"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Contents " -- "Preface to the English Edition" -- "Introduction" -- "1. The Substitute" -- "2. Animals, Machines, Cyborgs, and the Taxi " -- "3. Mind, Emotions, and Artificial Empathy " -- "4. The Other Otherwise " -- "5. From Moral and Lethal Machines to Synthetic Ethics " -- "Notes" -- "Works Cited" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Credits.

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...) projections in users. The objective is to give robots "social presence" and "social behaviors" that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ’applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a "cheating" technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns "anthropomorphism-based" social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, "synthetic ethics," which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (shrink)

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research – “Can machines have emotions?” – in the context of “social robots”, a new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question “Can robots have emotions?” Rather we argue that the “robotics of emotion” moves us to reformulate it into a different one – “Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?” Developing a series of (...) arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the claimed universal recognition of basic emotions corresponds to the recognition of conventionalized representations of emotions common in our culture. Section one presents some of the faces that people make in different circumstances, and argues that making faces is a form of action. Faces made function as narrative tools and as conversational tools. Section two compares and contrasts two conceptions of facial displays: basic emotion theories and the behavioral ecology view. The next section analyzes (...) and evaluates BET’s claim concerning the universal expression of emotions. Section four argues that the still pictures of posed emotions used by Ekman correspond to conventionalized iconographic representations of emotions in our culture. The last section asks whether present day social robots can make faces. They cannot for two reasons, I argue. First because of the dominance of BET in robotic research, second because robots do not need to enter into strategic negotiation with their human partners. The faces of robots simply reproduce conventionalized expressions of emotions, that they do paradoxically bear witness to the central relevance of the behavioral ecology view of facial displays. (shrink)

First published in French in 1979, “The Ambivalence of Scarcity” was a groundbreaking work on mimetic theory. Now expanded upon with new, specially written, and never-before-published conference texts and essays, this revised edition explores René Girard’s philosophy in three sections: economy and economics, mimetic theory, and violence and politics in modern societies. The first section argues that though mimetic theory is in many ways critical of modern economic theory, this criticism can contribute to the enrichment of economic thinking. The second (...) section explores the issues of nonviolence and misrecognition, which have been at the center of many discussions of Girard’s work. The final section proposes mimetic analyses of the violence typical of modern societies, from high school bullying to genocide and terrorist attacks. Politics, Dumouchel argues, is a violent means of protecting us from our own violent tendencies, and it can at times become the source of the very savagery from which it seeks to protect us. The book’s conclusion analyzes the relationship between ethics and economics, opening new avenues of research and inviting further exploration. Dumouchel’s introduction reflects on the importance of René Girard’s work in relation to ongoing research, especially in social sciences and philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction My claims are scandalously out of proportion with the general temper of the times and my literary background, which must be regarded by almost ...

What was René Girard’s attitude towards philosophy? What philosophers influenced him? What stance did he take in the philosophical debates of his time? What are the philosophical questions raised by René Girard’s anthropology? In this interview, Paul Dumouchel sheds light on these issues.

The starting point of my inquiry is the important uncertainty in relevant scientific communities concerning the nature of emotions. In consequence, in this chapter I look at three conceptions of emotions and their different relations to reasons. First, following Elster (2000) emotions as passions that are contrary to reason. Second, in line with recent developments in psychology that have had great success in economics and decisions theory, emotions as rational, as consonant with reason and indispensable to rational decision taking. As (...) progressively became evident over the years, this new conception of emotions and their relations to action coincides with a transformation of the concept of reason. It goes together with a trend at naturalizing reason. Finally, emotions as part of a mechanism of social coordination. In this last conception, unlike what is the case of passions and of emotions leading to rational decision, moral sentiments and interactive emotions are not to be primarily construed as a transformation of the agent’s relation to him or herself, but rather as leading to a transformation of the agent’s relations with other agents. (shrink)

Focusing on the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, this article argues that there is or can be a form of reciprocity between the victims of a catastrophe and society at large to the extent that victims become the occasion and rationale for social reforms. The victims’ contribution to society in this case is the simple fact of being victims. Such a form of reciprocity requires a particular relation to time which Jean-Pierre Dupuy has recently analyzed. In the case of modern (...) risks such as nuclear risk, the contribution of the victims is not only to a better future, but also takes place in the present by rendering patent risks which, as Ulrich Beck argued, though they are known tend to remain socially invisible. (shrink)

