Abstract

Social robotics provides an interesting example in the debate over the boundaries between the living and non-living. This paper wishes to show that the question of the living does not call for a phenomenological, analytic or scientific answer that would provide us with the true nature of the living and determine whether or not machines may be living. It proposes a constructivist approach that seeks ways of letting machines live and cultivating the desire to do so. It is necessary to let machines live, for they never will be able to unless we create the opportunity for them. We need a verb somewhere between «to be alive» and «to become living», which would mean something like «to become living in a manner specific to oneself».