wherein Haley Joel Osment plays an advanced robotic child craving love and affection from its human adoptive parents.

Sterba acknowledges this possible development and the moral predicaments it would entail, but states that at the moment the machines that we actually deal with cannot be benefited or harmed except derivatively through their ability to serve the purposes of their creators or owners. Sterba does not comment any further on what effect such a development would have on his theory.

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