Sociality and Normativity for Robots

This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our futurerelations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage andconnect with human beings.The contributors present cutting edge research thatexamines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members ofhuman societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"?Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? Howwill human social relations change when we interact with robots atwork and at home? The authors of this volume explore these questions from theperspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, androbotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classificationof simulated social interactions, investigate whether human socialinteractions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significanceof social relations for the formation of human individuality.Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actuallyfollow social norms, whether they could live up to the socialmeaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need toprogram robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of humansocial space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform jointactions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, andhow will such new commitments and practices change our regionalcultures?The authors connect research in social robotics andempirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates insocial ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy oftechnology. The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presentsfor our traditional conceptions of social interaction, whichpresuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality,agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightfulanswers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us toshape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change ofthe beginning 21st century.