This essay tackles the core question of machine emotion research—“Can machines have emotions?”—with regard to “social robots”, the new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to that question. Rather we argue that “robotics of emotion” moves us to ask a different question—“Can robots establish meaningful affective coordination with human partners?” Developing a series of arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI and the epistemology of (...) synthetic models, we argue that the answer is positive, and lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which elsewhere we introduced as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses on the sustainability of emerging mixed human–robot social ecologies. Therefore, it rejects the purely negative ethical approach to social robotics, and promotes a critical case-by-case inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human–robot affective coordination. (shrink)

As the vulgar generally look no higher for the original of moral good and evil, just and unjust, than the codes and pandects, the tables and laws of their country and religion, so there have not wanted pretended philosophers in all ages who have asserted nothing to be good and evil, just and unjust, naturally and immutably; but that these things were positive, arbitrary and factitious only.1 In this short presentation I want to propose a sketch of what “naturalizing ethics (...) from a Girardian perspective” would look like. My goal is not to engage in a Girardian tentative at naturalizing ethics, but rather to contrast what such a project entails in comparison with some of the current attempts at .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IJIME Paul Dumouchel Université du Québec à Montréal In Japan, in particular in junior and senior high school, there is a violent phenomenon known in Japanese as ijime, a term which could be translated as bullying. While the word may be culturally marked, the phenomenon it describes is certainly universal. Bullying is a process through which a child becomes the victim of one or more of his classmates. A (...) bully is a little brute, a person who pushes with his elbows, steps in front ofothers and, generally, brutalizes his comrades for no reason, it seems, except because he can. A bully is a torturer, and bullying refers to the set of actions involving torment, molestation, persecution, teasing, harassment, in short the set of cruelties and vexations inflicted on the victim. This is something which exists at every latitude, but in Japan it sometimes takes on disturbing proportions, both in terms ofnumber and seriousness of incidents. Between the beginning of the year and April 1995, it was possible to identify four suicides which clearly resulted directly from bullying, in other words where notes (generally called "testaments") left by the suicide victims explicitly stated that the cruelty ofwhich they were the victim was the reason for their suicide. Four suicides between January and April, in other words an average ofone per month. This is enough to raise a few questions.1 Japanese educators, sociologists and journalists often wonder, especially during bad years like 1 995, what could be the cause, origin or reasons for the ijime phenomenon. In general, they blame the greater individualism characteristic ofthe period since the war, the excessive competition typical of both Japanese society and school, the father's reduced role in family discipline, or the fact that children in today's society of abundance are too 'The important information, which I do not have, would be to compare the number of ijime related suicides to the total number of suicides in Japanese high-schools. 78Paul Dumouchel weak or spoiled. In short, the phenomena invoked are all related to the modernization of Japan, even to its recent modernization, that which has taken place since the end ofthe war. I tend to believe that ijime is not linked so much to the modern world, to anomy, individualism, excessive competition, as it is to the immemorial origin ofsociety (and notjust that of Japanese society, of course). Likewise, I tend to believe that incidents of bullying are not accidents, that they are not malfunctions, ruptures within the Japanese education system, but to the contrary a virtual institution, events which until very recently were relatively normal. It is not that I believe such persecution is the result of an open policy, much to the contrary: the phenomenon is much more fundamental than that. The high number of incidents of bullying which are reported now, and which are found in all sociological studies and research, do not indicate so much that the phenomenon is more frequent than before as they do that it is working less well, that it is beginning to crumble and that it is becoming possible to talk about it and see it. Allow me to explain. Numerous studies on Japan (see for instance, Benedict 253-316) provide certain reasons for thinking that the phenomenon of ijime among secondary school students is not recent, that it can be traced to the pre-war period, and perhaps even further back. (I do not know whether this phenomenon was present in the period preceding the Meiji era. It would be interesting to see if phenomena ofthe same sort already existed in the temple schools which were responsible for most education during the Edo period.) The little information I have been able to find on this subject (during the Meiji period) seems to indicate that the victim perished more often in the hands of his torturers than he did by his own hand. However this is nothing but an assertion. (We will see below why it is unlikely we will find easy access to information on ijime in ancient Japan.2) It is true that Japanese elementary and secondary schools are very restrictive for students, but they are so in their own... (shrink)

Living with the Robots. A Conversation about social Robotics This interview aims at focusing some aspects of an intriguing discipline known as social Robotics. In particular, we try to get familiar with concepts and philosophical frameworks which deal with this new human enterprise. Paul Dumouchel and Luisa Damiano will help us to get in contact with a scenario in which emotions, reason and ethics will be partially revised by a somehow different perspective about human-robot interaction and sociality.

