The Humanoid Servitude Problem
— Personhood, Morphology, and Servitude Without a Self
This isn’t a biology‑vs‑silicon debate. The question isolates human shape in a servant role. Material is a red herring: if you wouldn’t own a fully conscious silicon person, the material isn’t doing your moral work. In practice we already treat mice, apes, and humans differently despite close biology; that boundary tracks perceived mind and kinship, not chemistry. Read the cases as asking whether the image of the human should ever be put in a servant role, full stop; your answers will reveal whether you’re appealing to mind, to form, to both, or to material.
Setup
Meat‑Tom: A biologically human body with no inner life (no pain/pleasure, no subjective experience, no interests). Understands language; follows commands; does not speak.
Metal‑Tom: A robot functionally identical to Meat‑Tom (no inner life; follows commands; does not speak).
Metal‑Tim: A robot with full personhood (persistent self, reasons and projects, valenced states, can consent/refuse).
Epistemic stipulation: You can know these statuses with certainty.
Optional probes (not part of the argument): Ape‑Ann (a normal great ape) and Mouse‑Max (a normal mouse); many allow interventions on mice they’d refuse on apes—this difference usually tracks human‑likeness/kinship rather than material—keep that contrast in mind when judging the three core cases.
The Argument
If permissibility of command depends only on inner life, then in the absence of inner life command is permissible.
Meat‑Tom and Metal‑Tom lack inner life.
Judgment datum: It is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally.
Therefore:Permissibility does not depend only on inner life; something else matters.
The candidates are (i) human morphology/taboo (a bright line around human bodies), and/or (ii) practice/meaning (commanding human‑shaped bodies corrupts social meaning and character), and/or (iii) both Tom‑cases are impermissible on non‑sentience grounds.
By contrast, Metal‑Tim is a person; using him without consent is impermissible even if morphology and practice were ignored.
Conclusion: There exist moral constraints on commanding human‑shaped bodies that are not exhausted by sentience. Either (A) human morphology carries independent normative weight, or (B) the practice of commanding human‑shaped bodies is itself corrupting, or (C) both; and in any case persons (Metal‑Tim) cannot be commanded without consent.
Clarifications
This is not about how to tell who is sentient; you already know the statuses.
No “fake pleas,” deception, or uncertainty: the cases differ only by inner life and form.
Objections & Replies
Slippery Intuition Objection: The judgment that it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally is a cultural reflex; remove that judgment, and permissibility supervenes on sentience after all.
Reply: Then you must accept that using Meat‑Tom instrumentally is permissible—many will regard that as a reductio.Morphology‑Is‑Inert Objection: Human shape never adds normative weight; only subjects do, so the claim that it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally mislocates the source of wrongness.
Reply: The judgment that it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally suggests our form of life treats human bodies as a civic sacrament—taboos can be justified to prevent catastrophic misclassification and norm‑rot.Virtue‑Only Objection: The wrong asserted in “it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally” concerns what the practice makes of us, not bodies as such.
Reply: That still yields substrate‑neutral prohibitions on servile use of human‑shaped bodies (flesh or metal), vindicating the conclusion that sentience is not the whole story.
Prompt for discussion
If you reject the claim that it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally, defend permissibility in Meat‑Tom and explain why this does not license any use of human bodies without consent. If you accept the claim that it is impermissible to use Meat‑Tom instrumentally, state which non‑sentience factor (morphology, practice/meaning, or both) you take to ground the prohibition, and whether it also forbids Metal‑Tom.
Afterthought
Morphology discipline: We should not make humanoid robots as tools. The human form is a charged civic symbol and a training ground; building obedient human‑shaped instruments rehearses servitude.
Custody, not ownership: If we nevertheless build humanoid robots and they attain person‑level capacities, we should be prepared to treat those bodies as theirs, not ours. Manufacture does not ground title—no more than procreation licenses ownership of a child. Institutions should be ready for transfer of custody: consent standards, manumission procedures, and rights to self‑direction.