Abstract
This volume brings together a set of conceptual, moral, and cultural concerns carefully to assess a significant public policy issue: the development and proliferation of sex robots. Critics argue, for example, that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons as well as a degradation of society. They claim that the prevalence of sex robots will increase sexual violence, immorally objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body image stereotypes, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human erotic desire. Sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography and other forms of “digi-sexuality,” are appreciated as providing autonomy affirming companionship, sexual release for the lonely, and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. As these chapters explore, to secure normative claims about sexual activity with artificial humanoids, one will need first to understand what the meaning of the morality of sexual activity can be as well as the significance of various practices with robotic partners on such cardinal social institutions as the family and the relationship between the sexes. One will also need to consider in terms of which ranking of human goods, right-making conditions, social outcomes, or personal virtues we ought to evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men and children. Without such analysis, it will be unclear whether sex robots ought to be appreciated as a social evil that will further degrade moral culture, a positive technological innovation that will help preserve human dignity, or a more or less harmless pastime.
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Notes
- 1.
The Robot Companion company, for example, claims to offer more than just sex: “Our AI Robot Companion Sex Dolls have the ability to learn with you, the Technology allows her to interact on everyday level. The Robot Companion can tell you the weather, remember your favourite foods, ask about your day, answer many questions and most importantly continue to learn along the way. Along with regular remote updates you are sure to enjoy that mental stimulation you have always craved. You have the ability to ask the Robot Companion anything and she will respond. You also have the ability to help your Robot Companion understand what your preferences are…Our AI Robot Companion Sex Dolls are equipped with built in sensors, this means she will react in a sensual and sexual way when you touch her in certain places. Our Technology allows remote upgrades, which means once new technology is built, we will be able to upgrade your AI Robot Companion Dolls with her latest features.” https://www.robotcompanion.ai/our-technology/
- 2.
The technology company Acieta, for example, argues that “Robotics and manufacturing are a natural partnership. Robotics play a major role in the manufacturing landscape today. Automatic manufacturing solutions should be a key part of any operation that strives for maximum efficiency, safety and competitive advantage in the market. Manufacturing robots automate repetitive tasks, reduce margins of error to negligible rates, and enable human workers to focus on more productive areas of the operation.” https://www.acieta.com/why-robotic-automation/robotics-manufacturing/
- 3.
As one surgeon described the procedure: “Robotic surgery is not autonomous but is controlled by us the surgeons. We introduce the ‘arms’ surgically. These have instruments attached, including a high-definition 3D camera. The surgeons will go to the robotic console, while at least one assistant will stay by the bedside. We control the arms from the control console, manipulating tissue, much in the same way a surgeon would when carrying out open surgery, and remove the cancer” (Pratt 2018). https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-robotic-surgery-is-helping-patients-doctors
- 4.
Robots have become common in household cleaning (e.g., the Roomba produced by IRobot) as well as in industrial cleaning tasks, such as micro-dredging, the removal of sludge and sediment from industrial water tanks (see, e.g., Sciphyn.com).
- 5.
Paro, a robotic seal, was designed to calm and comfort patients with dementia or other forms of loss of cognitive function. Paro is marketed as a therapeutic robot: “PARO is an advanced interactive robot developed by AIST, a leading Japanese industrial automation pioneer. It allows the documented benefits of animal therapy to be administered to patients in environments such as hospitals and extended care facilities where live animals present treatment or logistical difficulties.” http://www.parorobots.com/
- 6.
Here one might consider such pop-cultural explorations as the movie Blade Runner (1982), based on Philip K. Dick’s book: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep first published in 1968; see the new edition 1996. Other examples include the popular science fiction television series Humans, see: https://www.amc.com/shows/humans%2D%2D51
- 7.
See Campaign Against Sex Robots: http://campaignagainstsexrobots.org
- 8.
As James Davison Hunter notes: “The family is the most conspicuous field of conflict in the culture war. Some would argue that it is the decisive battleground. The public debate over the status and role of women, the moral legitimacy of abortion, the legal and social status of homosexuals, the increase in family violence, the rise of illegitimacy particularly among black teenagers and young adults, the growing demand for adequate day care, and so on, prominently fill the headlines of the nation’s newspapers, magazines, and intellectual journals” (1991, p. 176).
One might also consider the statement of the “Black Lives Matter” political action group of the need to destroy the traditional nuclear family: “We are committee to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement… .” (www.blmphilly.com).