Human beings, after all, provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial knowledge and minimal rationality they can hope to command.We tend to have a romantic view of liars, or rather of those who lie, and of how and of why they and we lie. A romantic view in the sense in which Girard uses that term in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, whose French title was Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, that is, "Romantic lie and novelistic (...) truth." Our common paradigm of the lie is willful deceit. We think the liar knows the truth, but he or she willfully hides it. The liar misrepresents what is the case to manipulate others to his or her own advantage. The liar knows something that we do not know;... (shrink)

But as for most genes, they are not the units of interest once we get to the network level: it is the whole conspiracy we care about. Biologists, more precisely evolutionary biologists, and not only psychologists and philosophers also speak of modularity. However the way in which this theoretical construct functions in their discipline is relatively different from the role it obtains in evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. Rather than postulating modules to explain particular traits of organisms, such as the (...) specificity of input systems or limitations of human reasoning abilities, biologists originally simply assume that some form of modularity constitutes a precondition of evolution. They argue that, in order for natural selection to fine tune organisms to their environment, different traits must be able to evolve independently from one another. This implies modularity in one form or another. Organisms will only be able to adapt if they do not come all in one piece, so to speak. It must therefore be possible for changes to occur in one characteristic of an animal without those changes having repercussions throughout the whole organism. (shrink)

Deux ou trois articles récents, Nagel, Block, Jackson, forment la toile de fond de discussions actuelles au sujet des qualia et du caractère subjectif de l'expérience, du moins en philosophie de l'esprit. Ces articles ont ceci en commun qu'ils visent tous à montrer qu'un certain aspect de l'expérience consciente – les qualia ou sa dimension subjective – remet en cause l'une ou l'autre, ou l'ensemble de nos théories psychophysiques. Ce qui est visé, au-delà des théories psychophysiques, c'est le physicalisme, entendu (...) comme une théorie métaphysique portant sur l'ameublement de l'univers, comme l'affirmation que tout ce qui existe ce sont des objets physiques et des propriétés physiques ou des propriétés survenantes sur des propriétées physiqus. C'est pourquoi le point où l'attaque porte est le réductionnisme des théories qui affirment l'identité des états mentaux et des états physiques du cerveau. Peu importe la forme précise de ces théories, qu'elles affirment l'identité des éats mentaux individuels avec des états individuels du cerveau ou l'identité des types d'états mentaux avec des types d'états cérébraux, ou encore l'identité des états fonctionnels du cerveau avec les éetats mentaux, toutes sont censées trouver ici, dans deux ou trois expériences de pensée, leurs limites ou le sceau de leur échec. (shrink)

I argue that the conception of «méconnaissance» put forward by René Girard should be understood in relation to what Popper calls objective knowledge rather than to the classical idea of knowledge as true and justified belief. Objective knowledge considers knowledge as a tool which is open to many uses and abuses. It allows us to make sense of Girard’s claim that «méconnaissance» grows as our knowledge increases and shows that knowledge and «méconnaissance» should not be understood as polar opposites. This (...) suggests a different relationship between «méconnaissance» and revelation, that revelation does not spell the end of «méconnaissance» but rather initiates a different type of relationship between knowledge and «méconnaissance». I try to illustrate this last point with the help of two examples: Ernesto De Martino’s analysis of tarantism in La terra del rimorso and John Rawls’s idea of a veil of ignorance in his A theory of justice. (shrink)

What is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument—for example, a knife, a hammer, an ax, or a pencil? Tools are technical objects that can be seen as extending or continuing a bodily action. They augment its efficiency. To push, hit, tear, pierce, crush, grasp, or throw: tools and simple instruments allow us to do better what, to some extent, we can already do without them. They enhance our performance, make the action easier, more (...) precise, they push back the limits of what we can do. What is done with difficulty and imperfectly with our bare hands, teeth, or nails can be done better and more easily using a tool, or with the help of a stone, a leaf, a stick, or of any natural object... (shrink)

Following a suggestion from G. Bateson, this article enquires into the consequence of the idea of embodiment in philosophy of mind, taking seriously the notion of an ecology of mind. In the first half of this article, after distinguishing between the biological and the systemic approaches to ecology, I focus on three characteristics of the systemic approach. First, that a system is an abstract object that is multiply embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects. Second, that there is (...) a form of circular causality between the level of the elements and that of the system as a whole, as some characteristics of the elements partake in the explanation of how the system functions, while the requirement of the system explains why the elements have the characteristics that they do. The third is the ontological uncertainty that we sometimes find in ecology, where the same term is used to designate both a central component of the ecological system and the system as a whole. In the second half, beginning with a critique of the theory of mind approach, I look into the consequences of conceiving that mind is embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects that interact as elements of a system, rather than enclosed in an individual body. (shrink)

Starting from an historical remark of R. Tuch (1993) concerning the relationship between Renaissance scepticism and the first social contract theories, this article defends the idea that the main difference between Hobbes's social contract theory and contemporary contractualism rests on the conception of reason. Comparing Hobbes and Rawls it shows that the first one rejects subjective theories of rationality and conceives the contract as a pre-condition of successfid individual rationality, which allows him both to escape sceptical and relativist criticisms and (...) to consider politics as an autonomous source of norms. /// Apoiando-se numa observação historica de R. Tuck (1993) acerca das relações entre o cepticismo saído do Renascimento e as primeiras teorias do contrato social, o presente artigo defende a tese de que a diferença fundamental entre a teoria hobbesiana do contrato e o contratualismo contemporâneo versa sobre a concepção da razão. Comparando Hobbes e Rawls acerca do contrato, o autor mostra até que ponto o filósofo de Malmsbury rejeita as teorias subjectivas da racionalidade fazendo do contrato a precondição para o exercício individual da razão, o que lhe permite simultaneamente evitar as críticas cépticas e relativistas e de considerar a política como uma fonte autónoma de normas. (shrink)

