Paula Sweeney
Biographic Data
| ID | 4328757 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paula Sweeney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paula |
| FAMILY NAME | Sweeney |
| SIGNATURE | SWEENEY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Aberdeen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1004-5571 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
The Role of Avatars in Non-death Related Grief
Creating Durable Biographies in Palliative Care
In this paper I explore the potential benefits and harms of avatar or chatbot representations of persons who are in palliative care. Much has been written recently about the benefits and harms of ‘continuing bond’ chatbots: representations of those who have died. Depending on one’s view, continuing bond chatbots are either a useful tool that facilitates the bereaved engaging in conversations with a representation of the deceased or they are an un…
Could the destruction of a beloved robot be considered a hate crime? An exploration of the legal and social significance of robot love
In the future, it is likely that we will form strong bonds of attachment and even develop love for social robots. Some of these loving relations will be, from the human’s perspective, as significant as a loving relationship that they might have had with another human. This means that, from the perspective of the loving human, the mindless destruction of their robot partner could be as devastating as the murder of another’s human partner. Yet, the…
The ethics of ex-bots
Avatars and the Value of Human Uniqueness
Danaher and Nyholm (Philosophy & Technology 37:106, 2024) explore whether avatar technology makes humans less valuable by making them less scarce. They identify two forms of human scarcity, intrinstic scarcity and instrumental scarcity, and explore how each is impacted by avatar representation. Here I argue that avatars cannot make humans less scarce but that, nevertheless, the use of avatar technology can undermine the value of human uniqueness
Social Robots
Social robots are an increasingly integral part of society, already appearing as customer service assistants, care-home helpers, teaching assistants and personal companions. This book argues that the wider inclusion of social robots in our society is having a revolutionary impact on some of our key intuitions regarding ethics, metaphysics and epistemology and, as such, will put pressure on many of our best theories. Social robots elicit an emotio…
A fictional dualism model of social robots
In this paper I propose a Fictional Dualism model of social robots. The model helps us to understand the human emotional reaction to social robots and also acts as a guide for us in determining the significance of that emotional reaction, enabling us to better define the moral and legislative rights of social robots within our society. I propose a distinctive position that allows us to accept that robots are tools, that our emotional reaction to …
Eternalism as Therapy
It is often assumed that an eternalist and a presentist will have the same emotional response to life's events because, regardless of one's metaphysical beliefs, we all have the same phenomenological experience of time passing and it is this experience that is relevant to emotional response. I question the assumption that beliefs about the metaphysics of time can have little impact on one's emotional responses and establish the position that scie…
Nostalgia reconsidered
Nostalgia is standardly assumed to be directed towards the past, to involve some salient feeling of the irretrievability of the past, and to be directed towards the memory of an event. In this paper I argue that none of these standard assumptions hold. I use a time‐traveller example to demonstrate that nostalgia is not essentially past‐directed. Once nostalgia is prised from the objective past, we can examine the other purported conditions, makin…
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Nostalgia reconsidered
Nostalgia is standardly assumed to be directed towards the past, to involve some salient feeling of the irretrievability of the past, and to be directed towards the memory of an event. In this paper I argue that none of these standard assumptions hold. I use a time‐traveller example to demonstrate that nostalgia is not essentially past‐directed. Once nostalgia is prised from the objective past, we can examine the other purported conditions, makin…
A fictional dualism model of social robots
In this paper I propose a Fictional Dualism model of social robots. The model helps us to understand the human emotional reaction to social robots and also acts as a guide for us in determining the significance of that emotional reaction, enabling us to better define the moral and legislative rights of social robots within our society. I propose a distinctive position that allows us to accept that robots are tools, that our emotional reaction to …
Eternalism as Therapy
It is often assumed that an eternalist and a presentist will have the same emotional response to life's events because, regardless of one's metaphysical beliefs, we all have the same phenomenological experience of time passing and it is this experience that is relevant to emotional response. I question the assumption that beliefs about the metaphysics of time can have little impact on one's emotional responses and establish the position that scie…
Social Robots
Social robots are an increasingly integral part of society, already appearing as customer service assistants, care-home helpers, teaching assistants and personal companions. This book argues that the wider inclusion of social robots in our society is having a revolutionary impact on some of our key intuitions regarding ethics, metaphysics and epistemology and, as such, will put pressure on many of our best theories. Social robots elicit an emotio…
Could the destruction of a beloved robot be considered a hate crime? An exploration of the legal and social significance of robot love
In the future, it is likely that we will form strong bonds of attachment and even develop love for social robots. Some of these loving relations will be, from the human’s perspective, as significant as a loving relationship that they might have had with another human. This means that, from the perspective of the loving human, the mindless destruction of their robot partner could be as devastating as the murder of another’s human partner. Yet, the…
The ethics of ex-bots
Avatars and the Value of Human Uniqueness
Danaher and Nyholm (Philosophy & Technology 37:106, 2024) explore whether avatar technology makes humans less valuable by making them less scarce. They identify two forms of human scarcity, intrinstic scarcity and instrumental scarcity, and explore how each is impacted by avatar representation. Here I argue that avatars cannot make humans less scarce but that, nevertheless, the use of avatar technology can undermine the value of human uniqueness
The Role of Avatars in Non-death Related Grief
Creating Durable Biographies in Palliative Care
In this paper I explore the potential benefits and harms of avatar or chatbot representations of persons who are in palliative care. Much has been written recently about the benefits and harms of ‘continuing bond’ chatbots: representations of those who have died. Depending on one’s view, continuing bond chatbots are either a useful tool that facilitates the bereaved engaging in conversations with a representation of the deceased or they are an un…
Epistemology (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Philosophy of science (3 works) · Philosophy of technology (3 works)