Can an artificial being be loved?

Whether love for a made being is real or a deception.

Direction Humanlike machines
Span c. 8 CE–1938
Questions 2
Works 10
Languages Latin, French, German, English

  1. Q39Can love for an artificial being remain genuine after its artificial nature is known?

    6 answers are hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.

  2. Q40Can an artificial companion satisfy the need for companionship if it has no feelings of its own?

    Yes1

    • 1886l'Isle-Adam, Tomorrow's Eve

      Edison argues that the android Hadaly, with recorded speech and no inner life of her own, will be better company for Ewald than the shallow woman she copies.

    No4

    • 1637Descartes, Discourse on Method

      A machine might utter words in response to a touch, but it could never arrange words to answer the meaning of whatever is said to it, as even the dullest person can.

    • 1778Goethe, The Triumph of Sensibility

      Satire in which Prince Oronaro prefers a doll stuffed with sentimental novels to the real queen; the play mocks a love that needs nothing back.

    • 1816Hoffmann, The Sandman

      Nathanael feels only Olimpia understands him though she answers only 'Ah, ah'; the story treats this companionship as delusion.

    • 1914Rilke, Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel

      The child's doll takes all the love given it and answers with silence, because it is made of stuff that cannot respond; Rilke treats this as the child's first experience of not being loved back.