(1) I - Introducing Robot Sex

(3) 1 Should We Be Thinking about Robot Sex? [John Danaher]

"The past is often unrecoverable. But artifacts for sexual stimulation have long been a staple in human life. Dildos have been found in ancient cultures in both the East and West. And the technology of sex has advanced over the centuries. In 1869, the American physician George Taylor invented the first steam-powered vibrator. It was used at the time as a treatment for women suffering from hysteria. The first electrical vibrator for consumer sale was produced by the company Hamilton Beach in 1902. At around the same time, the first manufactured sex dolls became available, though the idea of the sex doll has a much longer history — one that can be traced back to the myth of Pygmalion and to Dutch sailors’ dames des voyages in the 1700s. Since the early part of the twentieth century there have been further developments in the technology of sex, from artificial vaginas to lifelike silicone dolls to teledildonics. This book is about another development in the technology of sex, namely: the creation of advanced sex robots." [mijn nadruk] (3-4)

Danaher wil inleiden aan de hand van drie vragen. De eerste is voor de hand liggend: wat zijn seksrobots eigenlijk?

"“Robot” has become a familiar term and robots have become a familiar concept. The term was first used in Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Čapek used the term robot to describe an artificial humanoid being made from synthetic organic matter." [mijn nadruk] (4)

"Obviously, sex robots are not quite the same as industrial robots. In previous work I have proposed a definition of “sex robot” that brings us back a little bit closer to Capek’s original intention. The definition holds that a “sex robot” is any artificial entity that is used for sexual purposes (i.e., for sexual stimulation and release) that meets the following three conditions:
Humanoid form, i.e., it is intended to represent (and is taken to represent) a human or human-like being in its appearance.
Human-like movement/behavior, i.e., it is intended to represent (and is taken to represent) a human or humanlike being in its behaviors and movements.
Some degree of artificial intelligence, i.e., it is capable of interpreting and responding to information in its environment. This may be minimal (e.g., simple preprogrammed behavioral responses) or more sophisticated (e.g., human-equivalent intelligence).
Defined in this manner, sex robots are different from existing sex toys and sex dolls." [mijn nadruk] (4-5)

[Waarom zou je humanoïde seksrobots niet als een erg geavanceerd seksspeeltje zien? Dat is nogal een keuze ...]

De tweede vraag is: bestaan er al seksrobots? Het antwoord is simpelweg: ja. Uitleg over de producten van de bedrijven TrueCompanion en RealDoll. Over de laatste:

"It caters overwhelmingly to a male audience. According to McMullen fewer than 10% of the customers are female. The vast majority of the dolls exhibit stereotypical, porn-star-esque features (indeed RealDoll has a deal with Wicked Entertainment whereby it recreates some of their stars in doll form). But it does make dolls for more diverse tastes, including male dolls and transgender dolls. This is interesting insofar as the preference profile of RealDoll customers could well be something that carries over into the sex robot era. In other words, we might expect the sex robot market to cater to a majority male audience and for the robots to match certain stereotypical norms of beauty/sexuality. This could provide fodder for critics of the technology, something discussed in more detail in several of the contributions to this book." [mijn nadruk] (7)

[Dat lijkt me problematisch, ja. Erg origineel is het in ieder geval niet.]

"From these two examples, it is apparent that humankind has taken its first steps toward sophisticated, humanlike sex robots. The visions of science fiction authors and moviemakers are still beyond the horizon. Nevertheless, we can expect the technology to develop further and for converging advances in animatronics and AI to be utilized for sexual purposes."(8)

De derde vraag is: waarom moet het ons iets schelen? waarom is het belangrijk om je in het onderwerp te verdiepen? Hij bespreekt wat kwesties, maar die worden verder uitgewerkt in de bijdragen van de andere auteurs van het boek.

"When we turn to the question of social acceptability, the phenomenon’s legal, ethical, and moral acceptability are also raised. And there is much to think about in this regard. Indeed, the majority of the papers in this volume take up one or more of the ethical problems that arise in relation to sex robots. These issues can be usefully lumped into three main categories: (1) benefits and harms to the robots; (2) benefits and harms to the users; and (3) benefits and harms to society."(11)

"Some people are very worried — and this is to say nothing of robots that cater to clearly unethical forms of sexuality such as rape fantasies or pedophilia." [mijn nadruk] (12)

[Dat is een waardeoordeel. Zo helder onethisch is dat allemaal niet. Zo veel vrouwen geven aan fantasieën te hebben waarin ze gedwongen worden tot seks. Vinden we die fantasieën (alleen maar) onethisch? Daar valt heel wat nuanceren. Hetzelfde geldt voor pedofilie: waaraan denkt een auteur als hij of zij zo'n begrip gebruikt?]

(15) 2 - On the Very Idea of Sex with Robots [Mark Migotti and Nicole Wyatt]

"In this chapter, we focus on the simple sounding question: What is it to have sex? On the assumption that having sex is what you do with all and only your sexual partners, this offers a way of focusing the question: What would it take for a sex robot to be a sex partner? In order to understand the significance of the development of robots with whom (or which) we can have sex, we need to know what it is to have sex with a robot. And in order to know this, we have to know what it is to have sex, period. In the bulk of the chapter, we develop an account of shared sexual agency we think is a plausible precondition of genuinely having sex. In the final section, we remark briefly on the issue of what it would take to form a sexual we (as we call it) with a robot. For if we can do this, we can probably have sex with robots; but if we can’t, we can’t. " [mijn nadruk] (15)

['Echte seks' heb je dus alleen met een ander? Wat een eenzijdig uitgangspunt weer. Hier wordt meteen een keuze gemaakt, waardoor je een robot niet meer zou mogen zien als een hulpmiddel bij masturberen zoals er zoveel zijn. Met een ander heb je andere seks dan met jezelf. De vraag mag wel zijn: in hoeverre kan een robot zo'n 'ander' zijn, een partner zijn. De vraag moet omgekeerd ook zijn: in hoeverre gebruiken partners elkaar alleen maar om te masturberen en in hoeverre is dat dan anders dan seks hebben met een robot? Hoe wordt seks dus gezien?]

"Clearly, the penetration paradigm is alive and well among these college students, with fully one fifth of them apparently ready to subscribe to it in its virulent, to our mind evidently mistaken, heteronormative form."(17)

"Instead of viewing having sex as a chapter in the larger story of engaging in sexual activity, we view it as a chapter in the larger story of people entering into sexual relations with one another."(18)

[Ondanks alle verwijzingen naar Plato blijft totaal onduidelijk waarom. ]

"As piety, according to Socrates, needs to be understood as a distinctive kind, or dimension, or context of justice, so, according to us, having sex needs to be understood as a distinctive exercise of shared sexual agency. And as Plato needed a much longer work than the Euthyphro to explain the concept of justice, so we would need a much longer paper than this to explain our higher order concepts of sexual agency and shared agency adequately. " [mijn nadruk] (19)

[Een voorbeeld van hoe ingewikkeld filosofen het kunnen maken. Waarom Plato erbij halen? Waarom zo veel woorden vuil maken aan zoiets?]

"Agency is shared when people do things together with others, as opposed to simply alongside them.(...) So: while having sex is, obviously, about sex, it is also about doing something together."(19)

"Our hypothesis, then, is that having sex can be understood as a an epitome of being sexual together in much the same way having a conversation can be understood as an epitome of what Paul Grice calls a “talk exchange.” As an exchange of backrubs will not by itself qualify as a case of having sex, so an exchange of words at an information booth does not amount to a conversation between the seeker and provider of information. (...) For conversation to occur, there must be a we conversing, not just a collection of I’s talking; conversation requires people talking to, rather than at or independently of, each other. And for sex to be had — we maintain — there must be a sexual we having it.
If having sex requires shared sexual agency, it really does take (at least) two to tango; and this means that you can’t have sex by — which is to say with — yourself." [mijn nadruk] (20)

[Het gaat om een 'shared sexual agency' in een 'sexual we', weet je wel. Dat taalgebruik ... Hoe vaak zou dit voorkomen bij alle sekspartners in de wereld? Wereldvreemd gebabbel.]

"The point is simply that if sex robots are nothing more than aids to masturbation (or for that matter to sex with a human partner), they are no different from the broad variety of sex toys already on offer, and so don’t raise any distinctive social, ethical, or conceptual problems."(21-22)

[Nou. fantastisch toch? Simpele visie, geen problemen. ]

"If sex robots are to instigate a revolution in our sexual relationships, it may be because they, in virtue of this interactivity, seem potentially capable of having sex with us, rather than merely serving as a passive aid to sexual gratification. "(23)

"It is the prospect of sex robots capable of exercising sexual agency that gives rise to some of the challenges discussed in this volume. For sex robots to actually have sex with us, they will need full-fledged sexual agency. If they have agency, then the moral issues that arise in our sexual relations with other human beings will arise in our relations with them as well. The familiar questions related to consent, fidelity, religious sexual rules, pornography, sex work, and emotional bonds between sexual partners will be equally pressing. "(23)

(29) II - Defending Robot Sex

(31) 3 The Case for Sexbots [Neil McArthur]

"While there are certainly many parallels between sexbots and sex toys, a sexbot promises to provide a sexual experience that is significantly more realistic and intense than what can be obtained merely through the use of a sex toy. This is both because of its physical similarity to a human and due to the level of humanlike interaction it would (theoretically) provide. Sexbots will be qualitatively different from other kinds of sex toys, and this difference raises distinct philosophical issues. The difference is reflected in public attitudes. People have strong reactions to the prospect of sexbots, ones that far exceed any reactions provoked by more familiar sex toys."(31)

[Als je het zo wilt zien, ja. Maar waarom zou je het zo zien? Is een machine die sprekend op een mens lijkt en zich gedraagt als een mens dan een mens? Dat lijkt me de kern van de zaak. Zeg je ja, dan krijg je allerlei morele en andere problemen. Zeg je nee, dan is een hubot gewoon een hulpmiddel voor seks als alle andere. Hoe het grote publiek reageert is geen maatstaf, vind ik.]

"The poll also asked: “If it were possible for humans to have sex with robots, do you think that a person in an exclusive relationship who had sex with a robot would be cheating?” A total of 42 percent said yes, and 26 percent said they were not sure. Only 31 percent said no. Other surveys have produced similar results. Overwhelming majorities consistently say they would not have sex with a robot. "(31)

[Het beschreven onderzoek van YouGov vergeet even dat mensen al reageren op de gevoelswaarde van een term als 'robot' (zijnde een stuk techniek). Presenteer ze Anita, de hubot uit Humans, vraag hetzelfde en ze zouden minder gemakkelijk nee zeggen. Waarschijnlijk zouden ze ook eerder vinden dat je ontrouw zou zijn als je met Anita seks zou hebben terwijl je een relatie met iemand hebt. Je kunt hier niet alleen maar woorden gebruiken, je moet zo'n hubot zien en meemaken om een oordeel te vellen.]

