Interactions between Humans, Non-human Animals, and AI: Philosophical Underpinnings and Ethical Considerations

Paper submissions are invited for the special issue/collection of Topoi entitled: Interactions between Humans, Non-human Animals, and AI: Philosophical Underpinnings and Ethical Considerations. The special issue aims to catalyze further research on the ethical challenges posed by both current and future AI applications, with a particular focus on their implications for the dynamic interplay among humans, non-human animals, and AI in our increasingly interconnected society.

Special issue article publications often bring higher citations and visibility than regular papers and attract more relevant readership due to its scope. Topoi is indexed in the Web of Science under AHCI, currently in Quartile 1 and placed in the top-10 ranked Philosophy-Category journals, with a 2022 IF of 1.4 and CiteScore of 2.8.

Guest Editor(s):

Xiaojun Ding (lead editor), Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China, email

Shaun Gallagher, Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA, email

Young E. Rhee, Department of Philosophy, Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea, email

Feng Yu, Department of Psychology, Academy of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, email

DESCRIPTION:

Over the past decades, academic inquiry has explored the distinctions among humans, non-human animals, and robots, focusing on concepts such as human uniqueness and human nature (Bilewicz et al. 2011; Haslam 2006; Haslam & Loughnan 2014; Loughnan & Haslam 2007). In today’s hyperconnected world, characterized by intricate networks of entities constantly interacting and exchanging data (Swaminathan et al. 2020), the burgeoning field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly the advancement of generative AI based on Large Language Models (LLMs), presents profound ethical challenges to the interactions between humans, non-human animals, and AI systems (Bonnefon et al. 2024; Ladak et al. 2024; Yu et al. 2024).

On one front, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, and philosophers have extensively debated the moral considerations humans owe to non-human animals (Allen & Bekoff 1999; Bastian et al. 2012; Loughnan et al. 2010; Regan [1983] 2004; Singer [1975] 2002; Waytz et al. 2009). Concurrently, there is an emerging scholarly consensus advocating the extension of moral circle to include machines, robots, and AI, proposing an expansion of our ethical frameworks to accommodate these new intelligent entities (Awad et al. 2018; Bigman et al. 2019; Danaher 2020; Gordon & Gunkel 2022; Wallach & Allen 2008).

In the domain of social cognition, innovative approaches such as enactive and embodied interaction principles have been instrumental in the development of sophisticated autonomous social robots capable of seamless and reliable human interactions in specific scenarios (Gallagher 2007, 2013). Additionally, the ethical implications of AI on non-human animals have been explored, examining both the direct impacts and the perpetuation of discriminatory and unfair outcomes (Hagendorff et al. 2022; Singer & Tse 2023). In moral psychology and experimental philosophy, empirical research has globally investigated the influence of ethical reflection on human attitudes and treatments toward animals (Hou et al. 2024; Jalil et al. 2020; Schwitzgebel & Rust 2014; Schwitzgebel et al. 2020).

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Ethics of/for AI/robot/machine

• AI alignment with shared human values

• Philosophical exploration of AI applications in various scenarios (healthcare, autonomous vehicles, education, scientific research, manufacturing, e-commerce, agriculture, cybersecurity, the legal and military sectors, entertainment, finance, human resources, travel, hospitality, human enhancement, etc.)

• Morality in the AI-driven hyperconnected society

• Creative and responsible implementation of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) across various modalities

• Enactive and embodied cognition of social robots

• From self-consciousness to social interactions in human and artificial agents

• Animal ethics (factory farming, animal experimentation, zoos, pet ownership, etc.)

• AI for animals

• Anthropomorphism, dehumanization, and infrahumanization

• Humanism, transhumanism, and posthumanism

INVITED CONTRIBUTORS:

Peter Singer & Yip Fai Tse (University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, USA)

Eric Schwitzgebel (Department of Philosophy, University of California Riverside, USA)

Chris Krägeloh (PAIR Lab, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand)

Mirko Farina (Institute for Digital Economy and Artificial Systems [IDEAS], Xiamen University and Lomonosov Moscow State University, Xiamen, China) & Yuxuan Wang (Department of Culture, Communication and Media, Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, London, UK)

Brian D. Earp (Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK; Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Anna Strøe (Institute of Neurology and Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK) & Anna Ciaunica (Centre for Philosophy of Science, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal)

Sean Kugele (Department of Computer Science, Rhodes College, Memphis, USA)

Sara Incao (Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy)

David Gray (Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, Memphis, USA)

Luis de Miranda (Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland)

Bongrae Seok (Philosophy department, Alvernia University, PA, USA)

Tianqun Pan & Dorothy Zhao (Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China)

Jing Zhu (Department of Philosophy, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China)

Liang Zhao (School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China)

Liying Xu (Department of Psychology, Academy of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China)

Yufang Han (International Business School, Hainan University, Haikou, China)

Caifeng Xie & Chengcheng Jiao (Department of Philosophy, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China)

Woojin Jung (Yulgok Institute, Gangneung, Republic of Korea)

Jiwon Shim (Department of Philosophy, Dongguk University, Republic of Korea)

Submission DEADLINE: Please submit your paper by July 31, 2025. Should you not be able to meet this deadline, please contact the Lead Guest Editor (contact details below).

