Humanities Bulletin ADVISORY BOARD Carlos João Correia, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Lisbon, Portugal) Asun López-Varela, Ph.D. (Professor, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain) Ignacio Garcia, Ph.D. (Professor, Brigham Young University, USA) Stefano Maggi, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Siena, Italy) Roger Markwick, Ph.D. (Professor, The University of Newcastle, Australia) Maria do Rosário Monteiro, Ph.D. (Professor, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal) Carla Locatelli, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Trento, Italy) Ibis Gómez-Vega, Ph.D. (Professor, Northern Illinois University) Nelson Robert Orringer, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Connecticut, USA) Vasiliy Gritsenko, Ph.D. (Professor, Krasnodar State Institute of Culture, Russia) Piotr Petrykowski, Ph.D. (Professor, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) José Nicolao Julião, Ph.D. (Professor, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) Abdul Rahim Afaki, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Karachi, Pakistan) Beata Borowska-Beszta, Ph.D. (Professor, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) Ahmadreza Yalameha, Ph.D. (Professor, Islamic Azad University, Iran) Bujar Hoxha, Ph.D. (Professor, South East European University, Macedonia) Anna Hamling, Ph.D. (Professor, University of New Brunswick, Canada) Ana Paula Banza, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Évora, Portugal) Osman Bilen, Ph.D. (Professor, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey) Silvia Magnavacca, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) Colin Schmidt, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Maine, France) Andrew Jay Svedlow, Ph.D. (Professor, University of Northern Colorado, USA) Gerrard Carter, Ph.D. (Lecteur, Aix-Marseille Université, France) Maybelle Marie O. Padua, Ph.D. (Professor, Far Eastern University Manila, Philippines) Cristal Huang, Ph.D. (Professor, Soochow University, Taiwan) Joseph P. Hester, Ph.D. (Independent researcher, Claremont, USA) EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Victor Alexandru Pricopi, Ph.D. Executive Editor Cristina Lucia Șutiu, Ph.D. Humanities Bulletin Volume 3, Number 2 November 2020 London Academic Publishing London, 2020 Humanities Bulletin, Volume 3, Number 2, 2020. Editor-in-Chief: Victor Alexandru Pricopi; Executive Editor: Cristina Lucia Șutiu. Copyright © 2020 London Academic Publishing ISSN 2517-4266 (Online) Humanities Bulletin is a peer-reviewed open-access Journal. Frequency: 2 issues per year: May and November. First Printing: November, 2020. Publisher: London Academic Publishing Ltd. 27, Old Gloucester Street WC1N 3AX London, United Kingdom Contact: e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] www.lapub.co.uk www.journals.lapub.co.uk Company Reg. No. 10941794 Registered in England and Wales The opinions expressed in the published articles are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the opinion of the editors or members of the editorial board. Font Copyright: This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, EB Garamond; Cardo. Table of Contents: What is Wrong with Machine Art? Autonomy, Spirituality, 9-26 Consciousness, and Human Survival Ioannis Trisokkas Understanding the Subjective Dimension of Work 27-44 from a Buddhist Perspective Ferdinand Tablan Towards Articulating the Unity of Augustine’s Confessiones 45-76 Barry David The Logical Relation of Consequence 77-90 Basil Evangelidis Here Are the Materials Strewn Along the Ground – Skepticism, 91-106 Autonomy and Education in Kant and Romanticism Maximilian Gindorf Same-Sex Marriage and Equality … Again 107-119 The Collectivist Argument Richard McDonough Condoning Wrongdoing 120-126 Gregory Mellema Metaphysics in a Black Hole: Technology and the Unfathomable 127-139 Siobhan Lyons The Subjective Import of Moral Knowledge 140-156 Joseph P. Hester Experimenting with Poverty & Performing Benevolence: 157-172 Morality and Social Reform in Stephen Crane’s New York City Sketches and Maggie, A Girl of the Streets Debbie Lelekis Women Deconstructing History in Search of their Own Voice and Identity 173-189 Ijeoma D. Odoh Narrative ‘Trauma-Testimony’ and Fragmented Identity 190-207 in Sometimes in April Soji Cole How an Eating Disorder May Have Informed Marianne Moore’s 208-224 “Nine Nectarines” Jessica Mehta Gertrude Käsebier, Photographer: The New Woman in 225-236 Black and White Margaret D. Stetz Longing for Return: An Existential Search and Identity Formation 237-245 in Almodovar’s Volver Zaya Rustamova Quantitative Analysis of Sound in a Short Horror Film 246-257 Nick Redfern What is Wrong with Machine Art? Autonomy, Spirituality, Consciousness, and Human Survival Ioannis Trisokkas Department of Philosophy National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Panepistimioupoli