Philosophy 101E

In the movie there was a sex machine developed in Illinois known as Sybian that was basically a rotating dildo on top of a vibrating seat. This really brought the odd idea of sex with robots into play. Would it not be considered cheating if you had sex with a robot because it is man-made? Man-made is ontologically different from evolutionary and everything natural, but what if robots grew on trees? Would it be acceptable then to have sex with them? For those females who invested in the Sybian system, it is not a substitute to sex but an addition. There can be no true substitute for intercourse, hence when people masturbate they do not say they just got laid by themselves. This Sybian is an addition not a substitute because no man can spin around in circles while he is inside a woman, but no Sybian can kiss a woman after she is finished and tell her how good it was.

Now if you had been dating a girl for a long time and you liked her, then you found out that she was a cybourg, would you break up with her? Cybourgs are not part of our moral ingroup so the natural thing to do would be to break it off. Similarly, in the 1940’s a white man dated a woman for many years and they fell in love. Then one day he found out that his lover’s great grandmother was black and he broke up with her because of his beliefs. He was white and, that being a different time, he rejected blacks from his moral ingroup. Historically people have rejected the idea of robots in their moral ingroup. Can you love someone that is not a part of your moral community?