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The Ideo-Politics of Paedophilia: The Controversial Case of the Child-Like Sex Robot

Huizen, J.C. van (2020) The Ideo-Politics of Paedophilia: The Controversial Case of the Child-Like Sex Robot.

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Abstract:Can the Child-Like Sex Robot (CSR) keep paedophilic individuals from harming a child? Ever since 2014, experts have been responding divergently to this controversial question. This indeterminacy seems to be the logical result of the current state-of-affairs: prior investigations into either virtual child pornography or adult sex robots seem unable to resolve the issue and the unknown causes of paedophilia are pushing an assessment of the CSR towards one of speculation. With the ethical stakes being high, this divergence creates an unfortunate deadlock. In response to this impasse, the purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to elucidate how contemporary arguments either in favour of or against the CSR appear to be conceptually inaccurate. Paedophilia, that is, constitutes a number of subgroups on which the CSR could have different effects; experts choose to ignore this by building their argument on one-sided conceptualisations of paedophilia. Nevertheless, the conceptualisations that they stick to are different from each other. In this regard, the second purpose of this dissertation is to explain this divergence in terms of ideology: approval of the CSR is not only a matter of morality, but it questions, too, standpoints on civilisation and political authority – among others.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:08 philosophy
Programme:Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society MSc (60024)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/82698
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