Did not address the most important question.. HAL was following orders..
It's also so subjective of a question it is not really useful as a philosophical tool either. I describe one criteria for it being "murder", but reasonable people might easily come up with other, equally defensible stances. So interrogating this question doesn't reveal much more than societal divisions along semantic lines.
I think the more interesting questions are things like: what do we do about murderers? Punishment for its own sake? Deference? Rehabilitation? What is the primary goal of our legal system?
Surely knowing that words mean different things to different people in the same society, and knowing what they mean, is quite valuable knowledge!
> what do we do about murderers? … Deference?
Is there any chance that 'Deference?' was a typo? I can't seem to make sense of it.
>Deference: Oops, that should be deterence
So we come to HAL: it could be fully self aware but have as little choice as a light switch, or at least have such little choice in some circumstances. This is why I think sentience may be a necessary, but not sufficient condition for "murder". The ability to have chosen otherwise is, I believe, also a necessary condition.
The story would have been uninteresting (or at least very different) if HAL had been acting on direct orders, and Clarke does not seem to have in mind that the mission was deliberately crafted with the intent that HAL would take homicidal action on its own initiative. Instead, HAL, in an unanticipated divergence, is confused by the apparent inconsistencies in the mission plan resulting from its goals being concealed, and, "like a neurotic", unable to recognize its own state, concludes that the astronauts must be killed for the greater good of the mission.
If, by "following orders", you are saying that HAL is a deterministic machine, then we are getting into the issue of free will. For what it is worth, Dennett is a 'compatibilist', maintaining that free will, in some sense, is compatible with physical determinism, but I don't know enough about that viewpoint to comment further. "Free will" is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the article, I would guess because it is too deep a rabbit-hole for an article of this length and scope.
If a lion eats a human, if an ostrich lands a lethal kick while protecting its nest, it’s not murder. HAL cannot commit murder.
> In the law of torts, an act of God may be asserted as a type of intervening cause, the lack of which would have avoided the cause or diminished the result of liability (e.g., but for the earthquake, the old, poorly constructed building would be standing). However, foreseeable results of unforeseeable causes may still raise liability. For example, a bolt of lightning strikes a ship carrying volatile compressed gas, resulting in the expected explosion. Liability may be found if the carrier did not use reasonable care to protect against sparks—regardless of their origins. Similarly, strict liability could defeat a defense for an act of God where the defendant has created the conditions under which any accident would result in harm. For example, a long-haul truck driver takes a shortcut on a back road and the load is lost when the road is destroyed in an unforeseen flood.