When Confucian theorists examine the object of artificial intelligence—the robot (or superintelligence)—their terminology, shaped by conventions of naming in Chinese characters, frames it as an anthropocentric entity by designating it as ji qi (machine) + ren (human), 機器人, rather than using the English term “robot.” In reflecting on human–robot ethics, they often employ the concept of the “distinction between humans and animals” (ren qin zhi bian 人禽之辨). The aim of this article is to clarify the classical Confucian framework for naming things that underlies the Chinese term ji qi ren, and to show that this designation does not imply that a robot is a human being, but rather that it resembles a human.
To avoid the cognitive bias embedded in the concept of ren qin zhi bian, which restricts discussion to “ethical evaluation” while neglecting the “ethical–descriptive” framework of classical Confucianism, this article analyzes how classical Confucians approached things in a pre-conceptual phase and how they classified and named different kinds of objects. In this way, it avoids the limitation of treating ji qi ren exclusively through the lens of human moral consciousness. Although Confucius addresses the naming of things from an anthropocentric perspective, his model of correct names incorporates both moral orientation and objective facts. By contrast, the treatments of the names of things by Zengzi, Mencius, and Xunzi are anthropocentric from the outset. Clarifying the classical Confucian framework for naming and classifying things according to their types and developmental processes can thus contribute to discussions of the distinction between human beings and things (ren wu zhi bian 人物之辨) and enable the development of diverse perspectives on the ethical and cooperative relationships between them.
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