
Robot Rights
David J. Gunkel(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 19. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-262-55157-1 (ISBN)
Description
A provocative attempt to think about what was previously considered unthinkable: a serious philosophical case for the rights of robots. We are in the midst of a robot invasion, as devices of different configurations and capabilities slowly but surely come to take up increasingly important positions in everyday social reality--self-driving vehicles, recommendation algorithms, machine learning decision making systems, and social robots of various forms and functions. Although considerable attention has already been devoted to the subject of robots and responsibility, the question concerning the social status of these artifacts has been largely overlooked. In this book, David Gunkel offers a provocative attempt to think about what has been previously regarded as unthinkable: whether and to what extent robots and other technological artifacts of our own making can and should have any claim to moral and legal standing. In his analysis, Gunkel invokes the philosophical distinction (developed by David Hume) between "is" and "ought" in order to evaluate and analyze the different arguments regarding the question of robot rights. In the course of his examination, Gunkel finds that none of the existing positions or proposals hold up under scrutiny. In response to this, he then offers an innovative alternative proposal that effectively flips the script on the is/ought problem by introducing another, altogether different way to conceptualize the social situation of robots and the opportunities and challenges they present to existing moral and legal systems.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
1 B&W ILLUS.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
415 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-55157-1 (9780262551571)
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Person
David J. Gunkel is Presidential Research, Scholarship, and Artistry Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University and Professor of Philosophy at Lazarski University in Warsaw, Poland. He is the author of Robot Rights, Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics after Remix, and The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (all MIT Press).