Philosophy 101E

For those who went to the movie screening tonight, here is a chance to comment on some of the things we saw. For those who did not attend you missed what I thought to be the strangest and most interesting screening of the entire semester, not to mention the discussion held afterwards. The central theme of the movie was robots and love. Can people fall in love with robots the way they do with pets? I think this is possible to an extent similar to that of a man’s love for his dog. When you play with your dog he shows affection by wagging his tail, jumping up on you, and licking you. The robots in this movie showed not similar signs of reciprocity, but signs on the same level. They had eyebrows, eyelids, mouths, and ears and could adjust all of them to run the gamut of facial expressions depicting emotions that are merely programmed in their silicon memories. We do not have a problem with people falling in love with with their pets, so why should matter if a human loves a robot that is just as smart as a pet? This kind of companionate love may be possible from a robot but I would still be skeptical of a robot telling me how much it liked me. Would that not just be the programmer speaking through the robot?  Even further, can humans have a passionate relationship with a robot? Some men do not require Sartrian reciprocity in their sexual encounters. When visiting a prostitue, a man will not care if the woman is into the sex because he has such a low life that he sleeps with prostitutes and does not care what happens to her as long as he gets what he wants. So is it acceptable to have a relationship with a robot if it will just be the same as that with a prostitute? One of the many aspects that the robot lacks is that of feedback. You do not know how the relationship is developing if the robot cannot tell you. As discussed after the movie you can have a relationship with cocaine but it still will not give you any feedback (unless you hallucinate and have an out-of-body experience or something). We are not yet at the point where robots can tell us how to grow in life and until we reach that point I do not believe that a relationship with a robot is possible–and even then it would be weird.