A thought-provoking look at the most interesting question in robot ethics: Can intelligent machines ever be considered as persons? The investigation is an impressively deep dive, drawing from many philosophical schools of thought. -- Patrick Lin, California Polytechnic State University, Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group At last, a masterful integration of the many disparate reflections on whether intelligent machines can ever be admitted to the community of moral subjects as either moral agents and/or moral patients. David Gunkel goes on to make a significant contribution to any further discussion of the topic in a final section that deconstructs the machine question from the perspective of continental philosophers including Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. Machines have been the definitive 'other,' not worthy of moral consideration, but as we contemplate the prospect that future machines might be conscious and perhaps even have feelings, we are forced to think deeply about who (or what) should be included in the moral order. -- Wendell Wallach, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
David J. Gunkel is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Communication Technology at Northern Illinois University and the author of The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics, Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics after Remix, both published by the MIT Press, and other books.
A formidable new book.... Provides a galaxy of challenging
thought.... Gunkel does a fine job of lucid and concise exposition.
-Peter Hankins, Machines Like Us
Gunkel's deconstruction is a tour de force that largely succeeds in
getting us to 'think otherwise'. His argument that machines have
always been the excluded other is convincing.... Gunkel engages the
thinking of both 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophers, which I
believe is a virtue.... The book is an original contribution to the
field and likely to have wide reverberations... careful and
remarkably comprehensive. -Ethics and Information Technology
There is something right about Gunkel's recognition that one can
hardly consider the questions of machine morality without being led
to more fundamental methodological and meta-ethical issues.... He
nevertheless succeeded in connecting the ethics of robots and AI to
a much broader ethical discussion than has been represented in the
literature on machine ethics to date. -Notre Dame Philosophical
Reviews
This controversial and thought-provoking book is a must-read for
anyone interested in the philosophy of technology and in
discussions on artificial intelligence and ethics of information
and communication technology. The unprecedented value of the book
is that Gunkel not only analyzes important aspects of the immediate
problem but also that he places his discussion in the context of
philosophical discussions on such related issues as rights
discourse. Maybe some day the moral status of machines will be
obvious for all of us, but for the present Gunkel's book provides
an important voice for discussion on the moral status of machines.
-International Philosophical Quarterly
From the opening pages, The Machine Question is a delightful
melange of graduate philosophy seminars, solemn debates at science
fiction conventions, and weighty discussions over drinks in
dimly-lit pubs. It is delightful mainly because such diversity of
approach, content, and examples is too rarely found in an academic
publication...Gunkel's book is worth reading and will likely find a
place in courses dealing with the problems reflected in its title.
-Essays in Philosophy
This book is essential reading for philosophers interested in AI,
robot ethics, or animal ethics. -AISB Quarterly
Readers would do well to first read David Gunkel's The Machine
Question in order to introduce themselves to the complex field of
robot ethics. -Techne
Robot Rights is a brilliantly disorienting book. -The Daily
Telegraph
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