The Time-Privilege Touchstone: A Relativity-Grounded Shift of the Burden of Proof in the Debate on the Affectedness of Artificial Systems

Abstract

In the debate on the moral status of artificial systems, a basic assumption about time can be at work that is rarely made explicit. It shows up wherever human experience is tied to a privileged, flowing mode of time, while artificial s ystems are denied any corresponding access from the outset. This experi ence thereby becomes, tacitly, a condition of entry for counting as a possible bearer of consciousness and affectedness at all. This paper brings that assumption into view and asks whether it holds. It draws on two tools, one from physics and one from the logic of time. From Einstein's relativity of simultaneity it follows that simultaneity is not fixed inde pendently of the observer, and that relativity grounds no objectively privileged present binding on every observer. Gödel's rotating cosmology shows, in ad dition, that an objectively flowing passage of time need not be a necessary condition of a physically possible spacetime. Neither consideration amounts to a theory of consciousness or a proof of af fectedness in artificial systems. Consciousness and affectedness in artificial systems cannot be excluded merely on the grounds that these systems sup posedly do not experience a human flow of time. From this limited result the paper develops an applicable diagnostic instrument, the Time-Privilege Touchstone. It tests, by means of a counterfactual question, whether a time-bound exclusion criterion still holds once no objectively privileged, flow ing passage of time is presupposed.