"There is a simple, rights-based argument in favor of sexbots that some people might consider decisive. According to this rights-based argument, sex with a robot is something that people will generally do in the privacy of their own homes, and it causes no direct harm to others.(...)
A rights-based argument for sexbots faces challenges, however. First of all, individual rights are never absolute. It may be that sexbots have an impact on society that, on balance, outweighs the privacy interest of their owners. Not everyone will agree that the use of sexbots is an entirely private matter."(33)

Er zijn nog meer bezwaren. McArthur's punt is met name dat het puur tolereren van seksrobots niet ver genoeg gaat.

"The right to privacy establishes only that we should tolerate sexbots, whereas I believe a case can be made for a stronger conclusion. I said at the outset that I believe the invention of sexbots will be not just morally neutral, but will in fact be, on balance, a positive good. I am advocating not just that we tolerate them, but that we actively encourage their development, support their distribution, and work to overcome stigmas associated with them." [mijn nadruk] (33)

"One potential reason we should welcome the development of sexbots is that they promise to deliver direct hedonic benefits. Put more simply, people will enjoy having them, and there is reason to believe they will be happier on balance as a result. I take it as a premise that sexbots will offer people a realistic and intensely satisfying sexual experience, one that approximates at least in many ways sex with a human partner. And this will benefit them in various ways." [mijn nadruk] (33)

"People who have more sex quite simply tend to live longer, healthier lives. Some of these benefits can be achieved through solitary sex or the use of existing sexual aids. However, others are the result of the physical exertion required for sex with a partner, and the sense of psychological well-being that results from partnered sex. Research has shown that sex with a partner has certain psychological benefits that masturbation cannot achieve. We do not fully understand the reasons for this, and so we cannot say whether robot sex will achieve the same benefits as partnered sex. However, I think it is plausible to say that sexbots will deliver at least some of these benefits." [mijn nadruk] (34)

"He [Roger Scruton - GdG] says that to see sexual arousal and sexual pleasure as purely ‘physical’ is to reduce us to what two followers of Melanie Klein call ... mere “desiring machines.”"(36)

"People who adopt one of these anti-hedonic views of sexual activity might see sex with a robot as a particularly intense, and perhaps dangerously appealing, form of auto-eroticism. Many philosophical defenders of these views explicitly argue that masturbation is morally impermissible. For Roger Scruton, masturbation is immoral because it “involves a concentration on the body and its curious pleasures” — indeed, an “obsession ... with the organs themselves and with the pleasures of sensation.” John Finnis also holds the Kantian view (which he draws from Aquinas and natural law theory) that masturbation entails a surrender to one’s purely “physical self,” and thus an abandonment of the “choosing self” that makes us human. It is, for this reason, a degradation of our nature. It should be noted that all of these arguments are clearly ones that have some resonance among the public. There remains a high level of public concern regarding masturbation, and, while no liberal jurisdictions forbid masturbation per se, several states continue to make “obscene devices” (sex toys) illegal." [mijn nadruk] (36)

[In de USA, ja ...]

"To dismiss all forms of masturbation as morally impermissible will, however, strike many people as extreme. I think there will be some people who are sympathetic to one or more of the anti-hedonist positions, but who construe them in a more moderate way, such that they are not troubled by masturbation, but still object to sex with robots. They will be disturbed not by the similarities of robot sex and autoeroticism, but precisely by the dissimilarities. They will think robot sex approximates partnered sex far too closely — but partnered sex of the most objectionable sort. This is to say, it is a form of casual sex totally devoid of any emotional connection, and indeed of the possibility of such a connection." [mijn nadruk] (36)

"On this view, what is objectionable about nonreciprocal sex is not that it treats sex as a mere physical release, but rather that it deploys an “Other” as an object for our own gratification. Sex with a robot is perverse in the way that, according to proponents of the Significance or Reciprocity Views, sex with a child or an animal is. In sex acts of this kind, we do not merely gratify ourselves, we do so by objectifying another being, one who can never be a proper subject equal to us — even if we do this only in our own mind. One of the wrongs of nonreciprocal sex is obviously that such objectification can harm the Other. But even if we do not think that the Other involved is capable of being harmed during a particular sex act, nonreciprocal sex makes sex itself into a vehicle for objectification, and it implicitly condones such objectification as morally legitimate. It can also generate an attitude toward objectification that can spill over into our human relationships." [mijn nadruk] (37)

"Practically speaking, people may become more likely to view their human partners simply as sex objects, and we may begin to weaken the power of sex to act as an expression of intimate, reciprocal connection between two partners."(38)

[Dit hangt allemaal erg op het bijzonder vage idee dat je een ander 'objectiveert', als een object voor je eigen pleziertjes ziet en gebruikt, in plaats van een subject te zoeken dat gelijk aan ons zelf is. Dan wordt het 'non-reciprocal', niet wederkerig. Wat betekent dat in feite allemaal? Kijk naar zo veel relaties en naar hun seksleven, dan zie je niet zoveel wederkerigs vermoed ik. Is dat allemaal schadelijk?]

Er zijn andere afwegingen, vind McArthur.

"I want to argue first of all that, in cases where sex is difficult or impossible to obtain, sex with a robot, even if it is less than ideal, is better than total deprivation. Second, far from harming our ability to have reciprocal or significant sexual encounters, robots may make people more able to engage in reciprocal, significant sex. They can thus have a positive effect on balance, by opening up the possibility of serious sexual relationships with fellow human beings. " [mijn nadruk] (38)

"Inequality has become a key topic of concern among academics and policymakers. Yet few commentators have noted how uneven is the distribution of sexual satisfaction. It has been the great achievement of theorists such as Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum to point out that the list of basic goods, the distribution of which we should care about, goes beyond the satisfaction of people’s rudimentary material needs. According to such modern egalitarians, we should try to ensure that everyone is able not just to feed and clothe themselves, but to access a variety of goods, such as education and leisure, which form key components of a flourishing human life. If we accept that there is a plurality of basic human goods, we should, I think, be willing to acknowledge that some degree of sexual satisfaction belongs among them, and that it represents a significant hardship to deprive someone of this good unnecessarily." [mijn nadruk] (38-39)

"There are a number of reasons why some people may face serious, even insuperable, obstacles in finding a companion." [mijn nadruk] (39)

[Precies. En die zouden het volgens mensen als Scruton en zo dan maar zonder seks moeten doen? Wat een arrogantie.]

"Defenders of the Reciprocity View argue that we should encourage partnered sex as the healthiest or most moral form of sexual activity. But sexbots have the potential to strengthen people’s human relationships in various ways and enhance the sex people have in these relationships. This provides another reason for friends of this view to remain open to sexbots. "(41)

" Indeed, some of the very factors I identified as advantages with sexbots, such as their willingness to perform acts a human partner would not, may give that partner reasons for jealousy."(42)

(47) 4 Should We Campaign Against Sex Robots? [John Danaher, Brian Earp, and Anders Sandberg]

"September 2015 saw the launch of the Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR). Spearheaded by Kathleen Richardson of Leicester De Montfort University and Erik Brilling of the University of Skövde"(47)

"We conclude that we are unlikely to come up with good reasons to preemptively reject the development of sex robots, unless we adopt a highly conservative approach to the ethics of sex , which many will find problematic for other reasons. This does not mean that there are no legitimate concerns one can have about the development of sex robots; it simply means that the concerns are not best addressed by adopting an organized campaign against their development.
More generally, the analysis we present in this chapter has implications for how societies should respond to controversial new technologies, based upon a range of factors including risk (and type) of harm, prospect of benefit, and different ways of pursuing regulation. Lessons learned here, therefore, should apply well beyond the specific debates about sex robots and autonomous weapons. " [mijn nadruk] (48)

De CASR vergelijkt de relatie tussen seksrobots en mensen met de relatie tussen prostituees en mannen.

Noot 8 zegt hierbij

"Richardson prefers “prostitute-john” to “sex worker-client” because it is more negatively value-laden. She disapproves of some attempts to create a positive impression of sex work. "(67)

"The claims that seem to be driving the argument are that sex worker-client relationships have several bad-making properties and that these bad-making properties will be shared and (thereby) reinforced and/or normalized by sexbot-human relationships. In advancing this position, Richardson adopts an almost entirely negative view of sex work."(51)

"Her main objections to sex work are that it is built around an asymmetrical powerrelation between the client and the prostitute (one in which the client has the balance of power); that the work itself is highly gendered (primarily women, and some men, providing sex to primarily male clients); and that the commercial relationship involves the denial of subjectivity (and hence effective objectification) of the sex worker. In other words, according to her view, the sex worker is always treated as a plaything that can be used and manipulated at the whim of the client, not as a human being with feelings, agency, and autonomy that ought to be respected. " [mijn nadruk] (52)

"But there are many prominent sex work researchers (and sex workers) who challenge that picture. For example, Sanders et al. provide an overview of the empirical literature on sex work in which they develop a far more nuanced account."(52)

"Likewise, on the question of objectification and asymmetrical power relations, they note that much of this opposition is grounded in a conservative view of sexual ethics that fails to consider the possibility of emotionally rich and intimate sex occurring outside of the confines of a long-term monogamous relationship . They argue that the attitudes of clients toward sex workers are often far more complex and multidimensional than Richardson supposes" [mijn nadruk] (53)

"For better or worse, denials of subjectivity, asymmetries of power, and other objectionable qualities or outcomes are rife throughout the capitalistic workplace."(54)

"The evidence adduced to show that sex robots will exacerbate harmful interhuman relationships is weak, and, even if it is correct, it does not support a strongly restrictive approach to the development of sex robots. At best, it supports a regulative approach (see analysis above). Furthermore, if we were to adopt such a regulative approach, we would need to be sensitive to both the merits and demerits of this technology and the costs of any proposed regulatory strategy. This is something that Richardson neglects because she focuses entirely on the negative." [mijn nadruk] (57)

(73) 5 - Sex Robots and the Rights of the Disabled [Ezio Di Nucci]

"In this chapter, I propose to argue that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people, and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, can be potentially fulfilled by deploying sex robots. This would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many people who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination."(73)

[Ik vind die hele discussie over 'recht hebben op', 'negatieve rechten', 'positieve rechten' helemaal niet interessant. Die groepen willen ook seks, dat is reden genoeg om er aan tegemoet te komen, zoals veel sekswerkers doen, of allerlei hulpmiddelen ter beschikking te stellen zoals ik zo mooi zag bij een centrum voor ergotherapie in Denemarken.]

