[Air-L] CfA Workshop “Social Robotics and the Good Life"

[Wulf Loh]

  Call for Abstracts: Workshop “Social Robotics and the Good Life – The
  Normative Side of Forming Emotional Bonds with Robots”

Organizers: International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and 
Humanities, University of Tübingen (Regina Ammicht Quinn and Wulf Loh, 
both Tübingen, in cooperation with Janina Loh, Vienna, and Charles Ess, 
Oslo)

Date: May 7-8, 2020

Venue:IZEW Tübingen, Germany

Social robotics has the strong potential of becoming more and more 
prevalent in the coming years, especially in the realms of elder day 
care, child rearing, and education. As human beings have the fascinating 
ability to emotionally bond not exclusively with other human beings, but 
also with animals, plants, and objects, it is highly likely that 
human-machine-relationships will arise from these 
human-robotic-interactions. While children and the elderly constitute 
vulnerable groups that merit special consideration, at the heart of the 
issue lie fundamental ethical questions that concern 
human-robot-interactions /per se/. Do human-robot-relationships 
necessarily constitute a form of manipulation, since any form of 
reciprocity on the side of the robot is merely simulated? Are these 
relationships then /per se/ detrimental to the good life, as they 
replace “real” relationships? What constitutes such a “real” 
relationship? Are more intimate relationships with robots, such as 
friendship or even love, possible and ethically sound? Which design cues 
does an ethical design of robots have to take into account? And: how do 
we conceive and ground “good lives” as more and more of the virtues and 
interactions – starting with those of friendship – of good lives will be 
increasingly interwoven with social robots?

For discussing these and further questions regarding the normativity of 
emotional bonds with robots, in this interdisciplinary workshop we 
invite submissions with a focus on (but not restricted to) topics such as

ofriendship

olove

osex

ocare

otrust

oobjectophilia or object sexuality

ofeminist perspectives on relationships

ofamily, children, and nurture

odisappointment, anger, and hate

omorally appropriate behavior

with regard to robots.

The workshop will take place on the 7^th and 8^th of May 2020 at the 
International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at 
the University of Tübingen. *Prof. Dr. Charles Ess*, Department of Media 
and Communication, University of Oslo, will be a fellow at the Center of 
Ethics at that time. He will give a keynote lecture and will be our 
dialogue partner throughout the workshop.

Please submit abstracts of around 500 words to 
Wulf.loh at izew.uni-tuebingen.de <mailto:Wulf.loh at izew.uni-tuebingen.de>by 
January 31, 2020. Acceptance notifications will be sent out by the end 
of February 2020. An English-language edited volume is planned with the 
publisher /transcript/. Those, who are invited to present their project 
during the workshop should be prepared to send their completed paper of 
about 6.000-8.000 words to Janina.loh at univie.ac.at 
<mailto:Janina.loh at univie.ac.at>by August 31, 2020.