Similarly, ‘objectification theory’ (which derives from a particularly pessimistic group of late Marxist philosophers in Europe) is riddled with absurdities that can ultimately be traced back to those same contingent values.

The core ethical or philosophical points are respect for cognitive liberty all things being equal, respect for informed consent, understanding of the difference between subject (emergent from matter as sentience) and object (the thing in itself which is not sentient) and a refusal to permit one autonomous mind’s value system to take command over another autonomous person’s mind if the second is harming no one else.

Naturally this is not quite so simple insofar as there are social claims for order and mutual liberty and so forth and judgments have to be made on the nature of consent and so forth but it is not a bad starting point for dealing with sexuality asa private choice where health (as you so rightly point out) tends evidentially towards responsible pleasure.

The fear of pornography (on the reasonable assumption that it is an industry no more or less exploitative than any other) is very odd and irrational. After all, milions of us sell our minds to our jobs on a daily basis and one would have thought that minds were vastly more important than bodies according to our cultural norms (though of course body and mind are integrated in fact). There is woolly thinking here …

Personally, I am impressed by the youngsters of today — more sexually aware, more sexually responsible in general, more educated and more self-confident than my older generation. And I think that this has something to do with being able to observe sexuality as ‘normal’ and complex and then make their own judgments. The wave of sexual abuse scandals emerging across the world tell us something important about the repressed culture that saw sexuality as negative.

Above all, please do not allow yourself to be bullied into quiescence, please, by the cod-philosophy of ‘objectification’. It is philosophically absurd. As humans, with our flawed perceptions and different processing powers, we have evolved through constant and fruitful objectification of reality and other persons are part of that reality.

Eventually, we learn to trust people and so create empathy and sympathy (de-objectify) but we would not survive long if we did not objectify people a roles and functions (which is not the same as stupidly stereotyping people or lacking respect for them as autonomous persons).

De-objectification is not a universal value (as the Frankfort School’s sucessors would try to enforce on us) but an earned relationship between mutually communicating parties.

The worst objectification I have ever seen is the objectification of lap dancers and sex workers as creatures without agency who are ‘victims’ who need ‘saving’ and who cannot make informed choices. Such objectification theory can be evil in its effects on people.

The truth is that humanity is complex — some people will have no need of bots, some will treat bots as useful for filling gaps because of inadequacies and some will use bots to enhance their existence in some way. Universalists cannot seem to forgive such choice and diversity.

However, my caveat is to your seventh paragraph where the implication is of bot as aid to grieving process — that is dangerous human territory (dealing with the real underlying fear of the human which informs almost every aspect of trans-humanism, death). Conquer anxiety about death and you have become transhuman — the attempt to escape death in transhumanism may be a reason to doubt its transhuman quality :-)

Still, an important debate that cannot be allowed to be pushed to one side because of the theoretical prejudices of the unimaginative.

I was hoping to learn more from the seed idea I had on this topic, and i’m not disappointed, thanks to your input.
I was rather disappointed that the essay was dismissed by some as “porn” fodder simply because of the title image, and not the context of why that image was used — to show how the human mind might just overcome the so-called uncanny valley of the real v/s the unreal…
Some comments were of the “objectifying women” category, and I had to make it a point to clarify that the essay should be read in it’s entirety.

We are a constantly evolving generation — the teens of today, the young adults of today, spend more time in a pixel world, in a simulated world, than they do in the real…

I see them using Bots (and in reading your last sentences in the comment above) as an aphrodisiac, just as alcohol is.. to enhance the mating session.

I’m also a believer of the emotional/psychological impact a sexbot could have, once mechanics are worked and smoothed out. i.e in a “healthy” relationship between two humans that has lasted a couple of decades, what happens after the loss of one? A sexbot driven by even rudimentary AGI and performance capture files (that were recorded when the partner was alive) can bring that person’s touch back — if needed.

As in any area that humans are involved in, there is always the issue of mis-use.
These issues are touched on in the story of Maya.

Thank you again for putting this essay into perspective for other Transhumans!

- a) ensuring consensuality at the point at which a sexualised artefact becomes sentient,

- b) the likelihood of many people (especially males) withdrawing from the mating game as excessively complicated, time-consuming, possibly expensive (if sexual tools become cheap enough) and emotionally exhausting (leading to continued collapse in the birth rate amongst the advanced nations and, presumably, amongst the more intelligent members of it with higher access to resources);

- c) the political problem of handling the large numbers of intellectually limited and philosophically unsophisticated essentialists who will find some ‘moral wrong’ (i.e. an invention to ensure social cohesion or alleviate anxiety and fear) both to argue against and to legislate against free choice in the matter.

I do not include spurious claims about ‘addiction’ because I am going to assume that human beings are autonomous individuals able to make their own decisions about sexuality although one would assume age-related restrictions on reasonable precautionary grounds.

None of these issues should be a barrier to effective and libertarian management.

a) is resolved by having open and precautionary legislative support for consent where object relations (which require no consent despite the inadequate post-Marxist theory of ‘objectification’ as a wrong) are intermediated by a phase of no consent being possible (because, like animals and children the bot cannot be informed yet has some sufficient sentience) before permitting full informed consent — this, of course, requires generous tests of sentience;

b) is a public policy issue where private choices have to be respected and can, perhaps, only be dealt with by economic incentives and changes in the behaviour of men and women towards each other in order to ensure ‘attraction’ for mating and family creation (which may be no bad thing given the idiotic inherited stereotyping of both sexes about each other)

c) is the most serious problem because social conservatives of limited intellect who suffer either from ‘spirituality’ (simply a sort of brain difference from others) or from a ‘politics of disgust’, may command democratic majorities and crush the life out of libertarians, causing untold misery to the individuals who crave the experience of love but are not going to get it in a traditionalist market.

All very interesting … it will be most interesting of all when real life couples decide to bring bots into their lives to deal with the boredom factor that disrupts so many middle aged marriages …

The good advantage we have today is that a simple $150 Kinect controller can capture a proper ‘gait file” to go with a mindfile and immortalize a persons characteristics, once step closer to simulating said person, either digitally, or offering a run file to assist the motor cortex of a 3D printed Surrogate.

Imagine going back through every CD ever offered, and converting the digitized motions of famous movie stars from as far back at the silent movie era? A woman’s dirrogate partner could be Rudolph Valentino, with some John Barrymore or Errol Flynn thrown in for good measure.

The possibilities of mixing and matching are mind boggling!