"This is not the place to have an extended discussion about the value of sex and sexuality: the point is just that — given important benefits in terms of welfare, self-fulfilment and even mental health — it is at least not implausible to hold sex and sexuality to be, if not necessary, at least important elements in a fulfilled life such that their nonvoluntary absence from someone’s life would be morally relevant."(75)

[Dit is meer dan voldoende. Een discussie of mensen recht hebben op seks zoals op voedsel vind ik belachelijk academisch. Dat is zeker weer nodig voor het vaststellen van of het door verzekeringen vergoed moet worden of niet. Als die groepen mensen die behoefte hebben zijn we in het algemeen moreel verplicht er aan tegemoet te komen. ]

(89) III - Challenging Robot Sex

(91) 6 Religious Perspectives on Sex with Robots [Noreen Herzfeld]

"From the explicitly libidinous carvings of Hindu temples to the celibacy of the Desert Fathers, religious thought on sexuality has run the gamut; religions have both celebrated and sought to severely limit human sexual expression. Thus, there will be no single religious approach to the question of whether sex with a robot is either permissible or desirable. It is impossible to survey such a vast and disparate area in a single chapter. I will, rather, present a few religious answers, primarily from a Judeo-Christian perspective, to four basic questions: What is the purpose of sex? What in our nature might predispose us to a relationship with a robot? Could we have an authentic loving relationship with a robot? And, finally, would such a choice aid or hinder our spiritual growth? " [mijn nadruk] (91)

[Nou ... de meeste grote monotheïstische religies zijn negatief over seks behalve voor voortplanting. Dat legt de auteur ook uit. Masturbatie en homoseksualiteit zijn dan slecht. Seks met robots zou dan ook slecht zijn. Er zijn wel groepjes katholieken en protestanten die niet negatief staan tegenover masturbatie, maar nog steeds een voorkeur hebben voor seks binnen een huwelijks relatie. Dan wordt de rol van robotseks wat lastiger aan te duiden. ]

"Most proponents of sexual robots would argue that they will rise above being mere sex toys by adding an interactive artificially intelligent component, thus moving the sexual act above masturbation and into the realm of authentic relationship. But why would we want such a relationship? A question that bothered me as a young professor teaching artificial intelligence was why, despite decades of failure, we have remained fascinated by the idea of making computers as much like ourselves as possible. It seemed to me that computers were most useful when they complemented rather than mimicked us, doing tasks we do not do well or do not wish to do, such as tedious calculations, crunching endless data, or riveting bolts in the factory. " [mijn nadruk] (94)

[Of seks? Gezien de deplorabele staat van het seksleven van de meeste mensen geen slecht idee. Misschien is het met dat doel gewoon leuker als de seksrobot zo veel mogelijk op een mens lijkt, ook al is hij of zij niet meer dan een middel voor ons om betere seks te hebben. Waarom zouden we een liefdesrelatie met een seksrobot willen hebben?]

"The robot has no choice but to give."(96)

[Dat lijkt me de kern van de zaak. Daarvoor hebben we ze gemaakt.]

"There seem, then, to be intrinsic weaknesses that would make the experience of truly authentic relationship with a robot problematic. The deep sharing found in a committed and loving relationship would be compromised, if existent at all. And the effects of this go beyond the couple."(97)

"Ideally, sexual expression serves as one factor of many that bind us closely to another, sharing a physical expression of a love that transcends our bodies, an expression that opens us to a deeper understanding of our human condition and of our neighbor’s hopes and needs. "(98)

[Erg mooie woorden om te benadrukken dat seks alleen binnen relaties iets goeds is. Maar zou het dan niet nog beter zijn voor de band en het begrip tussen mensen als we de exclusieve relatie zouden opheffen? O, nee, dat mag dan weer niet. Seks mag alleen in monogame relaties. Totaal inconsequent, die religies.]

" It is obvious that sex with robots does not rise to the standard of perfection laid out in Humanae Vitae or expressed by other theologians and sacred texts, a perfection found between a man and a woman in a committed and deeply loving relationship, open to the possibility of procreation. However, many, perhaps even most, sexual acts between humans also do not rise to this standard. " [mijn nadruk] (98)

[Precies. Dus waar hebben we het over?]

" If our primary experience of sex is with one that we can turn off or turn away from at will, might we not wish to do the same with persons?"(99)

[Dat weten we (nog) niet. Misschien gaan mensen dan wat meer hun best doen om iets meer van hun relatie en van seks te maken in plaats van zich te wentelen in oppervlakkige vanzelfsprekendheden en zekerheden.]

"Sex robots might make interesting, even desirable sexual partners. We might form an attachment of a sort with them. But in the end, it is God and each other with whom we must be in relationship. Replacing relationship with one another with relationship to a machine is ultimately a form of idolatry, a substitution for the living with something made, and thus controlled, by our own hands."(100)

[Je kunt nog beter een 'relatie' hebben met een robot dan met iets wat mensen 'god' noemen maar niet bestaat. En wie heeft het over het vervangen van de ene relatie door de andere? Waarom niet naast elkaar? Is dat dan zo raar?]

(103) 7 The Symbolic-Consequences Argument in the Sex Robot Debate [John Danaher]

De auteur haalt de serie Humans' erbij om duidelijk te maken wat hij wil doen.

"Presumably the objection to the young men having sex with the switched-off robot had nothing to do with the potential harm to the robot. The robots within the show are — apart from the core group — deemed to be devoid of moral status, lacking the requisite consciousness and intelligence. They are — to use a phrase repeated in other chapters of this book — not moral victims. So why is it wrong for the young men to have sex with them in the suggested manner? The answer must lie elsewhere: in the symbolic meaning of the act, and the consequences that might ensue from its permission.
As it happens, this combined concern for symbolism and its consequences is a common feature of several objections to the development and use of sex robots. Indeed, it is possibly the leading style of objection to sex robots in the current, admittedly small, literature. My goal in this chapter is to provide a detailed analysis of it, outlining its abstract structure, giving specific examples of its use, and evaluating its merits. " [mijn nadruk] (103-104)

Eerst gaat het over 'consent'.

"Affirmative consent standards stipulate that sexual contact is only permissible if there are clear and unambiguous affirmative signals of consent. No longer will people be able to infer consent from lack of resistance, clothing, and flirtatious behavior. More is needed. "(106)

Maar wat is het belang van die kwestie als je vindt dat een robot nooit het niveau van een mens zal halen, met bewustzijn, gevoelens, etc. en geen morele personen zijn? Veel mensen vinden het volgende:

"To talk about consent in the human-to-robot context is to commit a category mistake: to apply a concept that ought not to be applied."(106)

Danaher is het daar niet mee eens, omdat hij vindt dat zo'n seksrelatie met een robot allerlei symbolische eigenschappen kan hebben die gevolgen zou kunnen hebben voor 'consent' en andere zaken in het echte leven van mensen.

[Het argument dus dat gedrag met robots zou kunnen doorwerken in het gedrag met mensen. Maar wat heeft dat nog met toestemming te maken? Dan moeten we het hebben over of die symbolische relatie werkelijk bestaat tussen wat er met een seksrobot wordt uitgespeeld en wat er in het echt gebeurt.]

"First, the ethically problematic symbolism could take many forms. It could be linked to the robot’s appearance and demeanor, or to the act of sexually engaging with the robot. For instance, in the consent case, it could be that the robot encourages the user to engage with it in a way that ignores or positively flouts the socially accepted norms of consent. It could also be that the physical representation of the robot embodies negative sexual stereotypes. Perhaps the robot represents a certain style of female appearance (maybe a “porn star”-esque style)? The behavior or movement of these sex robots may also be problematic, e.g., they may behave in an overly deferential, coquettish manner, representing women as submissive and subordinated creatures ." [mijn nadruk] (107)

"Second, the negative consequences of the symbolism could take many forms, some more immediate and direct than others. It could be that the user is directly and immediately harmed by the interaction with the robot. It could also be that the development and use of the robots sends a negative signal to the rest of society, thereby reinforcing a culture of sexism, misogyny, and/or sexual objectification. This “expressive” consequentialism is common in other symbolic objections to cultural practices." [mijn nadruk] (107)

[Ok, dat is helder. Als we een bepaald beeld van en gedrag bij seksrobots normaal (gaan) vinden kan dat vooroordelen en ongewenst gedrag versterken in de omgang met echte mensen.]

Onderzoeker Sinziana Gutiu (auteur in het boek Robot Law) wordt dan besproken.

"For Gutiu, then, the physical structure of female robots alone serves to represent problematic norms of body shape, dress, and movement. The problematic symbolism is compounded when robots are designed for sexual use. As Gutiu puts it:
To the user, the sex robot looks and feels like a real woman who is programmed into submission and which functions as a tool for sexual purposes. The sex robot is an ever-consenting sexual partner and the user has full control of the robot and the sexual interaction. By circumventing any need for consent, sex robots eliminate the need for communication, mutual respect, and compromise in the sexual relationship. The use of sex robots results in the dehumanization of sex and intimacy by allowing users to physically act out rape fantasies and confirm rape myths."(geciteerd op 108-109)

[Ik hoop dat ze het in het algemeen niet eenzijdig heeft over seksrobots voor mannen. Als ze ter beschikking komen zou er net zo goed een markt ontstaan voor seksrobots voor vrouwen. En ook daar komen waarschijnlijk dezelfde uiterlijke stereotypen naar voren (groot, gespierd, vierkante kaken, grote penis) als vandaag de dag bestaan. En ook zouden die robots de verwachtingen tegenover mannen kunnen bevestigen en versterken die vrouwen er zo vaak op na houden: een vent die nooit onzeker is en altijd zin heeft, iemand die de leiding neemt, een vent die nooit moe wordt bij het vingeren of neuken, iemand met wie ze hun onderwerpings- en verkrachtingsfantasieën kunnen uitspelen, en zo meer.]

