Human-Robot Personal Relationships. Third International Conference, HRPR 2010, Leiden, The Netherlands, June 23-24, 2010, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Talking to Robots: On the Linguistic Construction of Personal Human-Robot Relations

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-19385-9_16,
        author={Mark Coeckelbergh},
        title={Talking to Robots: On the Linguistic Construction of Personal Human-Robot Relations},
        proceedings={Human-Robot Personal Relationships. Third International Conference, HRPR 2010, Leiden, The Netherlands, June 23-24, 2010, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={HRPR},
        year={2012},
        month={5},
        keywords={human-robot relations philosophy phenomenology language construction interpretation},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-19385-9_16}
    }
    
  • Mark Coeckelbergh
    Year: 2012
    Talking to Robots: On the Linguistic Construction of Personal Human-Robot Relations
    HRPR
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-19385-9_16
Mark Coeckelbergh1,*
  • 1: University of Twente
*Contact email: m.coeckelbergh@utwente.nl

Abstract

How should we make sense of ‘personal’ human-robot relations, given that many people view robots as ‘mere machines’? This paper proposes that we understand human-robot relations from a phenomenological view as social relations in which robots are constructed as quasi-others. It is argued that language mediates in this construction. Responding to research by Turkle and others, it is shown that our talking robots (as opposed to talking robots) reveals a shift from an impersonal third-person to a personal second-person perspective, which constitutes a different kind of human-robot relation. The paper makes suggestions for empirical research to further study this social-phenomenological process.