Robotics & Philosophy

Aachen, Germany

Situated close to the border with Belgium and the Netherlands, the medieval town of Aachen is home to many educational institutions bringing together scientists and teachers from a wide variety of different disciplines.

In 2004, the Technical University of Aachen sought for new ideas how to win students for technically oriented careers. However, rather than just presenting modern technology as something fascinating in itself, a number of academics let themselves be inspired by the idea of philosophy in the classroom (as propagated by Matthew Lipman back in the 1970ies). The charm of the Aachen approach, however, was that hands-on programming of real-life robots should encourage pupils and students to raise and discuss philosophical issues themselves.

Up to now (2008), 4 seminars have been held at two different schools, each seminar covering about 5 to 10 days. Various presentations and a weekend-course for future teachers at the Institute for Catholic Theology at Aachen University keep alive the links to the academic world. The "pro-vocative" question is always in how far technical artefacts are alive or whether human beings are nothing else but a fleshy piece of programmed hardware. Prompting this question naturally leads to intrinsically philosophical issues such as conscious awareness, the duality of mind and matter, the idea of responsibility for ones own doings etc.

Text excerpts from classical philosophy (Plato, Schopenhauer, Berkeley etc.), from prose and science fiction literature (Poe, Stapledon, Lem) from the current research community (the EU's CORDIS website) as well as authentic scientific papers (Turing, Libet, Gazzaniga etc.) are used to focus classroom discussions on hard scientific facts or propositions.

Encouraging comments from pupils and students as well as from cooperating institutions and individuals inspire us to carry on with our approach. However, most activities are sustained by individual i. e. private work with only little institutional support. At this stage, we want to make our work known to similarly interested people in order to exchange ideas and experiences.

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