"She then turns to the negative social consequences of this symbolism. She distinguishes between two sets of harms. First, there are the obvious social harms arising from the symbolism. If the robots represent gendered norms of sexualized appearance and sexual compliance, they will contribute to and reinforce a patriarchal social order that is harmful to women. In particular, they will further distort our understanding of sexual consent. (...) In other words, they would go against the recent reforms of consent standards and in particular the push for positive affirmative signals of sexual consent." [mijn nadruk] (109)

"Second, in addition to the social harms and harms to others, there are the harms to the users themselves. For one thing, the users could internalize the problematic sexual norms through repeated use of the robots, which could alter their moral character and the nature of their interactions with other people. Also, and somewhat in tension with this idea, the robots could reinforce antisocial tendencies among users, encouraging them to withdraw from social interactions, and avoid the need for mutuality and compromise in their sexual lives. This latter notion was contradicted in the film Lars and the Real Girl. In that film, the use of a sex doll was therapeutic and enabled an introverted man to reintegrate with society. However, Gutiu dismisses this" [mijn nadruk] (109)

"Thus, the disvalue that attaches to sex robots that are taken to represent women (or children) as passive, ever-consenting sexual playthings must be understood in terms of the disvalue that attaches to the view that women (or children) actually are passive, ever-consenting sexual playthings. The history of sexual violence and oppression, the disregard for individual autonomy and rights, the harm and trauma that results from unwanted sexual contact — these are all reasons to balk at the notion that women (or children) should be understood in these terms. These reasons carry over (in an attenuated form) to the symbolic representations (i.e., the sex robots). The symbols thus share in the disvalue of what they represent."(113)

"Where does this leave us with respect to premise one of the symbolic-consequences argument? It seems to leave us with much to be said in its favor. Given the centrality of symbols in human social life, proponents of these arguments have reason to be concerned. They seem to be justified in suggesting that, at least some (and maybe many), sex robots will be taken to stand for and represent our attitudes toward real people (specifically, women and children) due to both their resemblance to real people and the intentions of the creators and users. Furthermore, it seems plausible to suggest that they will tend to represent those real people in a particular way: as everconsenting sexual playthings. It is hard to escape this interpretation of the symbolism. If sex robots are designed and marketed for sexual use, the user will want them to be available and ready for use whenever they are switched on. They are unlikely to have an appetite for the mutual conversation and objective performances demanded by our consent norms. Since this could be taken to symbolically encode a disregard for preferred norms of sexual consent, it seems plausible to say that there is something symbolically disvaluable about sex robots. The same logic applies to other aspects of the symbolism (e.g., the gendered beauty norms, the asymmetry of power, the lack of mutual respect).
But the argument cannot end there. The problematic symbolism of sex robots is contingent in two important ways: it is removable and reformable. It is possible to embrace the symbolic critique without rejecting the permissibility of sex robots. With regards to removability, it is important to remember that the appearance and behavior of sex robots is not some Platonic essence that is fixed and irrevocable. Sex robots need not be large-breasted, thin-waisted, porn star-esque waifs. No doubt there will be significant pressures in favor of this representation. But it is conceivable that one could create and design a sex robot to look and act more like a ‘real’ woman; to represent a more progressive set of norms around sexual consent and beauty, and interpersonal relations. For instance, the robot could be programmed so as not to be an “ever-consenting” sexual tool . The robot might sometimes randomly refuse its user, and always provide positive affirmative signals of consent when it is willing to proceed. Enforcing and ensuring a more positive set of representations might be a good target for regulation in this area. Furthermore, to the extent that robots are designed to cater to rape fantasies or pedophiliac tendencies, this is something that could be outlawed or banned . In short, it is conceivable to imagine a world in which sex robots do not share the problematic symbolism highlighted by the arguments discussed in the preceding section. Whether it is possible to realize that world is another matter. " [mijn nadruk] (115-116)

"To many moral philosophers, the idea of paying for certain goods and services (mourners at funerals, sex, best man speeches, kidneys) necessarily leads to the moral tainting of those goods and services. To pay your spouse for sex, they say, would necessarily corrupt the intimacy and mutuality of the marital relationship, reducing it to a cold and emotionless commercial transaction. But not all cultures share this belief. In the Merina tribe of Madagascar, it is expected that husbands pay their wives after sex as a sign of respect. To the Merina tribe, money does not symbol- ize distance or a lack of affection. Quite the contrary, in fact."(116)

"We may then logically ask: Are the design, manufacture, sale, and use of sex robots likely to reinforce and exacerbate the problematic symbolism? Or could these factors have positive consequences that are capable of outweighing (and thus warranting changes in) the symbolic interpretation? "(118)

"There are a few possibilities to consider. For one thing, the design and use of robots that cater to, say, rape fantasies or pedophiliac tendencies might have a cathartic as opposed to emboldening effect on their users. In other words, the robots might create a “safe space” in which these problematic sexual desires can be expressed without harming others. This “cathartic” view of human desire is contentious, but if utilized in the right therapeutic setting — perhaps with complementary psychotherapy — it is possible that these robots could be used to wean people away from their problematic desires and dispositions. More generally, sex robots that are designed to symbolically represent more progressive attitudes toward women and sexual consent could be used to educate young people as to the socially accepted sexual norms. Thus, far from reinforcing patriarchal and misogynistic atti- tudes, the robots might help to undermine them. On top of this, there are, as other contributions to this volume suggest (e.g., McArthur, Di Nucci), positive consequences that may ensue from the development of sex robots, including the improvement of the access to, and satisfaction of, positive sexual rights. These consequences would need to be weighed against competing negative consequences. " [mijn nadruk] (118-119)

"I suggest that we adopt an explicitly experimental approach to the development of sex robots. This approach should be guided by ethical principles and should build in logistical frameworks that allow for experimental data to be gathered and fed back into the process of incremental development. Adopting this experimental approach will be a difficult thing to do. It will require significant changes in our perspective and attitude toward technological development. But it may be our best bet if we are to avoid the risks associated with developing this potentially high impact technology. " [mijn nadruk] (126)

(133) 8 Legal and Moral Implications of Child Sex Robots [Litska Strikwerda]

"At a robotics conference in July 2014, Ronald Arkin, Mobile Robot Lab director at the Georgia Institute of Technology, claimed that robots designed to look and act like children could be used to treat pedophiles the way methadone is used to treat drug addicts. This claim gave rise to a heated debate. While some people think that the development of child sex robots in order to treat pedophiles would be a worthwhile project, others say this is a repugnant idea."(133)

"This chapter will assess the legal and moral implications of child sex robots by means of casuistry, which is a case-based model of reasoning."(133)

"The first section of this chapter will define the term child sex robots, determine its scope, and explain that child sex robots and entirely computer-generated child pornography are similar, because they both lack a legal or moral victim. The second section will assess the legal and moral implications of entirely computer-generated child pornography. The third section will argue that there is one main difference between entirely computer-generated child pornography and child sex robots: child sex robots are interactive and entirely computer-generated child pornographic images are not. This means that, in certain respects, the legal and moral issues that child sex robots raise differ from the ones that entirely computer-generated child pornography raises.
However, at the end of this chapter it is concluded that the difference between entirely computer-generated child pornography and child sex robots does not lead to different legal and moral implications. Entirely computer-generated child pornographic images are prohibited in many countries on the ground that (the majority of) people find them morally objectionable (legal moralism). If child sex robots were to be developed, they would (likely) be banned for the same reasons. Use is made of virtue ethics and (anti-porn) feminism to explain why people find entirely computer-generated child pornography morally objectionable and why they would think the same about child sex robots. In short, both flout our sexual mentality based on equality, because they are, respectively, incomplete representations and replica of sexual relations between adults and children, which can never be considered equal." [mijn nadruk] (133-134)

[Wat een merkwaardig en zwak argument, dat allerlaatste ... De meeste relaties tussen mensen zijn geen relaties tussen gelijken. Niet qua uiterlijk, niet qua intelligentie, niet qua vaardigheden. Ook als het om macht en leeftijd gaat is dat eindeloos vaak niet het geval.]

"Ordinary child pornography is considered harmful to children. In acts of sexual contact between adults and children, mutual consent is in general assumed to be absent, and, therefore, they are always considered sexual abuse. Since the production of images showing a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct typically involves an act of sexual contact between adults and children, such images can be considered recordings of harmful sexual abuse. Following this argument, not only the production, but also the possession and distribution of child pornographic images can be considered harmful to children." [mijn nadruk] (135-136)

"As opposed to ordinary child pornographic images, entirely computer-generated child pornographic images do not involve a child really engaged in sexually explicit conduct. They consist of computer-simulated depictions and not of recordings of child sexual abuse. Therefore, the production, distribution, and possession thereof cannot be considered harmful to children, and hence the harm principle does not apply. Nevertheless, many countries have ratified article 9 (2) (c) of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime, which prohibits the production, distribution, and possession of entirely computer-generated child pornographic images. Since the harm principle does not apply, the question arises how this prohibition can be morally legitimated. In earlier work I studied this question. I will summarize my arguments below." [mijn nadruk] (136)

"Given their pornographic nature, it can thus be assumed that (entirely computer-generated) child pornographic images can influence children’s attitudes toward sex, especially at a young age. It does not seem likely that children would deliberately search the Internet themselves for such images. But they might well be used by offenders to groom children into taking part in sexual activities." [mijn nadruk] (137)

[Dat is echt een naïeve onderschatting van hoe nieuwsgierig kinderen zijn en van hoe gemakkelijk ze toegang hebben tot Internet. Geloof ook maar niet dat er veel ouders zijn die overal 'parental locks' instellen om dat te voorkomen. Dus: ja, een aantal kinderen zoekt al heel jong met hun vriendjes en vriendinnetjes naar porno en komt dan misschien ook kinderporno tegen. Maar de auteur heeft indirect toch gelijk, want dat laatste is vrij onwaarschijnlijk omdat het illegaal is.]

"In conclusion, it goes too far to claim that entirely computer-generated child pornography encourages or seduces children into participating in sexual contacts with adults. "(137)

"Many offenders argue that entirely computer-generated child pornography has a positive rather than a negative effect on them, because looking at such images provides a safe outlet for feelings that otherwise could lead to sexual abuse of a child. Recently, the Dutch sexologists Van Beek and Van Lunsen have claimed the same with regard to certain groups of pedophiles. They refer to a study by Diamond (2010), who found that the number of reported cases of child sex abuse dropped markedly when the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography was decriminalized in the Czech Republic for a while. Others argue that the reverse is true; they believe that there might be a causal link between watching (entirely computer-generated) child pornographic images and actual instances of child abuse. (...) However, there is too little evidence yet to prove that an imminent causal link between entirely computer-generated child pornographic images and child abuse exists; future, larger- scaled research is needed." [mijn nadruk] (138-139)

[Zoiets zal wel nooit grondig onderzocht worden. En dus overheersen de achterliggende waarden en normen. ]

"In conclusion, as yet neither soft nor hard paternalism can legitimate the criminalization of the production, distribution, and possession of entirely computer-generated child pornography, because at present there is no (sufficient) scientific evidence to prove that it encourages or seduces children into participating in sexual contacts with adults or pedophiles to commit child abuse. " [mijn nadruk] (139)

Maar misschien kan wettelijk moralisme dat wel?

"As was stated earlier, legal moralism provides a moral ground to outlaw behaviors that are inherently immoral. I wish to argue that legal moralism should only be applied as a moral ground for the criminalization of behaviors if people have good reason to find them morally objectionable. Entirely computer-generated child pornography is generally condemned, because many people feel revulsion and outrage at the thought of it. According to McCormick, virtue ethics “gives us the vocabulary to describe what seems intuitively wrong” about things like entirely computer-generated child pornography." [mijn nadruk] (139)

[Volgt een verhaal over deugdenethiek zoals die terecht gekomen is in allerlei feministisch werk, van Ruddick en anderen. Maar in essentie blijven al die posities normatief. De argumentatie is niet erg overtuigend. Kijk maar.]

