Introducing Complexity in Anthropology and Moral Status: a Reply to Pezzano

Abstract

Pezzano has offered some relevant considerations to my recently published article Anthropological crisis or crisis in moral status. He advocates for the need to address ontologically and anthropologically the relation between human beings and technologies from the concept of property. Despite its centrality, this concept is taken for granted in the debates on the moral status of artificial intelligence (AI). Both proponents and detractors of the anthropology of properties adopt a position towards it without analyzing in depth what exactly we mean by property. In this reply, I intend to take the thesis put forward in my paper a step further on the basis of Pezzano's commentary. I will defend the urge to explore a complex anthropology, markedly technological, and I will introduce the consequences this may have on the concept of moral status.