1st Edition

Personhood and Social Robotics A psychological consideration

By Raya Jones Copyright 2016
    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    An exponentially growing industry, human robot interaction (HRI) research has drawn predominantly upon psychologists’ descriptions of mechanisms of face-to-face dyadic interactions. This book considers how social robotics is beginning unwittingly to confront an impasse that has been a perennial dilemma for psychology, associated with the historical ‘science vs. art’ debate. Raya Jones examines these paradigmatic tensions, and, in tandem, considers ways in which the technology-centred discourse both reflects and impacts upon understanding our relational nature.

    Chapters in the book explore not only how the technology-centred discourse constructs machines as us, but also how humans feature in this discourse. Focusing on how the social interaction is conceptualised when the human-robot interaction is discussed, this book addresses issues such as the long-term impact on persons and society, authenticity of relationships, and challenges to notions of personhood. By leaving aside terminological issues, Jones attempts to transcend ritual of pitching theories against each other in order to comprehensively analyse terms such as subjectivity, self and personhood and their fluid interplay in the world that we inhabit.

    Personhood and Social Robotics will be a key text for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars interested in the connection between technology and human psychology, including psychologists, science and technology studies scholars, media studies scholars and humanists. The book will also be of interest to roboticists and HRI researchers, as well as those studying or working in areas of artificial intelligence and interactive technologies more generally.

    1. Problematizing Personhood Differently  2. Means to Meaning  3. The Semiotic Robot Hypothesis  4. The Relationship Machine  5. Voices in the Field – the Pragmatic Engineer, Technocentric Visionary and Inquisitive Scientist  6. Rhetoric and Right Action Ahead of Robot Nannies  7. Subversions of Subjectivity  8. Chronotope Shifts in the Uncanny Valley  9. Narrativity of the Act and the New Ontology  10. Futures in the Present Tense

    Biography

    Raya Jones is a Reader at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK.