The premise of this paper is that humans can have legitimate feelings of love or sexual desire for nonorganic objects, specifically robots or graphical constructions such as avatars. This claim, according to the authors, is justified both philosophically and through interviews. This was also the premise of a recent movie entitled Her in which a character played (very well) by Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a female voice on his computer that represents the computer’s operating system. The movie was quite well done, and the issues raised by this paper are certainly worth exploring. Unfortunately, the paper itself is deeply flawed.

The philosophical justification is really a conceptual justification where the author provides a hand-wave argument in favor of the paper’s premise. The author cites Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics in which Aristotle asserts that love is only possible between human beings. No quote is provided. Neither is a page number. And the reference provided is a secondary source. So, we don’t really know what Aristotle’s position was. However, we can take that as a given for now because, even if Aristotle didn’t say it or meant something else, most people would agree that love is normally between two people. The author then counters this claim by asserting that one can “love” a pet. This isn’t a serious argument. It doesn’t even rise to the level of sophistry. It is just silly. If one claims that he loves good scotch, is the relationship in trouble if the scotch doesn’t love him back? Of course not. The word “love” when referring to a human relationship and the word “love” when referring to one’s appreciation of good scotch are two entirely different things.

The interviews that were conducted involved six subjects, all of whom were acquaintances of the author, and all of whom had “their own favorite digital or two-dimensional characters.” Immediately, representativeness, generalizability, statistical significance, and objectivity go out the window. Thus, it is very difficult to take the author’s claim that the interviews justify the premise seriously.

The most disturbing part of this poorly written paper is that people do experience emotional states when interacting with digital constructs. And a greater understanding of those emotional states can advance our understanding of digital marketing, education, and possibly even mental health. However, when one suggests the existence of such emotional states, the idea is likely to be rejected if not scoffed at. Papers such as this one provide more ammunition for the scoffers and inhibit rather than advance our understanding.