Against Objectifying Objects

In spite of the funny title, I think there's a pretty good argument to be made here. It just isn't the argument being made.
Dr Kathleen Richardson, a robotics expert at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, warns that sex robots could contribute to the systemic dehumanization of women and children....

“Technology is not neutral. It’s informed by class, race and gender. Political power informs the development of technology,” she told the Washington Post. “That’s why we can do something about it. These robots will contribute to more sexual exploitation.”
There is no reason to believe that users of sex robots will lose the distinction between the object they are objectifying and actual women (or children). If anything, this might provide an outlet for people of very strong but antisocial desires to express themselves without hurting real human beings.

The real argument against this is not what it will do to the robots, but what it will do to the users. The problem isn't that they're using an appliance for its designed purpose, but that they're treating their own sexuality as a toy. This isn't a new problem: it applies to all such uses. Here's Kant on the subject, from The Metaphysics of Morals.



Kant can be a little opaque, and there's a lot more that has to be read to appreciate his full argument, but in sketch he is arguing this:

1) All things that happen have a cause.

2) For most things, that cause is something else acting on the thing being changed, e.g., sunlight hits ice, melting it.

3) These actions are not free, because they are caused by something else acting upon you.

4) Human beings, and other rational beings, have a possibility to act freely.

5) This only occurs when we are our own cause.

6) When we act as animals, we are not behaving freely: we are giving in to being acted upon by an outside stimulation.

7) Rather, we are free only when we reason to the right thing to do, and do that.

8) We can reason that the obvious good of sexuality is the preservation of the species.

9) Other uses are mere animal ends, and lack dignity because they lack freedom: we are throwing away our rational freedom and allowing ourselves to be driven like an animal.

10) Thus, dignity is only compatible with rationally electing to use sex for its proper purpose.

This is not a new argument even to Kant, although he frames it in what he would call 'pure practical reason.' You can find the same basic argument in Aquinas or Aristotle. It's an argument that has always struck me as incomplete: it's missing something, though after years of considering it I'm less sure than ever that I can say just what it is missing. Aquinas' version is better -- he distinguishes not one but three goods associated with sex -- but it doesn't avoid the conclusion that only this one mode of sexuality is fully good and worthy of a free and dignified human being.

Whether or not it's quite right, though, it's surely a good part right. Thus, the strong argument against sex robots isn't that they will lead to people imagining exploiting women or children: what is more likely is that those people are already imagining it, and might substitute the appliance for an actual person who would otherwise be exploited and harmed. The strong argument is that this mode of sexuality is itself necessarily harmful even to the user. It cannot be practiced without harm, even if in fact it reduces the actual incidence of harm to innocent third parties.

Kant makes an argument in the quoted passage that we can know this in part because the act is shameful. You're happy to present your spouse to the community, but would presumably hide the fact that you own a blow-up doll (or sexbot). I think he's right that it ought to be shameful, and that a decent society would be ashamed of such things and keep them private. What I wonder, though, is if a society is necessarily ashamed of it. Ours has come to think of free expression of sexuality as a kind of positive good, and might well treat parading your sexbot around as an act of courage. Can't you imagine hearing how "brave" someone was for "being open about his sexuality" in this way?

If that's right, then shame and reason have come apart: we aren't ashamed of what we ought to be, and have begun to praise vices as if they were virtues.

UPDATE: By the way, I've been doing some further reading on this subject, and the concept of "objectification" in sexuality seems to be rooted in feminist readings of Kant. Kant's talking about objectification in his sense, which is importantly different from the way these readings take him, here: the wrongdoer here is turning himself into an object by throwing away his rational capacities in favor of being acted-upon from outside. He gives up rational thought about what is right and wrong, and allows the impact of sensation to provoke desire, and desire to provoke action, as if he were a thoughtless object instead of a thinking subject.

Of course, part of what I think Kant gets wrong is the idea that even animals are "objects" in this way. The analysis may break quite early if, as seems likely to me, at least some animals are engaging in rational evaluation of desires or rationally adapting to ways of life compatible with other beings. There's probably also a basic error in assuming that rationality is divorced from sensuality, as both are emergent qualities from the world: to whatever degree we are actually rational, our ancestors had a potential for rationality that came to be realized in us. It is probably an error to think of reason as standing separate and alone, ordering reality rather than being ordered by it in the way that the Kant Song describes the First Critique. Reason itself is a product of the world, revealed by evolution, and its own function is therefore to be expected to be aligned with the world rather than divorced from it. We should expect to overcome Hume's objections not by Kant's apperception, but by a better understanding of the reality that we encounter with both reason and sensation.

9 comments:

jaed said...

I think he's right that it ought to be shameful, and that a decent society would be ashamed of such things and keep them private. What I wonder, though, is if a society is necessarily ashamed of it.

Or, perhaps, it is not shameful in itself, but is properly kept private. The shame then would be not in doing the act but in revealing it, publicizing it, boasting about it, and involving unwilling onlookers in a repulsive display of one's own private business. (One recalls the toddler emerging to his parents' dinner party to proudly show everyone what he made in his diaper. This function isn't shameful, but it is private - we teach children to keep it to themselves, not to be ashamed of it.)