Zografou, 15784 Athens, Greece E-mail: [email protected] There is a well-documented Pre-Reflective Hostility against Machine Art (PRHMA), exemplified by the sentiments of fear and anxiety. How can it be explained? The present paper attempts to find the answer to this question by surveying a considerable amount of research on machine art. It is found that explanations of PRHMA based on the (alleged) fact that machine art lacks an element that is (allegedly) found in human art (for example, autonomy) do not work. Such explanations cannot account for the sentiments of fear and anxiety present in PRHMA, because the art receiver could simply turn to human art for finding the element she is looking for. By contrast, an explanation based on the idea that machine art is “symbolically” a threat to human survival can be successful, since the art receiver’s turning from machine art to human art does not eliminate the (alleged) “symbolic” threat machine art poses for human survival. If there is a pre-reflective belief or feeling that machine art is such a threat, then it is perfectly understandable why humans exhibit a pre-reflective hostility against machine art. robots, machines, art, fear, anxiety, survival, technology, autonomy, spirituality, consciousness Coeckelbergh has recently raised an issue which, despite its huge importance, remains marginalized in debates in philosophy of technology: Why do we humans insist on being the only artists? If machines were artists, would this be a problem and why? [...] Why do we want to colonize and dominate the artistic domain? It is not clear what keeps us from opening it up to [...] machines [...], or what keeps us from recognizing that these are already “invading” the domain. (Coeckelbergh 2017, 296) Coeckelbergh asks about the reason why humans display a pre-reflective hostility against machine art and thereby exclude it from art’s domain. The present paper attempts to answer this question, especially in relation to robotic art. While the literature on the relation between art 9 Ioannis Trisokkas – What is Wrong with Machine Art? Autonomy, Spirituality, Consciousness, and Human Survival and technology increases exponentially each year, authors have hitherto paid minimal attention to that hostility’s causes. “Robot” originally signified a machine that is put to hard work or slavery (robota in Czech) and has no ability to escape this destiny; it had precisely this sense in ̌Capek’s 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots, where the term was first used (Bar-Cohen et al. 2009, 7; Stephens and Heffernan 2016, 34). In our days the term has another meaning: it signifies a machine that has “the capacity for sensing and self-guided behaviour” (Penny 2016, 49). As Penny notes, “as its quality of self- guidance declines, so does its claim to the moniker ‘robot’” (Penny 2016, 49-50). Robots are now “quasi-intelligent machines whose control systems are partially under human control, and partially autonomous” (Penny 2016, 50), and there are signs that they will soon enjoy full autonomy (Bar-Cohen et al. 2009). Machines are everywhere in human society and are already performing a myriad of tasks (Bar-Cohen et al. 2009, 9, 11, 13), but can they also create art, “one of the most cherished human endeavours” (Poltronieri et al. 2018, 5)? This question is raised more and more frequently in philosophy of technology (Coeckelbergh 2017; Still and d’Inverno 2019). Since the eighteenth century there have been numerous instances of robots or automata to which the label “artist” has been attached. As noted by Stephens and Heffernan, [t]hroughout the 1700s, a series of unsettlingly lifelike mechanical figures had held audiences spellbound by performing astonishing feats of skill and intelligence on the public stage. [...] These automata, like the other mechanical figures that so fascinated eighteenth-century publics, were not only the products of great art and technical skill: they were themselves highly skilled producers of art, participating in cultural activities widely understood to be definitively human. (Stephens and Heffernan 2016, 31, my emphasis) An example of such a mechanical “artist” was Jaquet-Droz’s “Musical Lady,” an automaton of the eighteenth century that has been described as “one of the world’s first programmable robots” (Stephens and Heffernan 2016, 29). The “Musical Lady” is seated before a piano and “when animated, her articulated fingers press down on the individual keys, so that the figure actually plays the music the spectator then hears” (Stephens and Heffernan 2016, 29). Moreover, “her chest rise[s] and fall[s] as she played, making her appear not only alive, but emotional” (Stephens and Heffernan 2016, 30). Jaquet-Droz made also the “Draftsman,” an anthropomorphic machine programmed to draw various objects, including a portrait of Marie-Antoinette,