"Ruddick means that the sex partners “actively desire and respond to each other’s active desires”; in other words, that they reach a level of reciprocity. Sex practices in which the internal good of reciprocity is achieved through the virtue of respect for persons Ruddick calls “complete sex."
Ruddick contrasts complete sex with incomplete sex, which lacks reflexive mutual recognition of desire by desire (i.e., reciprocity), because it is “private, essentially auto-erotic, unresponsive, unembodied, passive, or imposed.” Incomplete sex is not necessarily wrong, for “any sexual act that is pleasurable is prima facie good, though the more incomplete it is — the more private, essentially autoerotic, unresponsive, unembodied, passive, or imposed — the more likely it is to be harmful to someone.” Ruddick does not mean harm as intended by the harm principle here, but harm in the sense of virtue ethics, which can best be described as erosion of virtue. Incomplete sex acts are “prone to violation of respect for, and often violence to, persons.” In other words, they erode the virtue of respect for persons, which may, according to Ruddick, ultimately lead to violence." [mijn nadruk] (140)

[Daar gaan we dus weer. Alleen seks met een ander is echte complete seks, al blijft totaal onduidelijk wat die 'wederzijdsheid' zoal inhoudt. Incomplete seks - denk aan masturberen en naar porno kijken - maakt dat je het respect voor anderen verliest, ja zelfs gewelddadig wordt. Niet dat ook maar iets van die bewering is onderzocht ... ]

"Applying Ruddick’s theory, one could say that the sex acts depicted by child pornographic images cannot be complete, because the participants cannot reach a level of reciprocity. Child pornographic images depict sex acts that are incomplete, not only because they are, just like female-unfriendly pornographic images, unresponsive and passive, but also because they are imposed."(141)

[Hier wordt gewoon - tegen allerlei ander onderzoek in - ontkend dat 'kinderen' seks kunnen willen met volwassenen, dat er sprake kan zijn van 'agency' en van een actieve rol bij 'kinderen', dat ze kunnen genieten van seks met volwassenen als er tenminste geen sprake is van dwang of geweld. Ik zet het woord 'kinderen' tussen aanhalingstekens omdat er auteurs zijn die die term ook gebruiken om de seksualiteit van bijvoorbeeld 14 tot 18 jarigen te ontkennen. Dit soort theorieën zijn ontzettend normatief en omdat goed onderzoek vaak ontbreekt kan iedereen alles roepen.]

"In conclusion, legal moralism can legitimate the prohibition on the production, distribution, and possession of entirely computer-generated child pornography. The lesson to be drawn from Ruddick’s virtue ethics view and the feminist critique of pornography with regard to entirely computer-generated child pornographic images is that they depict unresponsive, passive, imposed, unembodied, and thus nonreciprocal, unequal sex acts. Therefore, the production, distribution, and possession thereof flout our preferred sexual mentality, which is based on equality. This leads to the conclusion that people have good reason to find these behaviors morally objectionable, which in turn provides good reason to prohibit them on the basis of legal moralism, at least if we accept the claim made at the beginning of this section that legal moralism should only be applied as a moral ground for the criminalization of behaviors if people have good reason to find them morally objectionable. " [mijn nadruk] (143)

[Wauw, geen woord van kritiek van deze auteur op Ruddick etc. Vreemd. ]

Nu over de seksrobots in de kinderuitvoering.

"They would be produced, distributed, and possessed so that pedophiles could engage in sexually explicit conduct with them."(143)

"people find it very difficult to perform immoral acts with humanlike artificial agents, such as robots. "(144)

"If it could be proven that child sex robots encourage or seduce pedophiles to commit child abuse, there would be reason to prohibit them on the basis of legal paternalism. "(144)

"This implies that people should have an intuitive resistance to having sex with a child sex robot, just as they should have an intuitive resistance to having sex with an actual child. According to Danaher this leads to the conclusion that those who perform sexual activities on child sex robots “must either (1) have an inherently defective system of intuitive moral judgments; or (2) have worked to repress or overcome the intuitive resistance to such acts.” In either case, there is reason to deem people who are capable of performing these activities also capable of committing child abuse. However, this claim remains speculative until specific research proves it. At present, such research is not available. Therefore, child sex robots cannot (yet) be prohibited on the basis of legal paternalism. " [mijn nadruk] (145)

[Hoe gemakkelijk mensen ergens van uitgaan ... Ik vind dat ... dus is het zo. De auteur zegt terecht dat een en ander nooit onderzocht is. Maar dan volgt ze weer de lijn van Ruddick.]

"And, since, as was explained in the last section, sexual acts between adults and children are always considered imposed, sex acts performed on child sex robots can be seen as replica of imposed sex acts. This leads to the conclusion that, despite the differences, sex acts performed on child sex robots are, just like the sex act of watching entirely computer-generated child pornography, likely to erode the virtue of respect for persons, for they are incomplete and flout our sexual mentality, which is based on equality. People will, therefore, have good reason to find sexual intercourse with child sex robots morally objectionable, which in turn provides good reason to prohibit this behavior on the basis of legal moralism." [mijn nadruk] (145)

[Het is maar wat je goede redenen noemt.]

(153) IV - The Robot’s Perspective

Dit deel gaat over de volgende vragen:

"Will sex robots ever be persons (in the philosophically rich sense of that term)? If so, can they be harmed or benefitted by their sexual interactions with humans?"(153)

(155) 9 - Is It Good for Them Too? Ethical Concern for the Sexbots [Steve Petersen]

"Of course, for today’s models, the question of whether it’s good for the sexbot makes little sense; they are “just machines,” not genuine ethical subjects, so they cannot be ethically wronged any more than we can wrong a vibrator or a toaster. But there is good reason to think that future sexbots will be artificially sentient and artificially intelligent. Such robots would not just seem to experience pain or pleasure, they would experience it; they would not just act like they have deeply held goals and values, but they would actually have them. I can’t argue for this possibility here, so instead I will take a cheap shortcut and argue from authority: unlike most philosophical questions, the possibility of genuine AI wins wide consensus among professional philosophers. So if you disagree with the premise of robotic intelligence, I urge you to read some of the reasoning smart people have made in its favor.
If robots have genuine experiences of pain and pleasure, triumph and defeat, this in turn strongly suggests that they are subjects of real ethical concern. They could even be inorganic persons with moral standing equal to that of humans." [mijn nadruk] (155)

[Ik vind dat nogal een aanname, dat we seksrobots zouden kunnen maken die lijken op mensen qua gevoelsleven etc. Vooralsnog zien we ze alleen in films en tv-series, nietwaar, dus waar komt dat optimisme vandaan? Is dat weer het bekende gedweep met technologie?]

"Sexbots seem to be slaves by their very nature, and, if so, then it seems clear we should prevent their creation. "(156)

[Tenzij er echt 'gelukkige slaven' zijn. Maar over het algemeen wordt dat afgewezen als een mythe. ]

"Given both the will and the way, it may seem that we are headed for tragedy: a population of sexbot slaves, forced into a lifetime of playing the happy companion to their sundry johns. But that is not my position here. There is a surprisingly strong argument that it is permissible to design and create genuinely intelligent, ethically valuable robots for the explicit purpose of serving humans sexually."(156)

"Just as sexbots might have radically different pleasures, they may also have radically different desires. For example, they might have little interest in long-term bonding with other persons, or any urge to rise in status relative to their cohorts. Those strong tendencies in humans are probably just artifacts of our primate heritage — a heritage sexbots obviously do not share. Again it seems like intelligent robots could have any of a wide range of hardwired desires; though there may be some constraints, they will largely be at the designers’ discretion. The sexbot might want more than anything to accumulate a vast variety of sexual encounters, or to bring its partners to ever greater sexual heights, or to leave its partners significantly more skilled in bed than previously. "(160)

"So far it seems that a well-designed sexbot could, in the course of its intended activities, be living a life, not just of immense pleasure, but also of great and very real personal satisfaction. "(160)

Hoewel mensen als Mill zeggen dat we alleen een goed leven leiden als we ook de intellectuele geneugten des levens kunnen meemaken.

[Dat zien we in de geschiedenis van de filosofie al te vaak: dat het lichamelijke veroordeeld wordt omdat er een groter belang wordt gehecht aan 'de geest', 'de ratio', of hoe het ook genoemd wordt. Maar er is geen objectieve universele lijst van wat het goede leven karakteriseert.]

"The “objective list” account of well-being is controversial, and mostly for the reason you might imagine: it is hard to say exactly what goes on the objective list of goods, and (more to the point) it is hard to say exactly why some things belong on it and others don’t. But supposing this theory of well-being is correct, and supposing that for all persons a certain level of intellectual fulfillment is on the objective list, then we have a way to say that the life of a sexbot is a bad one simply because it does not allow the sexbot to live up to its cognitive potential. " [mijn nadruk] (161)

"We can imagine that the sexbots engage all their higher faculties in pursuit of better sex. They might compose marvelous erotic poems to enhance the mood, or conduct extensive and rigorous research on human sexuality. They could be experts in fields from psychology to anatomy to interior design. Their scientific sensibilities may humble Masters and Johnson, while their aesthetic sensibilities may humble the traditional geisha. It may be true of them that — as the tiresome phrase goes — their most sensitive erogenous zone is between their ears. I think such sexbots could live a deeply reflective, even spiritual life."(162)

[Misschien ... maar kunnen ze ook gemaakt worden door mensen met heel wat minder capaciteiten?]

"The putative happy slave is plausibly wronged not in terms of well-being, but in terms of personal autonomy.(...) Naturally a slave does not have autonomy, and so on this account the slave is being wronged simply in virtue of being a slave, independent of that slave’s perceived well-being. "(163)

[Wonderlijk: er wordt geen onderscheid gemaakt tussen hoe die slaven zich in de praktijk voelen en abstracte filosofisch principes als 'autonomie' of 'vrijheid' of zo. Als een slaaf in de praktijk werkelijk goed behandeld wordt - geen gewelddadige onderdrukking, goede materiële voorzieningen als wonen en eten - en in die zin een goed leven kan leiden, zou zij of hij dan zitten te peinzen over zijn of haar vrijheid? Stel je voor: je bent vrij en geen slaaf meer, maar je hebt helaas niets te eten ... zou je dan niet weer slaaf willen zijn als je dan wel te eten had? Een filosofisch principe kun je niet eten. En hoe autonoom zijn al die zogenaamde autonome mensen dan? Hoe vrij? Het zijn containerbegrippen, ze worden voor alles misbruikt. Op een gegeven moment zijn mensen slaaf geworden van een abstract principe in plaats van slaaf van een slavenhouder. Like that's a step up ... ]

"But it is not clear that the MP3000 [de 'Mary Poppins 3000', een bedachte kindermeisjerobot - typisch seksistisch weer - GdG] or our imagined sexbots are slaves in any relevantly similar way to human slaves. If the sexbots are owned by another in some legally robust sense, then I would say they surely are slaves; and since ownership implies rights of access and use, that seems to imply automatic loss of autonomy for the slave. Therefore, it would be a moral wrong, at least on the autonomy account, to allow legal ownership of person-level sexbots."(163)

[Heel dit soort discussies hangt op de aanname dat robots als personen mogelijk zijn. Maar wanneer we ze als machine blijven zien dan zitten ze in de categorie van de wasmachine en zo, die we als eigenaar ook allerlei dingen laten doen zonder dat we zeggen dat de wasmachine een slaaf is omdat hij niet autonoom is in zijn beslissingen en zo. Met andere woorden: hoe plausibel is die aanname eigenlijk?]

