Reflections on Moral Challenges Posed by a Therapeutic Childlike Sexbot

In this paper, I discuss the serious ethical issues that arise from the advent of childlike sexbots (CSB). The main question I will be addressing is: Is it morally and legally acceptable to create CSBs for therapeutic purposes to treat paedophilia? Proponents of love and sex with robots would argue that a CSB could have a twofold interest: protecting children from sexual predators and by the same token, treating the latter. On the other hand, opponents to sexbots would contend that a CSB is not an effective therapeutic tool in treating paedophilia. It could even contribute to legitimizing or normalizing, in the eyes of the offender, the fundamental social, moral and legal transgression of having sex with under age children. However, as a pragmatic observer of society, I believe that CSBs are inevitable due to the recent development of sexbot technology, but also because of existing demand. Thus, I think that a general ethical framework is necessary and should be drawn up, in order to help healthcare providers, lawmakers and judicial systems deal effectively with this technology. Based on the loosely interpreted tenets of the harm principle, I argue that CSBs could be authorized under strict medical supervision and in accordance with guidelines issued by an ethics committee. Moreover, I devote an entire section of this paper to exploring the social and moral attitudes towards paedophilia in very recent history. I shed particular light on the strange case of the defence of paedophilia, by several prominent French intellectuals in the 1970’s. How did this type of moral relativism supersede for a time a moral absolute?SCOPUS: cp.k