I almost always finish my bioethics courses by having a final-class party and showing much of the 90’s film GATTACA–a movie which predicts a dystopian future in which procreation and sex are completely disconnected from each other.
The film has already been prophetic in many ways, and the fact that sex robots now appear to be here to stay signals that we remain on the GATTACA trajectory. I wrote about this development (particularly in light of this week’s international conference on sex and robots) in today’s New York Daily News:
“Does love have to be reciprocated in order to be valid?” asks Dr. Kate Devlin, event host for the London conference. Much to her delight, she knows that our culture has already answered her question.
The vision of sex celebrated by our movies and music — and facilitated by hook-up applications like Tinder — is premised on lack of feelings and commitment. The whole point is to use each other as mere objects. The rise of digital pornography (and, soon, mainstream virtual reality porn) is also premised on sexual gratification apart from there being any reciprocation.
Sex with computers is just the latest example of this trajectory.
But barring any changes in our sexual culture, the game-changing nature of robotics and artificial intelligence gives many people good reason to believe that it will eventually replace having sex with humans.
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[A counter-cultural sexual ethic] must begin by calling out how a capitalist market drives out cultural values and moral principles in the name of securing profits for shareholders of the companies which bring us virtual-reality porn, sex robots and quality-controlled laboratory embryos.
In resisting such forces, we must stand up for new cultural norms which insist that sex and openness to the gift of procreation (not the market-laden term “reproduction”) must be connected.
Charles,
First, when it comes to the subject of sex, the child rape scandals and now the Trump election (60% of Catholics voting for a bragging sexual predator) have ripped away most of Catholic credibility. This reality must be faced and addressed if Catholic moral sermons are to again have any influence beyond those who already agree with them. Given that you are a highly educated person of reason, I invite you to question the logic of preaching to the choir. What is accomplished?
Second, computer sex would seem to be a far more complicated topic than can be easily addressed with simplistic formulas. There are a lot of lonely people in the world. There are a lot of lonely Catholics in the world. There are a lot of marriages being held together by creative solutions. We should be very thoughtful and careful before blundering in to this moral mine field with the usual blame and shame Catholic trumpeting.
Third, computer sex is just the leading edge of a far larger emerging cultural virtual reality trend which will increasingly affect every area of our lives. As is almost always the case with technological advances, some of these developments will be wonderful, and some of them will present very troubling challenges. This subject would seem to merit much more attention here on this blog.
As example, what if there was a room in your house where you could have pretty much anything you want? When that arrives as it surely will, how much time will you be willing to invest in to engaging inconvenient real world people when you could instead be having whatever experiences you most desire? We need to face this emerging question with a great deal of honesty.
Human experience has always been about trying to manage reality so as to obtain the inner psychological experiences we seek. What’s going to happen to us when we master this process? What’s going to happen when we can actually have what we want? All I know is that the digital realm has an enormous gravity that few will escape.
I hope you will continue with this subject.