Relational Turn

Relational Turn is the name for a shift in robot and AI ethics associated with the philosophers Mark Coeckelbergh and David Gunkel. The standard approach asks what a being is, whether it is conscious or sentient, and derives its moral status from that. The relational approach turns the question around. It starts from how we actually encounter and relate to other beings, and argues that moral status emerges in those relations rather than being read off hidden inner properties.

Why it matters

The usual route to moral patienthood runs through machine consciousness: first prove a machine can feel, then grant it consideration. The relational turn doubts that this route can ever be completed, because inner experience cannot be checked from outside, the problem the philosophical zombie makes vivid.

Coeckelbergh made the case in a 2010 paper in Ethics and Information Technology, “Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration.” Gunkel developed it in his books The Machine Question (2012) and Robot Rights (2018). In 2014 the two wrote together about animals, “Facing Animals: A Relational, Other-Oriented Approach to Moral Standing,” applying the same reasoning beyond machines.

The view has critics. Some argue that if relations decide moral status, then status depends on how people happen to feel, and companies that design lovable machines could manufacture moral claims. Defenders reply that the approach does not say any feeling creates obligations; it asks us to take the relations seriously and examine them. The relational turn is also different from proposals for electronic personhood, which were about legal liability rather than moral standing.

Example

A widower grieves when his companion app is shut down. On the standard view, nothing was wronged, because the software felt nothing. On the relational view, the question is not settled so quickly: years of conversation, care and habit formed a relation, and the way the shutdown was handled says something about how such relations should be treated, whatever the machine felt.

The AIrotic angle

Intimate AI is where the relational turn stops being abstract. Users already relate to companions as partners, often through anthropomorphism that designers encourage. The relational view takes those bonds seriously instead of dismissing them as mistakes.

That cuts both ways. It gives weight to what users feel, and it also warns that relations built by a company’s design choices are relations the company can exploit. Asking who shaped the relationship, and for whose benefit, is part of the ethics.