of Ethics, Intercultural Ethics,
Medical Ethics & Asian Philosophy
New Book Release – Caregiving, Carebots, and Contagion
Would you want to be cared for by a robot? Michael C. Brannigan’s Caregiving, Carebots, and Contagion explores caring robots’ lifesaving benefits, particularly during contagion, while probing the threat they pose to interpersonal engagement and genuine human caregiving. As our COVID-19 purgatory lingers on, caring robots will join our nursing and healthcare frontlines. Carebots can perform lifesaving tasks to minimize infection, safeguard vulnerable persons, and relieve caregivers of certain burdens. They also spark profound moral and existential questions: What is caring? How will we relate with each other? What does it mean to be human?
Underscoring carebots’ hands-on benefits, Brannigan also warns us of perils. They can be a dangerous lure in a culture that settles for substitutes and venerates the screen. Alerting us to the threatening prospect of care bots becoming our surrogate for interpersonal connection, he maintains they are not the culprits. The challenge lies in how
we relate to them. While they beneficially complement our caregiving, carebots cannot replace human caring. Caring is a fundamentally human act and lies at the heart of ethics. As humans, we have a binding
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Michael C. Brannigan
As the former George and Jane Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, I have taught philosophy and ethics and have established ethics programs engaging the academic and public communities. I remain Adjunct Professor at Albany Medical College’s Alden March Bioethics Institute where I teach Intercultural Bioethics and at St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry in Albany teaching Contemporary Moral Issues. Moreover, I write a monthly ethics column for our Capital Region’s city newspaper, the Albany Times Union. My columns can be read here.
My Books and Writings
I continue to write extensively in the areas of ethics, intercultural ethics, healthcare and medical ethics, end-of-life issues, the doctor-patient relationship, healthcare cultural competency, Asian and Japanese studies, philosophy of the body, and technologies and communication. I am currently working on a book that explores how our digital technologies of communication have generated a perilous disembodiment that has enabled a self-imposed alienation from interpersonal, face-to-face communication and connectedness.