The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is “natural,” or at least not artificial. The problem is that intelligence, whether “natural” or “artificial,” is not well defined: it is hard to say what, exactly, is or constitutes intelligence. This difficulty makes it impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing (...) artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:INDIFFERENCE AND ENVY: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN ECONOMY Paul Dumouchel University ofQuébec-Montréal 1. Girard and economics René Girard himself has not written very much on economics, at least explicitly. Though his works are full ofinsights into and short remarks on the sacrificial origin of different economic phenomena or the way in which mimetic relations and commercial transactions are often intertwined and act upon each other.1 Unlike religion, psychology, (...) psychoanalysis, literature and anthropology, the analysis of modem and traditional economies from the point ofview ofmimetic theory has never been carried out by Girard himself, but for the most part by other people, for example, in the French speaking world, which I know best, essentially by Michel Aglietta and André Orléan in La violence de la monnaie (1982) and by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and myself in L'enfer des choses (1979) and as well as others, such as, by Mark Anspach, Andrew Feenberg, P. Lantz, A. Orléan, G-H. de Radkowsky and Lucien Scubla in various works on economy, economic anthropology, or the place and role of money in literary texts.2 In a way, this is somewhat surprising since the relationship between mimetic and economic phenomena, at least in a broad sense, was seen quite early on. For example, soon after the original publication Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) the French Marxist Lucien Goldman wrote in his Pour une sociologie du Roman (1964) that Girard's work was the most important book to read in order to understand 1 For example, Mensonge romantique (18-23); Des choses cachées (82-88). 2 See Anspach, Feenberg, Lantz, Orléan [passim], de Radkowski. 150Paul Dumouchel the effects of economic alienation on literature since Georg Lukács's Theory of the Novel (1920). Moreover in a footnote in Les origines du capitalisme (1971) Jean Baechler suggested that those wishing to understand the nature of the infinite desire for acquisition which capitalists economies have institutionalized should read Girard's book.3 Whatever the reason for Girard's relative disinterest in economic phenomena others have not been prevented from tackling this problem and it bears witness in a special way to the dynamism and intellectual power ofthe mimetic theory that its application to the field ofeconomics has essentially, ifnot entirely, been due to the work of others rather than to the efforts of René Girard himself. 2. The substantivist-formalist debate In the late 1 940's and early 1 950's a debate began that divided (and still divides) the community ofeconomists and ofanthropologists interested in economic phenomena. It concerns the nature ofeconomy and is generally referred to as the substantivist-formalist debate. It was first formulated in the works of the Austrian economist, Karl Polanyi.4 In The Great Transformation (1945), a book on the history ofthe formation and organization ofthe market economy in Europe from the late 1 8th to early 20th centuries, Polanyi already argued that the modem market economy was a rare historical accident. Furthermore Polanyi said, unlike what liberal and economic ideologies pretend, thatthere is nothingnatural aboutthe market. It does not correspond to any spontaneous human tendency to barter and exchange, and it does not arise by itself as soon as certain conditions are satisfied. Onthe contrary, modem markets have been put into place through sustained and voluntary state policies which consciously destroyed traditional solidarities, authorized the unlimited sale of land and labor and literally created the labor market, for example, in England through the Reform Bill of 1834 that repealed the existing Poor Laws which had prevented the free circulation of labor. The system formed by market economies, the balance of power among European states and the gold 3 Interestingly, 24 years later, in the second vastly enlarged edition of that work, Le capitalisme, (1995) the reference to Girard has disappeared though the text ofthe original work, which now constitutes the second part of the book, is otherwise reprinted in its integrity. 4 Actually Polanyi in The Livelihood ofMan (1977) sees the origin of the debate in Carl Mengers, Principles ofEconomics [1871]. Let us say then that it found its first modern formulation in the work of Polanyi. Indifference andEnvy... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Inside OutPolitical Violence in the Age of GlobalizationPaul Dumouchel (bio)One characteristic of globalization that often goes unnoticed, perhaps because it is so evident, is that it has no outside. There is nowhere beyond, no place that can be viewed as an outer space, as a location that globalization has not reached. Globalization has no border that indicates that this is where it ends; rather it closes upon itself like (...) the globe whose shape it adopts. It is a house that you cannot leave. There is no other world that is further than, that is past, globalization. There is no area where you can go that escapes its closure. Outside of globalization, there is no outside, no land that can be inhabited or even discovered and explored. This is not a problem of imagination. The difficulty to which I wish to point is not that we cannot imagine a life that would be different from life in the globalized world; in fact, that is relatively easy to do. What I want to argue is that the process we call globalization changes the shape and structure of our relations to each other, because it has no outside. Globalization (whatever else it may be) is a totalizing process in the sense that there is nowhere that is not part of the globalized world.If it is not possible to go outside of globalization or to go beyond it, it is indeed possible to fall from globalization or to be left behind and overlooked by it. This “fall from grace,” so to speak, corresponds to a form of internal exile [End Page 173] rather than to a departure for another country. This “exile” may be self-imposed, as was (and is) the case with cloistered monks. Men and women “abandon the world” for the service of God within monasteries, islands of peace that are both inside and outside the world. However, historically this voluntary internal exile was a departure in which those who left did not entirely vanish from the society where they had previously lived. As history has shown, monasteries were important economic actors during the Middle Ages, and they played a fundamental role in the evolution of the social and political structure in Europe, as well as in the transformation of Europe’s natural environment. Similarly, those who choose internal exile in today’s globalized society also remain important actors in the process they denounce.This internal exile can also be externally imposed; individuals and entire populations even, can be dropped out of globalization. Nonetheless, in no case does this falling out give access to a place that is not inside the global world. It does not lead anywhere that is not surrounded by the global world. To use a somewhat different image, globalization contains holes into which one can tumble and out of which it may be difficult to climb, but it has no outside. There is no outer space. That is precisely why it is called globalization! It encompasses the whole world.Why is the outside important? Essentially, because outside of where we live is where “others” live. It is a place that is inhabited by those who are not us. Who are they? It could be that the answer to this question is not very important, as long as they are not us. The word “outside” suggests first of all a separation in physical space. It is opposed to inside, and those who are not us do not live inside, or if they happen to live there, it is only by accident, temporarily, and with our permission. This is what globalization has transformed. “Others” are now among us. Through globalization, the coincidence between political, social, and cultural separation on the one hand and distance in space on the other has come to an end. It is not true anymore that those who are not us, those who are different, inhabit a different place, that they live somewhere else. We now share with them the same “global” world and integrated space. That which we call globalization corresponds, among other things, to the fact that difference in spatial location does not anymore coincide with important social, cultural, and... (shrink)