Online SUBMISSION: Please use the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission System Editorial Manager®. Do note that paper submissions via email are not accepted.

Author Submission’s GUIDELINES: Authors are asked to prepare their manuscripts according to the journal’s standard Submission Guidelines.

EDITORIAL PROCESS:

• When uploading your paper in Editorial Manager, please select “SI: Humans, non-human animals and AI (Ding et al)” in the drop-down menu “Article Type”.

• Papers should not exceed a maximum of 9000 words.

• All papers will undergo the journal’s standard review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance.

• Reviewers will be selected according to the Peer-Reviewer Selection policies.

• publications until final publication into an issue and available on the page Collections.

CONTACT: For any questions, please directly contact the Lead Guest Editor Xiaojun Ding, email

References:

Allen, C., & Bekoff, M. (1999). Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Kim, R. et al. (2018). The Moral Machine experiment. Nature 563(7729): 59–64.

Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38(2): 247–256.

Bigman, Y. E., Waytz, A., Alterovitz, R., & Gray, K. (2019). Holding robots responsible: The elements of machine morality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23(5): 365–368.

Bilewicz, M., Imhoff, R., & Drogosz, M. (2011). The humanity of what we eat: Conceptions of human uniqueness among vegetarians and omnivores. European Journal of Social Psychology 41(2): 201–209.

Bonnefon, J. F., Rahwan, I., & Shariff, A. (2024). The moral psychology of Artificial Intelligence. Annual Review of Psychology 75: 653-675.

Danaher, J. (2020). Welcoming robots into the moral circle: A defence of ethical behaviourism. Science and Engineering Ethics 26(4): 2023–2049.

Gallagher, S. (2007). Social cognition and social robots. Pragmatics & Cognition 15(3): 435–453.

Gallagher, S. (2013). You and I, robot. AI & Society 28: 455–460.

Gordon, J. S., & Gunkel, D. J. (2022). Moral status and intelligent robots. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 60(1): 88–117.

Hagendorff, T., Bossert, L.N., Tse, Y.F., & Singer, P. (2022). Speciesist bias in AI: How AI applications perpetuate discrimination and unfair outcomes against animals. AI and Ethics 3(3): 717–734.

Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10(3): 252–264.

Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology 65: 399–423.

Hou, T., Ding, X., & Yu, F. (2024). The moral behavior of ethics professors: A replication-extension in Chinese mainland. Philosophical Psychology 37(2): 396–427.

Jalil, A. J., Tasoff, J., & Bustamante, A. V. (2020). Eating to save the planet. Evidence from a randomized controlled trial using individual-level food purchase data. Food Policy 95: 101950.

Ladak, A., Loughnan, S., & Wilks, M. (2024). The moral psychology of artificial intelligence. Current Directions in Psychological Science 33(1): 27–34.

Loughnan, S., & Haslam, N. (2007). Animals and androids: Implicit associations between social categories and nonhumans. Psychological Science 18(2): 116–121.

Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Bastian, B. (2010). The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals. Appetite 55(1): 156–159.

Regan, T. (2004). The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. First published 1983.

Schwitzgebel, E., Cokelet, B., & Singer, P. (2020). Do ethics classes influence student behavior? Case study: Teaching the ethics of eating meat. Cognition 203: 104397.

Schwitzgebel, E., & Rust, J. (2014). The moral behavior of ethics professors: Relationships among self-reported behavior, expressed normative attitude, and directly observed behavior. Philosophical Psychology 27(3): 293–327.

Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation. 3rd edition. New York: HarperCollins. First published 1975.

Singer, P., & Tse, Y. F. (2023). AI ethics: The case for including animals. AI and Ethics 3(2): 539–551.

Swaminathan, V., Sorescu, A., Steenkamp, J. B. E. et al. (2020). Branding in a hyperconnected world: Refocusing theories and rethinking boundaries. Journal of Marketing 84(2): 24–46.

Wallach, W., & Allen, C. (2008). Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press.

Waytz, A., Iyer, R., Young, L., Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2019). Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle. Nature Communications 10(1): 4389.

Yu, F., Krägeloh, C., Bharatharaj, J., & Ding, X. (2024). Moral psychology of AI. Frontiers in Psychology 15: 1382743.