Moving Images, Mechanical Minds
offers a distinctive approach to human-machine relations by shifting attention away from questions of intelligence, consciousness, and personhood toward the imaginative frameworks that shape how such questions arise. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology of Mary Midgley, the book argues that our understanding of social robots is guided less by formal criteria than by "organizing pictures"-the myths, narratives, and images through which technosocial life becomes intelligible. Close readings of
I'm Your Man, Ex Machina, Hugo, Blade Runner 2049, The Twilight Zone, Humans, and Westworld
demonstrate that moving images do not merely illustrate philosophical debates but actively generate and test them. A central claim is that film and television think differently: cinema stages encounters that expose dominant frameworks, while television reveals how relations with machines are sustained or eroded over time. Rather than offering a theory of artificial intelligence, the book develops a framework for evaluating technosocial worlds through concepts such as holding, mixed community, and ecologies of care.
Moving Images, Mechanical Minds
is a timely and original contribution to philosophy of technology, robot ethics, and film and television studies. Shifting the question from intelligence to intimacy, Weiss shows that the real challenge posed by social robots and artificial companions is not whether machines can think, but where they are placed in the relational worlds of care, vulnerability, recognition, and dependency. This is genuine philosophical plumbing at its finest-a careful inspection of the images, myths, and stories through which we are already learning to live with machines.
David J. Gunkel, Distinguished Research Professor, Northern Illinois University (USA), and author of
Person, Thing, Robot
(MIT Press 2023)
Moving Images, Mechanical Minds
offers a distinctive approach to human-machine relations by shifting attention away from questions of intelligence, consciousness, and personhood toward the imaginative frameworks that shape how such questions arise. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology of Mary Midgley, the book argues that our understanding of social robots is guided less by formal criteria than by "organizing pictures"-the myths, narratives, and images through which technosocial life becomes intelligible. Close readings of
I'm Your Man, Ex Machina, Hugo, Blade Runner 2049, The Twilight Zone, Humans, and Westworld
demonstrate that moving images do not merely illustrate philosophical debates but actively generate and test them. A central claim is that film and television think differently: cinema stages encounters that expose dominant frameworks, while television reveals how relations with machines are sustained or eroded over time. Rather than offering a theory of artificial intelligence, the book develops a framework for evaluating technosocial worlds through concepts such as holding, mixed community, and ecologies of care.
Dennis M. Weiss
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York College of Pennsylvania. His work lies at the intersection of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of technology, and film and media studies. He is co-author of
Designing the Domestic Posthuman
(2024), co-editor of
Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman
(2014), and editor of
Interpreting Man
(2002). He curates a monthly film series at Zoetropolis Cinema Stillhouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and writes the Substack
Triangulations: Reflections on Being Human.
