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Could Robots Feel Pain?: How Can We Know?

Could Robots Feel Pain?: How Can We Know?

Bruce MacLennan
Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 25
ISBN13: 9781522529736|ISBN10: 152252973X|EISBN13: 9781522529743
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2973-6.ch007
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MLA

MacLennan, Bruce. "Could Robots Feel Pain?: How Can We Know?." Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society, edited by Steven John Thompson, IGI Global, 2018, pp. 151-175. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2973-6.ch007

APA

MacLennan, B. (2018). Could Robots Feel Pain?: How Can We Know?. In S. Thompson (Ed.), Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society (pp. 151-175). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2973-6.ch007

Chicago

MacLennan, Bruce. "Could Robots Feel Pain?: How Can We Know?." In Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society, edited by Steven John Thompson, 151-175. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2018. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2973-6.ch007

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Abstract

This chapter considers the question of whether a robot could feel pain or experience other emotions and proposes empirical methods for answering this question. After a review of the biological functions of emotion and pain, the author argues that autonomous robots have similar functions that need to be fulfilled, which require systems analogous to emotion and pain. Protophenomenal analysis, which involves parallel reductions in the phenomenological and neurological domains, is explained and applied to the “hard problem” of robot emotion and pain. The author outlines empirical approaches to answering the fundamental questions on which depends the possibility of robot consciousness in general. The author then explains the importance of sensors distributed throughout a robot's body for the emergence of coherent emotional phenomena in its awareness. Overall, the chapter elucidates the issue of robot pain and emotion and outlines an approach to resolving it empirically.

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