Alienation and Recognition: The Δ Phenomenology of Human-Social Robot Interactions (HSRI)

A crucial philosophical problem of social robots is how much they perform a kind of sociality in interacting with humans. Scholarship diverges between those who sustain that humans and social robots cannot by default have social interactions and those who argue about the possibility of an asymmetric sociality. Against this dichotomy, we argue in this paper about a holistic approach called “Δ phenomenology” of HSRI (Human-Social-Robot-Interaction). In the first part of the paper we will analyse the semantic of a HSRI, that is what leads a human being (x) to assign or receive a meaning of sociality (z) by interacting with a social robot (y). Hence, we will question the ontological structure underlying HSRIs, suggesting that HSRIs may lead to a peculiar kind of users alienation. By combining all these variables, we will formulate some final recommendations for an ethics of Social Robots.