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Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development

Social robots are increasingly developed for the companionship of children. In this article we explore the moral implications of children-robot friendships using the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics. We adopt a moderate position and argue that, although robots cannot be virtue friends, they c...

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Autores principales: Constantinescu, Mihaela, Uszkai, Radu, Vică, Constantin, Voinea, Cristina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9384694/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35991848
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.818489
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author Constantinescu, Mihaela
Uszkai, Radu
Vică, Constantin
Voinea, Cristina
author_facet Constantinescu, Mihaela
Uszkai, Radu
Vică, Constantin
Voinea, Cristina
author_sort Constantinescu, Mihaela
collection PubMed
description Social robots are increasingly developed for the companionship of children. In this article we explore the moral implications of children-robot friendships using the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics. We adopt a moderate position and argue that, although robots cannot be virtue friends, they can nonetheless enable children to exercise ethical and intellectual virtues. The Aristotelian requirements for true friendship apply only partly to children: unlike adults, children relate to friendship as an educational play of exploration, which is constitutive of the way they acquire and develop virtues. We highlight that there is a relevant difference between the way we evaluate adult-robot friendship compared to children-robot friendship, which is rooted in the difference in moral agency and moral responsibility that generate the asymmetries in the moral status ascribed to adults versus children. We look into the role played by imaginary companions (IC) and personified objects (PO) in children’s moral development and claim that robots, understood as Personified Robotic Objects (PROs), play a similar role with such fictional entities, enabling children to exercise affection, moral imagination and reasoning, thus contributing to their development as virtuous adults. Nonetheless, we argue that adequate use of robots for children’s moral development is conditioned by several requirements related to design, technology and moral responsibility.
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spelling pubmed-93846942022-08-18 Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development Constantinescu, Mihaela Uszkai, Radu Vică, Constantin Voinea, Cristina Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Social robots are increasingly developed for the companionship of children. In this article we explore the moral implications of children-robot friendships using the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics. We adopt a moderate position and argue that, although robots cannot be virtue friends, they can nonetheless enable children to exercise ethical and intellectual virtues. The Aristotelian requirements for true friendship apply only partly to children: unlike adults, children relate to friendship as an educational play of exploration, which is constitutive of the way they acquire and develop virtues. We highlight that there is a relevant difference between the way we evaluate adult-robot friendship compared to children-robot friendship, which is rooted in the difference in moral agency and moral responsibility that generate the asymmetries in the moral status ascribed to adults versus children. We look into the role played by imaginary companions (IC) and personified objects (PO) in children’s moral development and claim that robots, understood as Personified Robotic Objects (PROs), play a similar role with such fictional entities, enabling children to exercise affection, moral imagination and reasoning, thus contributing to their development as virtuous adults. Nonetheless, we argue that adequate use of robots for children’s moral development is conditioned by several requirements related to design, technology and moral responsibility. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9384694/ /pubmed/35991848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.818489 Text en Copyright © 2022 Constantinescu, Uszkai, Vică and Voinea. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Constantinescu, Mihaela
Uszkai, Radu
Vică, Constantin
Voinea, Cristina
Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title_full Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title_fullStr Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title_full_unstemmed Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title_short Children-Robot Friendship, Moral Agency, and Aristotelian Virtue Development
title_sort children-robot friendship, moral agency, and aristotelian virtue development
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9384694/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35991848
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.818489
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