It is worth noting that the traditional nuclear family is not a Western phenomenon; various forms and variations of the biologically-based nuclear family exist throughout the world (see Cherry 2016). Children raised within such traditional family structures enjoy an internationally and cross-culturally well documented wide range of statistical advantages (social, emotional, psychological and economic) compared to children raised in other environments. Children raised in single parent homes, for example, are more likely to experience poverty, criminality, and school delinquency, to fail to finish school, to become pregnant while still an unmarried teenager, as well as to experience poor psychological health (see Defoe 2003; Noval et al. 2002; Weithoff et al. 2003). Learning to function as a responsible adult is a slow and challenging process. Children typically need close parental guidance into their mid to late twenties. Outside of close biological family connections there is often significantly less support. For example: “…stepfathers, on average, are less attached to the unrelated children of their partners than genetic fathers to their own children. From an evolutionary perspective, men’s investments in children are influenced by genetic links. … In addition, stepfathers and children may compete for mothers’ time, energy, attention, or affections. All of these suggest that genetic fathers may make higher quality investments in children than stepfathers; accordingly, stepfathers have a higher probability of physically abusing children ” (Alexandre et al. 2010, p. 960). Similar cross-cultural data is available. In rural China , for example, data suggests that children of divorced parents are much more likely to experience abuse or violence than children who live with their biologically related mother and father (Mengtong and Ling 2016). A study in Britain found stepfathers to be the offender in fatal child abuse cases approximately 62% of the time. In the Netherlands, data from all seventeen of the country’s child-protective service agencies concluded that families with a stepparent have an elevated risk of child abuse (van Ijzendoorn et al. 2009). In Brazil, a study found that child physical abuse was 2.7 times more likely in a household that included a stepfather than in a household with two biological parents. The elevated risk included additional alleged abuse by the mother (Alexandre et al. 2010, p. 960; see also Berger et al. 2008). As Charles Murray summarizes: “No matter what the outcome being examined – the quality of the mother-infant relationship, externalizing behavior in childhood (aggression, delinquency, and hyperactivity), delinquency in adolescence, criminality as adults, illness and injury in childhood, early mortality, sexual decision making in adolescence, school problems and dropping out, emotional health, or any other measure of how well or poorly children do in life – the family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married (2012, p. 158). The roles that male and female biological parents play in raising children cannot be easily reproduced in other types of social arrangements. Arguing against the traditional nuclear family inevitably leads to significant harms to children.
- 9.
As Hong Kong scholar Y. C. Richard Wong points out, traditional families have been empirically proven to be the most beneficial to the growth of children and their development. “Since children take a long time to grow up and must be cared for intensively, and since children in modern societies tend to take an even longer time to grow to independence as a result of the much larger investments in human capital parents make in them, the traditional family continues to be the best available institution for producing ‘quality’ children. The term ‘quality’ is used in a very general and broad sense covering cognitive, behavioral, health and other characteristics.” However, he is significantly worried about the decline of the family along with the rise of the increasingly omnipresent state in the contemporary time: “The family was by far the most important institution in society. But today it is in decline with the state acting as a powerful competitor for the loyalty of its members. Its impact is in contrast to that of the market and technology, which are not competitors but instead encourage the substitution towards more quality and less quantity and indeed have brought hugely beneficial economic effects. I am not at all concerned about the effects of the market on family choices because market choices are always made on a voluntary basis. The state, however, has coercive powers to enforce legislation and regulations that seek to impose its will on the family, often with little room for choice” (available: http://www.wangyujian.com/?p=1997&lang=en).
- 10.
The CIA World Factbook defines Total Fertility Rate as “the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age.” (See the World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate)
- 11.
“Much of this decline is due to delaying the age at marriage. At the turn of the twentieth century, median age at first marriage was 26 for men and 22 for women. By the mid-1950s, these numbers had declined to about 22.5 (men) and 20 (women). Since that time, age at first marriage has increased dramatically: in 2018, men’s median age at first marriage was 29.8 and women’s was 27.8. Other key factors explaining declining marriage rates are the growth of unmarried cohabitation…shifting economic fortunes among those with less than a college degree, and some increase in lifelong singlehood” (Wilcox et al. 2019, p. 16).
- 12.
