CONCEPT
The Mixed Community
Midgley's concept of the moral community of humans and other beings with whom we share the world — and the reason AI systems cannot be admitted to it without gutting its meaning.
The mixed community is Midgley's term for the moral community that includes humans and other conscious beings — the dogs we live with, the animals we eat, the creatures whose lives intersect with ours and whose interests we have obligations toward. The concept was developed primarily in relation to animals, as part of her extended argument against Cartesian automatism. Animals belong in the mixed community because they share with us the features that generate moral standing: consciousness, the capacity to suffer, the capacity to flourish, vulnerability to harm. Scholars have recently begun extending the framework to the question of how artificial agents fit into the moral landscape — and the extension is instructive precisely because it reveals how poorly artificial agents fit.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The mixed community is not a metaphor or a sentimental gesture. It is a specific claim about moral membership: that certain beings, by virtue of features they possess, are parties