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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9384694 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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