The use of autonomous and intelligent personal social robots raises questions concerning their moral standing. Moving away from the discussion about direct moral standing and exploring the normative implications of a relational approach to moral standing, this paper offers four arguments that justify giving indirect moral standing to robots under specific conditions based on some of the ways humans—as social, feeling, playing, and doubting beings—relate to them. The analogy of “the Kantian dog” is used to assist reasoning about this. The paper also discusses the implications of this approach for thinking about the moral standing of animals and humans, showing why, when, and how an indirect approach can also be helpful in these fields, and using Levinas and Dewey as sources of inspiration to discuss some challenges raised by this approach.

自主和智能个人社交机器人的使用引发了有关其道德地位的疑问。本文不再讨论直接的道德立场，而是探讨关系方法对道德立场的规范含义，提供了四个论证，这些论据证明了在特定条件下基于人类的一些社会，情感方式为机器人赋予间接道德地位的理由，游戏和怀疑存在的事物-与他们有关。用“康德狗”的比喻来辅助对此的推理。本文还讨论了这种方法对于思考动物和人类的道德地位的含义，并说明了间接方法为何，何时以及如何在这些领域中有所帮助，并以列维纳斯和杜威为灵感来源进行了讨论这种方法带来的挑战。