Synthetic Moral Agents or Sophisticated Mimics?

Abstract

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have produced AI systems capable of generating moral judgments that are frequently indistinguishable from those offered by human ethicists. This development has reignited a longstanding philosophical debate: can artificial systems genuinely engage in ethical reasoning, or do they merely simulate the outward appearance of moral thought? This paper argues that the debate, as currently framed, rests on anthropocentric assumptions that limit productive inquiry. Drawing on posthumanist theory, new materialism, and science and technology studies (STS), the paper develops the concept of distributed moral cognition (DMC) to reframe the question. Rather than asking whether AI systems possess inner moral understanding, DMC directs attention to the conditions under which moral reasoning emerges within human-AI assemblages. The framework is applied to three conceptual cases: clinical ethics consultation, AI-generated moral philosophy, and autonomous vehicle decision-making. The paper concludes by outlining governance implications, including a model of relational accountability that moves beyond individualist blame attribution.

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