"Myself, I basically bite the bullet here: I am at least intellectually persuaded that there is no inherent wrong to designing a person — whether human or robot — for sexual service. "(167)

(173) 10 Was It Good for You Too? The New Natural Law Theory and the Paradoxical Good of Sexbots [Joshua D. Goldstein]

"The New Natural Law Theory (NNLT), associated with thinkers such as Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Robert George, has emerged as a noted, if not prominent, force in ethical theory since the 1960s. It is an attempt to revive and update Thomistic philosophy to meet modern moral challenges. If we think of NNLT at all, it is both for its complex moral theory of how sex and human fulfillment fit together, and for the rather limited set of human sexual acts and decisions that fit within the moral horizon it sketches. Within this horizon falls “reproductive-type” sex, but only insofar as it occurs within and for the sake of different-sex marriage. Irretrievably beyond that horizon for the NNLT sexual ethic is masturbation, all reproductive-type sex outside of or only contingently related to marriage (e.g., “adultery,” “fornication”), and all complete sex of an intrinsically non-reproductive-type regardless of the relational or physical configuration it takes (e.g., “sodomy,” oral, or contracepted sex). On the face of it, then, an account of sexbots based on the NNLT sexual ethic promises to be brief. The mere existence of sexbots would seem to signal that our relations with them are going to be masturbatory, certainly non-reproductive, and a simulation of adultery (if we are married) or fornication (if we are not). In other words, sexbots simply would appear to be outside the NNLT’s moral horizon. In terms of new and interesting moral insights into sexbots, a NNLT account seems to promise only its rather sophisticated (some might say “casuistical”) reasoning for these wrongs and how they apply to sex with robots." [mijn nadruk] (173)

[De auteur gaat binnen die NNLT zoeken naar mogelijkheden voor seksrobots. Nee, dank u.]

(201) V - The Possibility of Robot Love

(203) 11 Automatic Sweethearts for Transhumanists [Michael Hauskeller]

De auteur heeft drie vragen.

"First, if we assume, as several futurists profess to believe, that within a few decades we will be able to build robots that do all the things we would normally expect a real human lover and sexual com- panion to do, and do them just as well, will they then also be, as lovers and companions, as satisfying as a real person would? Or will we have reason to think or feel that something is amiss, that these robots are, in some way, not as good as human companions? To answer this question, I shall assume that those robots will not be real persons, by which I mean that although a robot may give the impression of being a person, it is in fact not a person.(...) A being that only behaves as if it were a person, without being one, I shall call a pseudo-person." [mijn nadruk] (203)

"However, in initially making the assumption that those robotic sexual companions of the future will not be real persons in the specified sense, I am not committing myself to the view that it will never be possible for us to create artificial persons. While I do not think that this is very likely, I am happy to concede that, since we do not know what exactly gives rise to self-awareness and self-concern, we can at this stage not entirely rule out the possibility that one day we will be able to create machines that are real persons. If that happened, then those robots would either be designed to reliably perform certain tasks, say to love, cherish, obey, and sexually gratify us, or they would not. If they were not designed to reliably perform such tasks, and instead were free to make up their own minds, about what they want to do and what not (to the same extent that we are), then we would have little if any reason to create them in the first place (except perhaps to see whether it is possible to do so), simply because they would not in any relevant way differ from human persons. It is therefore most likely that if we figure out how to create self-aware and self-concerned robots we will also seek to make sure that they always do what we want them to do and nothing else, or, preferably (to avoid certain ethical issues, which will be briefly addressed later on), that they always want to do what we want them to do." [mijn nadruk] (203-204)

[Dat is nu realisme :-). Nog even afgezien van het probleem of het zou kunnen - ik bedoel, maak maar eens een vagina of een penis die precies zo functioneert als bij mensen, de complexiteit ervan is enorm - is dat een geweldige vraag: inderdaad, waarom zouden we robots maken die precies zo zijn als wij? Voor de hand liggend is dat we robots maken die precies doen en willen wat wij willen op specifieke terreinen. Waarom vragen mensen zich bij industriële robots nooit af of het slaven zijn en doen ze dat wel bij robots die in uiterlijk en gedrag op ons lijken? En waarom gebeurt dat waarschijnlijk niet bij een hubot die het huis schoon maakt en voor de kinderen zorgt, terwijl het wel gebeurt bij hubots voor seksuele doeleinden? Ik vermoed dat hier typisch weer de vooroordelen over seks in naar voren komen.]

De tweede vraag is dan:

"Would an artificial person (a real one, not a pseudo-person) who has been designed and programmed to reliably give us exactly what we expect a human lover to give us, namely both the actions and the accompanying emotions, thoughts, and attitudes, be, as a lover and companion, as satisfying as a person is (be they human or human-made) who gives us all this without having been designed and programmed to do so?"(204)

En de derde vraag:

"This consideration gives rise to my third and last question: On what grounds can sexual companion robots be regarded as being not only just as good as human lovers, but in fact as better, i.e., as more satisfactory?"

[Ja, dat zou wat zijn, kan iedereen lekker jaloers worden.]

"... what we value in those with whom we have an intimate relationship [zegt William James - GdG] is not primarily the fact that they behave or treat us in a certain, seemingly loving way, but that they do so precisely because they love us.
However, it is difficult to see what this love (the subjective feelings and thoughts of which the behavior is supposedly a mere expression) should consist of, if not in a certain kind of loving behavior. If my lover treats me badly and does not show any concern for my well-being (by, for instance, looking after me when I’m sick, or by taking care of my needs), then it does not seem to make much sense to insist that they, despite all, do love us."(205)

"On this view, we do not, in fact, infer the presence of (a certain kind of) mind from a person’s behavior. Rather, their behavior is their mind."(206)

[Ik zie dat precies zo: als iemand zich niet liefdevol gedraagt, is er geen sprake van liefde. Dan wordt het een soort van geloof dat iemand je lief heeft, op basis van wat iemand zegt dat hij of zij voelt of op basis van wel liefdevol gedrag dat je een keer eerder met iemand meemaakte.]

"Yet the reason why it may not make much sense to doubt the love of somebody who unfailingly behaves lovingly toward us is that we would be hard-pressed to come up with a plausible explanation for why they would do such a thing. By far the best explanation for their loving behavior is that they really love us."(206)

"Sex, or perhaps we should better say good sex — the kind that D. H. Lawrence used to call “tender-hearted fucking” — is a practice of sharing desire, a particular form of companionship and communion. In order to be fully satisfied with a robotic pseudo-person designed for sexual pleasure (who is by definition incapable of feeling any desire), we would have to attach no value to the interpersonal aspects of sex, i.e., to those aspects of sex that can make it such a rich and exhilarating experience in the first place. This becomes quite evident when David Levy declares that the “prime purpose of a sexbot is to assist the user in achieving orgasm, without the necessity of having another human being present.” The human that is not present, and whose absence is supposedly fully compensated by the presence of the robot, is here seen as having the same function as the robot, namely to “assist the user in achieving orgasm.” Not only does this view reduce the sexual act to what it often leads up to (as if nothing else mattered; the process itself discounted), it also assumes that to achieve full sexual satisfaction we do not need anybody else. All we need is someone or something (it doesn’t matter which) that pushes the right buttons, scratches what needs scratching, and tickles what needs tickling. This someone could also be us. In other words, the other who is no longer a partner, but merely an “assistant,” is nothing more than a rather overdeveloped masturbation device. You don’t necessarily need a robot for that, and you certainly don’t need a person. If sex is in any case nothing but masturbation (and at best mutual masturbation), then there is no reason to think that a pseudo-person, designed with sufficient technological sophistication, could not meet the job requirements just as well as a real person. But if sex is in fact more than that, or at least can be more than that, a communion of some sort, then sex with a pseudo-person can, just like masturbation, never be as satisfactory or fulfilling as sex with a real person." [mijn nadruk] (208)

[Dat lijkt me onjuist, omdat je bij masturberen die andere personen en situaties erbij kan fantaseren zoals jij dat wilt. Dat is precies waarom mensen fantaseren bij het masturberen: ze kunnen het krijgen zoals ze willen, terwijl echte mensen op allerlei manieren een probleem kunnen vormen - ze zijn niet meer aantrekkelijk, ze zijn niet enthousiast, ze willen allerlei spannende dingen niet doen, en zo verder. Misschien is masturberen daarom vaak juist meer 'satisfactory or fulfilling as seks with a real person'. Waarom blijven mensen bijvoorbeeld masturberen, ook al hebben ze iemand met wie ze seks kunnen hebben? Omdat de realiteit maar al te vaak te kort schiet bij de fantasie.]