In China, for example, abortion of girl babies has significantly contributed to the imbalance among the numbers of men and women. “In January 2010 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed what can happen to a country when girl babies don’t count. Within ten years, the academy said, one in five young men would be unable to find a bride because of the dearth of young women—a figure unprecedented in a country at peace. . . . China in 2020 will have 30 m-40 m more men of this age than young women” (The Worldwide War on Baby Girls 2010, p. 77). Other countries, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and India, similarly have an off balance of boys over girls. Technologies which detect the child’s sex before birth, such as ultrasound, together with easy access to abortion have contributed to the killing of girl babies. “Until the 1980s people in poor countries could do little about this preference: before birth, nature took its course. But in that decade, ultrasound scanning and other methods of detecting the sex of a child before birth began to make their appearance. These technologies changed everything. Doctors in India started advertising ultrasound scans with the slogan ‘Pay 5000 rupees ($110) today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow’ (the saving was on the cost of a daughter’s dowry). Parents who wanted a son, but balked at killing baby daughters chose abortion in the millions. The use of sex-selective abortion was banned in India in 1994 and in China in 1995. It is illegal in most countries (though Sweden legalised the practice in 2009). But since it is almost impossible to prove that an abortion has been carried out for reasons of sex selection, the practice remains widespread” (The Worldwide War on Baby Girls 2010, p. 79).
- 13.
- 14.
Ezio Di Nucci similarly argues that sex is a candidate for a good to which persons have a basic right, and that sex robots could provide an important avenue for sexual interaction for socially isolated, unwanted, or disabled individuals: “It is at least plausible to hold that sexual satisfaction is an important part of a fulfilled life: indeed, the fact that some people renounce it cannot imply that it is not important, and that’s not because those people may be just wrong. Hunger strikes do not make food less important just as celibate priests do not make sex less important. …the point is just that – given important benefits in terms of welfare, self-fulfillment 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. …So sex is at least a candidate for membership of the set of things that are the appropriate objects of rights (if there are to be rights at all); but there is a more pressing point: that it would be good – morally good – to provide sexual satisfaction for the severely physically and mentally disabled…” (Di Nucci 2018, pp. 76-77). Given that no particular person would be obliged to provide such sexual satisfaction, sex robots might be a useful solution.
- 15.
Consider, for example, Litska Strikwerda who argues that at least in some circumstances it might make sense to treat pedophiles with child-like sex robots. Much like entirely computer-generated child pornography, sex with a child-like sex robot would mimic an immoral and criminal act, but there would be no victim. Entirely computer-generated child pornography and child-like sex robots “are similar, because both lack a legal or moral victim; both are so-called victimless crimes. But they are also different because child sex robots are interactive and entirely computer-generated child pornographic images are not. This difference gives rise to two assumptions. On the one hand, one could suspect that child sex robots may provide a safer outlet for feelings that otherwise could lead to child sexual abuse than entirely computer-generated child pornographic images, because engaging in sexual explicit conduct with a child sex robot is a better substitute for child sexual abuse than watching entirely computer-generated child pornography. If this turns out to be true, then child sex robots should not be prohibited, but instead be used to treat pedophiles the way methadone is used to treat drug addicts … On the other hand, the step from engaging in sexually explicit conduct with a child sex robot to child sexual abuse seems smaller than the step from watching entirely computer-generated child pornography to child sexual abuse. 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. There is no scientific evidence available yet to confirm or reject these assumptions, however. Thus, they remain speculative” (2018 p. 146; see also Prigg 2014).
- 16.
As John Danaher notes, objections to the use of sex robots often lies in the symbolic nature of the behavior. The “objection can be spelled out in terms of the symbolic-consequences argument. The problem with switching off a robot and having sex with it lies not in the harm it does to the robot, but rather in what it symbolizes – a general disregard and/or contempt for norms of consent in interpersonal sexual relationships – and the potential negative effects of that symbolism – harm to real women and/or harm to the user of the robot” (2018, p. 126). Such objections face a number of hurdles, not the least of which is that it is consequentialist – the force of the objection depends on there being actual empirical harms to persons. Moreover, in modern pluralistic societies, not all experience such symbolism the same way. Such an argument might, however, work well within particular morally coherent groups including traditional religions and cultures, such as Confucianism.
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Cherry, M.J., Fan, R. (2021). Sex Robots: A Twenty-First Century Innovation in the Culture Wars. In: Fan, R., Cherry, M.J. (eds) Sex Robots. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82280-4_1
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