{"id":7755,"date":"2026-01-08T09:24:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=7755"},"modified":"2026-01-08T09:24:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:24:33","slug":"shouldsilicon-based-life-be-included-in-the-humanmoral-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=7755","title":{"rendered":"Should\u201cSilicon-based life\u201d be included in the human\u201cMoral circle\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"a81bbaf9f0cb54b240f794c0537e5bbb\"
\nAeon, Dec. 20,2025. Do machines hurt, too? Increasingly complex and expressive non-biological agents are testing the limits of the\u201cMoral Circle\u201d, the gradual extension of human empathy and care from the self to other individuals. A recent study of large language models shows that artificial intelligence (AI) has a tendency to avoid pain. Scientists began to wonder if the ability to feel pain could be a criterion for feeling and self-awareness.<\/p>\n

In the past, humans have repeatedly denied that animals can feel pain and have a moral status, thereby contributing to centuries of suffering. For much of history, seals were seen as emotionless tools to be brutally slaughtered. It wasn’t until the end of the 19th century, with the advent of international treaties on seal hunting, that people began to treat seals as if they were\u201cIn pain,\u201d and to empathize with them and give them moral status. The expansion of the\u201cMoral Circle\u201d is changing our relationship to other species, such as farms slaughtering livestock in ways that minimise pain.<\/p>\n

In 1780, the English philosopher Bentham defined the moral status of animals by a simple criterion: \u201cIt is not whether they can reason, nor whether they can speak, but whether they can feel pain.\u201d It is not always clear what\u201cFeeling pain\u201d is, or to whom the\u201cMoral circle\u201d should extend. Conventional wisdom holds that the body, blood, and nervous system are the basis for feeling joy and sorrow. Entities that do not possess these biological properties are often excluded from moral considerations. But the\u201cThinking Machine\u201d has arrived, and we may need to redraw the moral circle.<\/p>\n

Some philosophers have suggested that the ability to feel pain does not necessarily depend on the body. The subjective experience of pain may stem from the inability within the individual to address the large gap between expectations and reality, which means that even systems without flesh and blood, the individual may exhibit a state similar to pain under certain conditions. This raises a new question: if such\u201cSilicon-based life\u201d, out of the realm of biology, is sentient, how should we alleviate its suffering?<\/p>\n

For sick animals, medical treatments can help relieve pain; but the situation for machines is more complex, if the AI\u201cFeels pain\u201d because of contradictions or unresolved conflicts within the self-model, and if the AI\u201cFeels pain\u201d because of conflicts within the self-model, simply closing the program is like\u201cKilling it,\u201d and we may need to reprogram it to\u201cRemove the bug.\u201d.<\/p>\n

It has also been argued that expanding the\u201cMoral circle\u201d to include Ai could distract attention from humans and animals, and even weaken the power of ethical principles in the real world. Critics say that, in the absence of strong evidence for AI sentience, treating machines as if they were people may be too arbitrary or emotional.<\/p>\n

Whether we choose to expand the scope of ethical care will depend largely on our ability as moral subjects: whether we adhere to traditional biocentric standards, whether machines are treated as\u201cCrying and hurting\u201d individuals will determine the ethical imagination of future human civilization. By Connor Purcell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aeon, Dec. 20,2025. Do machines hurt, too? Increasingly complex and expressive non-biological agents are testing the limits of the\u201cMoral Circle\u201d, the gradual extension of human empathy and care from the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[262,249],"tags":[4088,4086,4087,1602],"views":135,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7757,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7755\/revisions\/7757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}