"But what if we eventually managed to build robots that are real persons, as some believe is possible (e.g., Petersen, in this volume)? Robots that can desire us as much as we can desire them, robots that can really love us back and feel what we feel. Would they then be just as good as a human lover? I am reasonably sure that for many they would, provided they are, in all relevant respects, just like us (except perhaps better looking and more skilled in the art of pleasuring the flesh).(...) However, that future social robots will in all relevant respects be like us is even more unlikely than that they will be persons, for the simple reason that they will in any case be made for a purpose, while humans generally are not (at least not yet). In order for them to exist we will have to make them, and we are not going to do that without a good reason for it, and that means without there being a need or demand for them. In other words, there has to be a market for them. So why would anyone want a robot lover? Why would anyone be willing to pay for them? Whitby lists several plausible motivations. Obviously, sexual companion robots might appeal to those who have trouble finding a human lover. Not everyone has the appearance or social skills that would make them attractive as a sexual partner to others, and even if they do find someone, those they can get may not be the ones they would have chosen if they had a choice. A sexual robot would allow those who are less sexually attractive not only to find a partner, but also to find a very attractive one. Others may simply like the idea of having sex with a machine (or in this case an artificial person). Possible reasons for this I have discussed elsewhere. Some people may feel drawn to the undemanding nature of robots that are designed to please us, and some may look forward to being able to do with their robotic partner whatever they want to without being restricted in any way by morality or by what their partner happens to like and dislike. But, whatever the motivation, in order to give those people what they want, we can perhaps allow robots to be persons in the specified sense, but what we cannot allow is that they are free to act in a way that runs counter to the wishes of their buyers. If they think and feel, that’s fine, perhaps even desirable, but they must love us when we want them to love us and have sex with us when we want them to have sex with us. Their freedom needs to be restricted. Otherwise, we would have no reason to create (and, perhaps more importantly, buy) them in the first place. " [mijn nadruk] (208-209)

[Lijkt mij ook. ]

"According to Bryson, robots should be slaves. Not only would there be nothing morally wrong with keeping them as slaves, but also would it be morally wrong not to do so. It would be wrong to grant them any kind of moral status because doing so would draw time and energy, as well as care and emotional investment, away from those who deserve it, namely human persons. Ascriptions of personhood are a valuable resource with which we should not be too generous. And it would not be morally wrong to refuse robots moral consideration and keep them as slaves because we have created them specifically for that purpose, that is, to serve our needs and wants." [mijn nadruk] (210)

Hauskeller is het niet met Brysons redenering eens. Maar nog minder met Petersen die meent dat het altijd moreel ok is als we robots en zo maken die zelf willen wat wij willen.

"People would get what they want, and what they want is someone who wants what they want them to want, for instance “an airhead silicon bimboid obsessed with serving them sexually, or perhaps a skinnier anal-addicted Ukrainian model,” or, for the more outlandish tastes, “babies for rape” or “snuff robots which scream and bleed realistically when their arms are sawn off.” All that would presumably be fine, following Petersen’s original argument, as long as those treated that way do not mind because it is what they themselves want anyway. Except it is not all right. It is demeaning, and the fact that we would have designed them to find pleasure in a demeaning life, makes it not less, but even more demeaning." [mijn nadruk] (212)

[Want het zijn nog altijd wijzelf die die robots maken en er in stoppen wat wij willen dat ze willen. En wijzelf blijven altijd moreel verantwoordelijk voor wat we maken.]

"So let us assume for now that creating persons programmed to love us [het gaat nu dus over liefde, niet over seks - GdG] is morally unobjectionable (as unobjectionable as, say, creating a person programmed with a burning desire to cure cancer). Would they then be as satisfying as a real (unprogrammed) human person who just happens to love us?
They might not be, even if we have no ethical concerns about it. That is because, as Dylan Evans has pointed out, we do not only desire to be loved, but we usually also have the second-order desire to be loved freely, i.e., by choice." [mijn nadruk] (213)

"This entails a certain contingency, and, with it, the possibility of loss. Even though we fear that possibility, we are unlikely to accord much value to a love that is ours whatever we do. We will probably tire of it very quickly. If that is correct, then an automatic sweetheart, even if they are real persons, and even if they are designed to love us no matter what, will not be as satisfying as a human person who (really) loves us. "

"On the other hand, the prospect of having somebody that loves us reliably, someone who we know won’t leave us no matter what, will certainly have a strong appeal to many. So there is indeed, as Evans puts it, a dilemma at the heart of the human-robot relationship: “We want contradictory things: a romantic partner who is both free and who will never leave us.” And if we cannot have both, then, depending on what we value most, we may well prefer the reliable artifact to the never completely reliable human. What is more, we might not even see this as a huge loss, or for that matter any loss, in the first place." [mijn nadruk] (213)

"To engage with someone, a real human person, is, after all, always risky. Not only do we never quite know what we will get or whether we will actually get what it says on the box, we are also constantly expected to take into account, and sympathetically respond to, their needs and desires. Real people are demanding and do not always perform the way we want them to. The great advantage of robots is that they do ..." [mijn nadruk] (214)

(219) 12 - From Sex Robots to Love Robots: Is Mutual Love with a Robot Possible? [Sven Nyholm and Lily Eva Frank]

"The question we will be discussing is: Could mutual love be achieved between humans and sex robots? To clarify: we are not only concerned with whether humans might interpret themselves as loving, or as being in love with, sex robots. We are primarily interested in whether the sex robots could also possibly love the humans who see themselves as loving the sex robots. That is why we have emphasized the expression “mutual love.”" [mijn nadruk] (219-220)

[Dat gaat dan weer uit van dat het mogelijk is zo'n soort robot te maken. Maar, nogmaals, dat is nogal een aanname. Zonder dat is het een zinloos gefantaseer.]

"Our tentative answer is that whereas mutual love between humans and sex robots is not in principle impossible, it is hard to achieve. The sex robots would have to be very advanced."(220)

[Nee, echt? Wat een opendeurantwoord ... ]

Een van de redenen om dit onderwerp te bestuderen:

"However, it is also widely held that sex has greater value and deeper meaning if it takes place between people who love each other. We take this to be part of common sense."(222)

[Die bewering hangt dus van vaagheden aan elkaar. Het is gewoon een aanname op basis van bepaalde waarden en normen.]

"Levy’s answer to the looming question of whether or not there could be real love between a human and a robot, or whether the robot can really be in love with the human, follows from the way he understands love. That understanding is functional and behavioristic. If the robot speaks and behaves in the same manner a human lover does, and if the robot can produce the same (or greater) experienced levels of companionship, satisfaction, emotional comfort for the human (than) a fellow human lover can, then we should take this to be genuine love.
We are critical of a purely functional and behavioristic characterization of love, in part because it fails to take into account important features of the ordinary conception of romantic love. If love boiled down to certain behavioral patterns, we could hire an actor to “go through the motions,” by behaving in the various ways we associate with lovers. We could thereby buy ourselves love. But, by common conceptions, this would not be real love, however talented the actor might be. What goes on “on the inside” matters greatly to whether mutual love is achieved or not. The inner motives and thoughts that our lovers have when they treat us well is an important part of what distinguishes them from people who merely pretend to love us because this is somehow to their personal advantage. Part of what we hope for when we want others to love us is that they harbor a genuine concern for us. " [mijn nadruk] (223-224)

[Zoals Hauskeller hiervoor al schreef: alles wat er innerlijk gebeurt bij iemand kunnen we alleen weten via haar of zijn gedrag. Liefde is niet meer dan gedrag zoals Sullins volgens de auteurs beweert. We zien geen 'innerlijk', we zien gedrag in de vorm van gezichtsuitdrukkingen, taalgebruik, lichaamstaal, handelen. En dat is dan ook de reden waarom er zo veel toneel gespeeld wordt, want veel mensen voelen helemaal geen 'echte liefde' - wat een vaagheid - voor die ander. Pas als het gedrag tegenstrijdig wordt, pas als er slecht toneel gespeeld wordt, gaan we conclusies trekken over wat iemand van binnen denkt en voelt. De 'ordinary conception of romantic love' is gewoon een geloof en zit er helemaal naast met haar opvattingen. En daar baseren deze auteurs zich dus op. Tja.]

"The approach we favor here is to understand love primarily under its guise as a core human value and component of a good human life. Thus understood, the best way to interpret love is to consider the descriptions, ideas, or associations under which people typically value, seek, or celebrate love.(...) But we think the best way to go is to try to isolate clusters of ideas that don’t only show up within the philosophy of love, but that have also become part of ordinary common sense, and that are represented in widely familiar tributes to love in art, poetry, and literature.
Using this strategy, we base the rest of our discussion around three clusters of ideas about love that we find represented in philosophy, common sense, arts and literature, and popular culture (e.g., love songs). These are (1) the idea of being “a good match” (or being made for each other), (2) the notion that lovers should value each other in their distinctive particularity, and (3) the ideal of a steadfast commitment on the part of the true lover. We think these are very common aspects of what people value and cherish when they value and celebrate love as an end, or as a value in itself. " [mijn nadruk] (226)

[Dan neem je naar mijn smaak te veel de kritiekloze houding van mensen over liefde en houden van over. Liefde maakt blind, weet je wel. De vaagheden vliegen je hier om de oren: we zijn voor elkaar gemaakt of hij/zij is mijn wederhelft, hij laat me in mijn waarde of zij accepteert me zoals ik ben, zij is de Ene of de Ware of de liefde van mijn leven voor wie ik alles over heb. Ugh ... ]

Wat betreft het tweede punt wordt opgemerkt:

"Thus, from the lover’s point of view, part of what makes loving somebody a special kind of good is that we cherish that particular person, faults and all. And in just the same way, from the recipient’s point of view, part of what makes enjoying somebody’s love such a great good is that they care about and value us as the particular people we are, faults and all." [mijn nadruk] [mijn nadruk] (230)

[Leeg soort relaties, lijkt me. Mensen verbeteren elkaar dan dus niet, voeden elkaar niet op, leren niets van elkaar. Een andere mogelijkheid: dat je fouten accepteert die in je eigen nadeel zijn, zoals 'hij slaat me, maar ik hou gewoon van hem', en dat soort zaken, doie ook nog eens gebonden zijn aan gender: zij accepteert zijn fouten, hij niet de hare; zij blijft altijd bij hem, blijft hem altijd trouw, wat hij ook doet; hij zoekt zijn heil bij een ander. ]

En wat het derde aspect betreft:

"The human ideal of love, in other words, seems to contain an important element directly premised on the notion that human beings have a distinctive kind of free will. This is the kind of free will that consists in the capacity to choose otherwise. And in the case of love, it is committing to stand by our beloved, even though it is possible for us to do otherwise and even though doing otherwise might sometimes be more convenient, that matters specifically. "(233)

[Ik geloof niet zo in die vrijheid om te kiezen. Praktisch is er vaak helemaal geen mogelijkheid om een andere keuze te maken dan bij een partner te blijven (geen huis, geen werk, de kinderen, noem maar op). Het lijkt me nogal naïef om dat 'committment' te noemen. Hoe dan ook is het idealiseren van dat iemand zijn of haar hele leven bij een ander blijft nogal belachelijk. Het is een soort van lofzang op de alledaagse zekerheid en saaiheid. Erg romantisch ... Waarom zou je dat willen? Wil je dan niet iemand anders meemaken? En waarom niet? Misschien heb je wel heel erg fout gekozen. Dat kun je pas ontdekken als je met meerdere partners te maken hebt gehad, als je hebt kunnen vergelijken, als je hebt kunnen ontdekken wat je goed ligt en wat niet. ]

"The lover gives his or her beloved care robustly, and does so because he or she values the beloved, not for any opportunistic instrumental reasons."(233-234)

[Dat maken mensen zichzelf graag wijs, ja. Maar natuurlijk is dat allemaal ook in je eigen voordeel: als ik voor hém zorg, zorgt hij als het nodig is ook voor mij, de kick van iemands afhankelijkheid en kwetsbaarheid, de macht die je daarbij voelt, egocentrisme alom.]

