Can Interactive Mediation Serve as a Method in Robot Ethics?
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_105How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- technological mediation; robot ethics; interactive mediation
- Abstract
Existing research in robot ethics has focused primarily on norm embedding and moral learning as ways to align robotic behavior with human values, while paying little attention to the normative role of artifacts in robotic action. Drawing on technological mediation theory, this article examines whether and how artifacts can mediate robots’ moral action. It argues that although robots lack human forms of agency, their perception–action cycles provide the interactive conditions under which technological mediation can occur. On this basis, the article distinguishes between mediation of experience and mediation of praxis in robotic contexts and introduces the concept of interactive mediation to explain how artifacts structurally reshape robots’ spaces of possible action. It thus shows that technological mediation can serve as a complementary approach in robot ethics, distinct from norm embedding and moral learning.
- Copyright
- © 2026 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Zhengqiang Han PY - 2026 DA - 2026/05/15 TI - Can Interactive Mediation Serve as a Method in Robot Ethics? BT - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 1031 EP - 1037 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_105 DO - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_105 ID - Han2026 ER -