Abstract
One of the challenges in thinking about sex robots is that the use of automation in sexual relationships does not line up neatly into moral and social categories. Instead, one finds themes of friendship and dignity, empathy, and socialization as important human and moral issues tied to sexual practices. However, such themes are always understood within the context of the particular language and framework of a specific moral community. This means that fully to explore many of the questions raised by sex robots, such themes will need to be situated within the context of a particular moral community and its assumptions, values, and moral commitments. The challenge, however, is that in a secular, postmodern society, one will find quite different views expressed in various moral communities. We know, for example, that different religious communities have differing views on appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior depending on the broader context of a community’s vision and its moral commitments. As a result, it should come as no surprise that various moral and religious communities are likely to come to rather different conclusions regarding the ethical permissibility, implications for personal virtue or vice, or cultural harms and benefits of sex robots. Confronted by such a pluralism of moralities, rather than a single moral narrative, the only defensible moral position in the secular context, as I argue, is the libertarian position. Since one cannot assume that others will share the same moral values, rankings, and premises in resolving moral controversies (since reason cannot discover a content-full moral vision that all rational agents are compelled to accept), then one will have to rely on the moral authority of individual moral agents. Controversies surrounding the ownership and use of the human body (e.g., use and sale of blood products, participation in human experimentation, sex robots) can only be resolved on a secular level by the agreement of the parties involved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Following H. T. Engelhardt Jr., “Moral strangers are persons who do not share sufficient moral premises or rules of evidence and inference to resolve moral controversies by sound rational argument, or who do not have a common commitment to individuals or institutions in authority to resolve moral controversies. A content-full morality provides substantive guidance regarding what is right or wrong, good or bad, beyond the very sparse requirement that one may not use persons without their authorization. Moral friends are those who share enough of a content-full morality so that they can resolve moral controversies by sound moral argument or by an appeal to a jointly recognized moral authority whose jurisdiction they acknowledge as derived from a source other than common agreement. Moral strangers must resolve moral agreements by common agreement, for they do not share enough of a moral vision so as to be able to discover content-full resolutions to their moral controversies, either by an appeal to commonly held moral premises (along with rules of evidence and inference) and/or to individuals or institutions commonly recognized to be in authority to resolve moral controversies and to give content-full moral guidance” (1996, p. 7; see, generally, Engelhardt 1991).
- 2.
“Hence this is the first precept of law, that ‘good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.’ All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided” (Aquinas 1948, I–II, q.94, a. 2).
- 3.
Kevin O’Rourke and Philip Boyle summarize the principle of totality: “The concept of totality seeks to apply the concept of human dignity to oneself. Human beings have four levels of function: the biological, the emotional or psychic, the social, and the spiritual or intellectual. To be a complete human being is not merely to have a higher level of function but to have the basic human functions in harmonious order. All persons should develop their natural functions in two ways: First, bodily and psychic lower functions are never sacrificed except for the better functioning of the whole person. Second, the basic capacities that define personhood are not sacrificed unless it is necessary to preserve life. Unless we respect our own integrity, which includes our natural bodily and psychic integrity, and seek to protect our own functions, we do not fulfill our needs as social beings” (2011, p. 17).
References
Aquinas, T. 1948. Summa theologica. Westminster: Christian Classics.
Beauchamp, T., and J. Childress. 1989. Principles of biomedical ethics. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brody, B. 1988. Life and death decision making. New York: Oxford University Press.
Carse, A. 1991. The “voice of care”: Implications for bioethical education. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1): 5–28.
Cherry, M. 2016. Sex, family, and the culture wars. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 1987. Instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation: Replies to certain questions of the day. Origins 16: 697–711.
Daniels, N. 1985. Just health care. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Department of Health and Human Services. 1986. Organ transplantation: Issues and recommendations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. 1991. Bioethics and secular humanism: The search for a common morality. London: SCM Press.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr. 1996. The foundations of bioethics. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Engelhardt, H.T., Jr., and K.W. Wildes. 1991. The artificial donation of human gametes. In Human reproduction: Current and future ethical issues, Bailliere’s clinical obstetrics and gynecology, ed. W.A.W. Walters. London: Bailliere Tindall.
Finnis, J., J. Boyle, and G. Grisez. 1988. Nuclear deterrence, morality and realism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Frankena, W. 1973. Ethics. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc.
Gilligan, C. 1982. In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge: MA. Harvard University Press.
Hastings Center. 1985. Ethical, legal and policy issues pertaining to solid organ procurement: A report on the project on organ transplantation. Hastings-on-the-Hudson: The Hastings Center.
Howard, M., and R. Sparrow. 2021. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: Sex robots as social influencers. In Sex robots: Their social impact and the future of human relations, eds. R. Fan and M.J. Cherry. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jecker, N. 2021. Sociable robots for later life: Carebots, friendbots and sexbots. In Sex robots: Their social impact and the future of human relations, eds. R. Fan and M.J. Cherry. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jonsen, A., and S. Toulmin. 1988. The abuse of casuistry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. The postmodern condition. Trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
MacIntyre, A. 1981. After virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
———. 1988. Whose justice? Which rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
The Monks of Solesmes. 1960. The human body. Boston: The Daughters of St. Paul.
Office of Technology Assessment. 1987. New developments in biotechnology: Ownership of human tissues and cells. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
O’Rourke, K.D., and P.J. Boyle. 2011. Medical ethics: Sources of Catholic teachings. 4th ed. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Pellegrino, E., and D. Thomasma. 1981. A philosophical basis of medical practice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Singer, P. 1979. Practical ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Spital, A. 1991. The shortage of organs for transplantation: Where do we go from here? New England Journal of Medicine 325: 1243–1246.
The United States Congress. 1984. National Organ Transplantation Act (PL 98–507).
Veatch, R. 1981. Theory of medica1 ethics. New York: Basic Books.
Wang, J. 2021. Should we develop empathy for social robots? In Sex robots: Their social impact and the future of human relations, eds. R. Fan and M.J. Cherry. Dordrecht: Springer.
Wildes, K. 1998. Ownership of the human body and secular ethics. In Ownership of the human body, eds. H. Ten Have and Jos. V.M. Weile, 143–157. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wildes, S.J., K.W. (2021). Sociable Robots: Technology, Automation, and Human Relationships in Postmodern Society. In: Fan, R., Cherry, M.J. (eds) Sex Robots. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82280-4_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82280-4_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82279-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82280-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)