Kan een robot aan die kwalificaties voor liefde voldoen?

"The job description for a sex robot that could enter into a relationship of mutual love that would match with the human ideal of mutual romantic love is highly demanding. By today’s standards, a robot that could meet these qualifications would be truly amazing. "(237)

(245) VI - The Future of Robot Sex

(247) 13 - Intimacy, Bonding, and Sex Robots: Examining Empirical Results and Exploring Ethical Ramifications [Matthias Scheutz and Thomas Arnold]

"While polling does not settle ethical debates, arguments with empirical assumptions about people’s social views and reactions toward social robots should not remain untethered by actual views of the public. Seeing where those opinions lie can help to describe the society into which new developments in robotics may be introduced, perhaps by flagging important moral intuitions that could affect how the use of sex robots will unfold on a societal level (for example, who presently would be likely to use them and for what purpose). It can enhance ethical arguments to consider how a number of actual people currently regard the notions being discussed. "(247-248)

"We explore in closer detail some of these specific takes, and surmise that ethical discussions of sex robots must facilitate finer-grained discussions of relationships and context than have been conducted so far. In particular, we conclude that notions of intimacy and companionship — inherent in social robotics in general — must overtake narrower discussions of sexuality, robots, and “sex robots.” "(248)

"We found significant differences in how appropriate men and women regarded using a sex robot, with men more approving and women less so almost across the board. On the other hand, men and women shared a general sense for what capabilities a sex robot would have, a particular form that would be inappropriate (e.g., child), and certain contexts where a sex robot would be more appropriate than not (e.g., extreme isolation, sexual harassment training)." [mijn nadruk] (249)

[Dat ligt voor de hand, gezien de socialisatie van mannen en vrouwen op het vlak van seksualiteit.]

"Not suprisingly, most agreement is obtained with questions about the prevention of disease transmission, sex availabilty around the clock, and the lack of psychological impact on the sex partner. Similarly, people disagreed with sex robots possibly enabling legal underage sex. Opinions were more split on questions the effects of sex robots on people’s sex lives, as well as emotional and physical harm. " [mijn nadruk] (253)

[Ook dat ligt gezien de maatschappelijke standaard ideeën over dat soort zaken voor de hand, zoals de onderzoekers gelukkig zelf ook zien.]

"People somewhat agree that sex robots could cause harm to human relationships and might be addictive, possibly leading to unrealistic expectation in the human case. And they slightly disagree that sex robots might become so good that people will not go back to human sex, although this is, of course, a speculative ques- tion, since we cannot know whether this is true without having advanced sex robots. "(255)

"The strongest agreement (which was overall fairly modest) was that sex with a sex robot does not violate any law, while the strongest disagreement to any question was about whether sex robots ought to have rights: only 6% of all subjects agreed with this statement. Overall, we found a split on questions such as whether one could fall in love with a sex robot, whether a sex robot must always oblige or should only be used for sex, whether any action is allowed with a sex robot, and whether one can cheat with a sex robot. Again, subjects did not agree with legal underage sex with a sex robot, and they most disagreed that sex robots would free humans from human sexual relationships. Interestingly, and different from the HRI 2016 data where subjects found sex with a sex robot more like masturbation than having sex, subjects in the current study disagreed more with the idea that sex with a sex robot is not really sex and does not count as sex (we will return to this discrepancy shortly). " [mijn nadruk] (255-256)

"While some have argued that robots could help educate the young in their incipient sexuality, there was decided disapproval of that as an advantage (only 19% approving). Use in the context of adult sexual lives that help oneself and others seems safer ground. " [mijn nadruk] (256)

[Ook typisch. Seks en jongeren gaan in de hoofden van mensen in dit onderzoek niet samen.]

"Interestingly, some common ideas about bonding and robot interaction in the scholarly literature and the mainstream press do not seem shared by the subjects. Emotional bonding beyond sex with the robots is not, for example, a threat most subjects shared, nor the risk that superior robot performance will render human-human sex inferior (making the 2050 prediction from the literature seem even bolder). Moreover, the idea that the robot will exploit the human is almost wholly rejected. Whether these last results say more about the presumed state of the technology on the part of the subjects, or speak to a more permanent skepticism that humans could fall prey to robot manipulation, is still an open question. " [mijn nadruk] (256)

(261) 14 - Deus Sex Machina: Loving Robot Sex Workers and the Allure of an Insincere Kiss [Julie Carpenter]

"Of the many questions the notion of human-robot sexuality brings to mind, this chapter considers whether people will feel affection for, and possibly even love, a robot while engaging in a sexual association or context. The tendency of overlapping sexual and emotional affection in human-human models will also increase the likelihood that people will cast some robots into light not just as viable sexual partners, but also as things worthy of human affection. "(261)

"In the same poll, when asked about the ethics of a spouse turning to a robot for stimulation during the course of the marriage, 42% of survey respondents said this act would be viewed as cheating. Another 31% said it would not be regarded as cheating, and 26% said they were unsure. Americans under the age of thirty were almost as likely to say it would not be cheating (34%) as that it would (36%), while respondents over the age of sixty-five were far more likely to say that it would, by a 52% to 24% margin. While there is often a difference between what people claim they might do and how they actually behave, this poll indicates that some people are already open to the idea of sex with a robot. " [mijn nadruk] (263)

"In conclusion, it is easy to see there are many questions about human-robot sexuality in this new era of human-robot interactions. Currently, at this point in time, theory building is one way to investigate and propose answers to these questions. This is a time of theory building, as well as a time to negotiate how to live with robots in every way, including sexually, which would involve bestowing them with meaningful affection. To deny the idea of human-robot sexuality, or the idea of human-robot affection or romantic attachment, is akin to denying the existence of many innate and integral parts of humanness and human experience, such as sexuality, love, vanity, loneliness, and curiosity, some of the very things that may endear robot sex workers to humans via an alternate method of fulfilling those desires."(283)

[Ik vind het maar een vaag artikel dat allerlei kanten uitgaat met als basis een geloof in dat robots werkelijk het niveau van menselijkheid gaan halen dat technologische optimisten hebben. Als je zoals ik sceptisch bent over dat gegeven, is zo'n artikel speculatie en tamelijk zinloos.]

(289) 15 - Sexbot-Induced Social Change: An Economic Perspective [Marina Adshade]

"Sexbot-induced social change (SISC) is on the horizon. Elements of that social change can be easily anticipated. For example, the share of the young adult population that chooses to remain single is very likely to increase. Because social change is organic, however, adaptations in other social norms and behaviors are much more difficult to predict. But this is not virgin territory. New technologies completely transformed sexual behavior over the second half of the twentieth century. We have decades of technology-induced social change to guide our predictions about the future of SISC. SISC will influence a broad spectrum of social structures. Here we will focus on one significant area: the nature of marriage. While many will be dismayed to see marriage evolving as the result of SISC, the reality is that marriage already is, and always has been, evolving with changes in technology." [mijn nadruk] (289)

"Let us begin by looking at three historical examples of technology-induced social change. This will give us a tool for understanding the process though which social norms evolve in response to the availability of new technologies."(290)

"Increased access to contraceptive technology changed society’s views of sex outside of marriage. This had the unanticipated effect of contributing to the increase in births to unmarried women. It also contributed to the de-stigmatization of childbirth outside of marriage. "(291)

"Regardless of whether or not you accept as conclusive the evidence of a relationship between the viewing of online pornography and rape, there is sufficient statistical evidence to claim a relationship between access to the Internet and a reduction in the incidence of rape. This is an unambiguously positive effect for society. "(291)

"Between 1890 and 1940, the share of married women working in the labor force tripled, and over the course of the century that share continued to grow as new technologies arrived that replaced the labor of women in the home. Electric washing machines and dryers saved women days each week of manual labor. By the early 1970s, the arrival of microwave ovens and frozen foods meant that a family could easily be fed at the end of a long workday, even when the mother worked outside of the home. "(292)

Dat waren de drie historische voorbeelden. Nu de voorspellingen.

"Prediction One: The adoption of Sexbot technology will disentangle the association between sexual intimacy and marriage, leading to higher quality marriages. "(292)

"Today, thanks in part to contraceptive technology, we marry because marriage brings both partners relatively easy sexual access, companionship, and reduces the costs of household production, including the production of children. The question then is, what happens to marriage when sexbot technology provides a low-cost substitute to easy sexual access in marriage?" [mijn nadruk] (294)

"Access to sexbot technology will not change the biological imperative of individuals to want to share their lives, and raise their children, with another human being. But it would make it possible for individuals to choose that human being based on characteristics other than mutual sexual desire; to disentangle the association of sexual intimacy and life as a family. For example, it is not hard to imagine two heterosexual women seeing the value in forming a household and raising children together as a married couple, but with their needs for sexual companionship met by sexbot technology. Nor is it hard to imagine a homosexual man seeing the value in forming a household and raising children with a woman, since that arrangement would significantly reduce expenses associated with reproductive technologies, but with each of their needs for sexual companionship met by sexbot technology. " [mijn nadruk] (294)

[Boeiend idee. In dit boek nog niet op die manier naar voren gebracht.]

"Prediction Two: The adoption of sexbot technology will lead to the normalization of nonexclusive relationships as the dominant relationship structure. "(295)

"Access to sexbots is likely to accelerate that change in social norms, and, in fact, has the potential to eliminate social disapproval of non-monogamy altogether."(295)

"Monogamy within marriage will come to be seen as a personal preference rather than a socially imposed constraint. With sufficient numbers of married individuals choosing to seek sexual gratification outside of marriage, perhaps at even various stages of their lives, it is easy to imagine non-monogamous marriage becoming the dominant marriage institution in the developed world. "

[Minder sterk onderbouwd, vind ik.]

"Prediction Three: Legal marriage institutions will be reformed to allow individuals to determine the nature of their own marriages free from state interference. "(297)

[Ook niet. Zit eigenlijk al als een gevolg in de eerste voorspelling.]

"Prediction Four: Changes in social norms around marriage and sexual access will disadvantage those in the lower socioeconomic groups, potentially making them worse off than they might have been before the technology existed."(297)

"In this case, however, sexbot technology has the power to be harmful, since none of the direct benefits are likely to reach those socioeconomic groups who cannot afford to access it. "(298)

Conclusie.

"We can already see a small-scale revolution brought on by people demanding the acceptance of non-monogamy in marriage, the separation of sexual intimacy and productive marriage, and the abandonment of a universal concept of marriage. Access to sexbots cannot on its own transform society to make these new attitudes broadly accepted. But it can certainly accelerate changes already underway — perhaps quite dramatically. For those who believe in the concept of traditional marriage, access to sexbot technology is going to help usher in some very trying times. " [mijn nadruk] (299)