Paula Sweeney on Wittgensteinian Considerations on the Moral Status of Social Robots

Paula Sweeney is a senior lecturer in Philosophy. She joined the University of Aberdeen in 2009. Prior to that she completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Crispin Wright.
In 2015 Paula became the Head of Philosophy and the Deputy Head of School. From 2016 until 2022 Paula was the Head of the School of Divinity, History, Philosophy and Art History.
Paula's academic background is in the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy of Logic. Now she works in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, particularly regarding social robots. She is interested in what social robots are, what benefits they can bring to society and how we should engage with them. Although she approaches these questions from a philosophical perspective, she draws on research from a wide range of disciplines.
Paula teaches at undergraduate and masters level in Philosophy and at masters level in the School of Computer Science.
Paula's monograph Social Robots: A Fictional Dualism Model is to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in late 2023. An episode of the podcast Philosophical Disquisitions was dedicated to a discussion of her fictional dualism theory of social robots. She has also published many articles in peer reviewed journals and edited collections.