Folk-ontological stances toward robots and psychological human likeness

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Datteri, Edoardo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Datteri, Edoardo
author_facet Datteri, Edoardo
contents It has often been argued that people can attribute mental states to robots without making any ontological commitments to the reality of those states. But what does it mean to 'attribute' a mental state to a robot, and what is an 'ontological commitment'? It will be argued that, on a plausible interpretation of these two notions, it is not clear how mental state attribution can occur without any ontological commitment. Taking inspiration from the philosophical debate on scientific realism, a provisional taxonomy of folk-ontological stances towards robots will also be identified, corresponding to different ways of understanding robotic minds. They include realism, non-realism, eliminativism, reductionism, fictionalism and agnosticism. Instrumentalism will also be discussed and presented as a folk-epistemological stance. In the last part of the article it will be argued that people's folk-ontological stances towards robots and humans can influence their perception of the human-likeness of robots. The analysis carried out here can be seen as encouraging a 'folk-ontological turn' in human-robot interaction research, aimed at explicitly determining what beliefs people have about the reality of robot minds.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_11759
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Folk-ontological stances toward robots and psychological human likeness
Datteri, Edoardo
Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
It has often been argued that people can attribute mental states to robots without making any ontological commitments to the reality of those states. But what does it mean to 'attribute' a mental state to a robot, and what is an 'ontological commitment'? It will be argued that, on a plausible interpretation of these two notions, it is not clear how mental state attribution can occur without any ontological commitment. Taking inspiration from the philosophical debate on scientific realism, a provisional taxonomy of folk-ontological stances towards robots will also be identified, corresponding to different ways of understanding robotic minds. They include realism, non-realism, eliminativism, reductionism, fictionalism and agnosticism. Instrumentalism will also be discussed and presented as a folk-epistemological stance. In the last part of the article it will be argued that people's folk-ontological stances towards robots and humans can influence their perception of the human-likeness of robots. The analysis carried out here can be seen as encouraging a 'folk-ontological turn' in human-robot interaction research, aimed at explicitly determining what beliefs people have about the reality of robot minds.
title Folk-ontological stances toward robots and psychological human likeness
topic Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.11759