This clearly isn't where Kant is going, but we might go there.

In this case, the disease of society is not in doing such things but in the impulse to brag about them publicly, to discuss them with strangers, to insist on using these revelations as status badges. (Which is more or less what the toddler's doing, come to think of it.) Which would mean what we might lose is not the virtue of self-control but the virtue of modesty.

Ymar Sakar said...

PProfit is merely worried that the Leftist alliance's money funding would go down if the laundering was crippled by non reproductive sex which prevents their molestors and rapists like Clinton from producing women ready to take to the abortion centers of PProfit.

This would naturally limit PP's ability to harvest organs if the cattle human livestock group is obsessed over such artificialities.

Cassandra said...

I continue to be amazed that so many people don't think there is any connection between what one does in private and one's public actions.

Overall, I'm more inclined to worry about the effect of sex robots on the consumer than the robot. But as a married woman who has a more than healthy appreciation for the wonders of the human sex drive, I also have a healthy respect for the power our basic instincts hold over us.

I hear men argue all the time that the male sex drive is so incredibly powerful that they can scarcely manage to control it :p Was amused several years ago to see many male bloggers applauding Dennis Prager for characterizing men's daily battle to control their own sexuality as "heroic". As a metaphor for helping women understand that male sexuality is fundamentally different from female sexuality, I can appreciate how what sounds to me like borderline hyperbole might jar us womenfolk into some level of understanding, but at the same time, if we take such talk seriously (as it was clearly meant to be taken), then shouldn't it engender in us some caution?

Sitting on the sidelines, I'm often baffled by the way guys talk about themselves. On the one hand, I hear things that seem designed to make me view men as little more than socialized Yetis - barely under control at the best of times and then, only through their own heroic efforts :p Allow me to say that view doesn't square with my experience, but I'm not the one saying it.

On the other hand, I see guys getting angry when feminists characterize men the exact same way - as barely under control at the best of times and badly in need of *more* socialization.

What effect does it have on a person's character when they can gratify any instinct at any time with no consequences? Is it in men's natures to be satisfied with the first thrill and go no farther - not to seek greater thrills once the first ones lose their novelty? That notion comports neither with my own experience of men, nor with their own characterizations of masculinity.

Food for thought there.

Cassandra said...

One more thought.

When raising our sons, I often used the metaphor of maintaining a brick wall to describe conscience to them. You can build the best wall in the world, but over time stones will fall out and the wall will be breached at its weakest point.

Every time you obey your conscience, you add a stone and strengthen the wall. And every time you ignore your conscience and do something wrong, it's like taking out a stone - the wall weakens.

I think there are many things we don't do - despite powerful urges to the contrary - because we're conditioned with powerful taboos against them. What happens when society decides that anything you do in private doesn't count morally?

Or, as a commenter here often used to say, "Conscience is what you do when no one is watching."

If a thing is wrong in public, it's probably wrong in private too. I accept that one could argue this isn't wrong, but I think the public/private distinction can't support the distinction between right and wrong. I also think this is a tough moral question with no easy answers.

One more argument I've heard (only from men) is that most of men's achievements throughout history have been spurred on by the desire to have sex with women. What happens to this drive for excellence when they can have more (and more kinds of) sex with robots who demand nothing of them - not even to be treated well?

I don't know if I believe the "we do it all for sex" argument, but again if one accepts it on its face, should it not engender some caution?

Grim said...

One more argument I've heard (only from men) is that most of men's achievements throughout history have been spurred on by the desire to have sex with women. What happens to this drive for excellence when they can have more (and more kinds of) sex with robots who demand nothing of them - not even to be treated well?

I don't know if I believe the "we do it all for sex" argument, but again if one accepts it on its face, should it not engender some caution?

I've heard this argument as well, and it's always struck me as hyperbolic. But even if it's true of some portion of human excellence -- some percentage of great poetry, say -- then it does seem to be endangered here.

Maybe, anyway. It may be that the robots will never prove to be an adequate substitute for a real woman. That's what I would expect to be true, in the end.

Cassandra said...

Funny - just a few minutes after leaving this comment, I saw a guy make that argument :p

I see it a LOT, and it never makes much sense to me. Doesn't mean there's nothing to it, but I doubt men are solely motivated by sex. There's also ego, and dominance in the old pecking order, and competitiveness.

I don't worry about robot competition on a personal level. I wouldn't want a guy who wanted to have sex with robots - I'd rather do without. But on a societal level, margins sometimes matter.

Grim said...

Funny - just a few minutes after leaving this comment, I saw a guy make that argument...

I don't get around much, I guess. I hear there's some movement to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States, and that makes about as much sense to me as electing Oprah.

Cassandra said...

The odd thing is, neither do I. This is just about the only place I bother to read the comments anymore, and I haven't been online much lately at all.

I think it was something at Althouse, which I only read occasionally and the comments almost never.

douglas said...

"This is just about the only place I bother to read the comments anymore"

Boy, ain't that the truth.