William James' 'Automatic Sweetheart' Revisited: Comparing Sternberg's Love Measurements for Real versus Identical Android Sweethearts

The American philosopher and psychologist William James coined the term "Automatic Sweetheart", meaning a soulless body devoid of a consciousness (James, 1908). Long before words like robot, android or avatar were coined, James (1908) wrote: "I thought of what I called an 'automatic sweetheart,' meaning a soulless body which should be absolutely indistinguishable from a spiritually animated maiden, laughing, talking, blushing, nursing us, and performing all feminine offices as tactfully and sweetly as if a soul were in her. Would any one regard her as a full equivalent?" (p. 5). James used his automatic sweetheart as a metaphor for a mechanical universe void of a Creator, one that was identical in all regards to one having a metaphysical essence beyond purely physical matter. He concluded that God matters pragmatically because humans would feel differently about a Godless universe, just as they would feel differently about a sweetheart devoid of human consciousness, even though there were no observable differences. James thought that no one would regard a soulless sweetheart as a full equivalent for a sweetheart that possessed a soul. Simply the knowledge of knowing one's sweetheart lacked a true human consciousness will cause changes in love and admiration. James' 'Automatic Sweetheart' was recently revitalized as the 'Philosophical Zombies' debate. The philosophical zombie is a thought experiment in which the zombies' consciousness is not necessary for intelligence or behavior (Bailey, 2006; Chalmers, 1995, 1996, 2003; Dennett & Kinsbourne, 1992). Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is generally considered incapable of fully emulating human consciousness (McCarthy, 2000; Reggia, 2013) and our androids only crudely mime actions attributable to human consciousness. However, some futurists are predicting the science fiction world of very human-like androids will become part of our everyday lives much sooner than predicted (Levy, 2007). As conceived by Alan Turing (1950), how would we know when machines can think? Defining artificial intelligence, the Turing test defines AI based upon whether machines would fare as well as humans in an imitation game. Turing's test is still influential, although widely criticized. Searle's Chinese room problem critique (1980) was among the most notable. He suggested that while Turing's AI may readily translate Chinese characters into flawless English prose imitation, unlike human intelligence, the machine does not comprehend what the translation actually means. Searle concluded that AI could never fully pass the test due to this limitation. Turing's test requires the elimination of an original-copy distinction, as the machine copy must be indistinguishable from the human original playing the imitation game. James' argument that his Automatic Sweetheart would never suffice for the genuine love object is similar to Searle's critique of Turing. Both James and Searle concluded that AI lacks the capacity to grasp or attach underlying meanings to outwardly indistinguishable imitative actions. This makes the machine copy a counterfeit that is inherently different from and inferior to the human original. When William James posed his automatic sweetheart question in 1908, he imagined android sweethearts behaving in a way that would be indistinguishable from biological human sweethearts. James opined we could never love a machine, no matter if it was a perfect, indistinguishable replica of a human sweetheart. James' prediction was examined in this study by comparing love for a human and an identical non-human sweetheart using Robert Sternberg's triangular model of love. To assess loving relationships, Robert Sternberg (1986) produced a theoretical model in which love is conceptualized as three constructs acting together forming the vertices of a triangle. Sternberg's triangular theory of love is comprised of: "intimacy," feelings of closeness and bond forming in loving relationships; "passion," romantic drives such as physical attraction and sexual consummation; "decision/commitment," the decision to enter a relationship and in the long term to maintain commitment to the individual. …