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The design, planning, and public presentation of service robots is gradually eroding the traditional distinction between social robots and service robots. This paper concentrates on one service robot (Spot) and two humanoid robots employed in the therapy of children diagnosed with ASD (Kaspar and Zeno). The paper argues that 1) Spot, which looks like a dog but is clearly identifiable as a machine, is less likely than Kaspar and Zeno to provoke the so-called uncanny valley effect. 2) The symbolic connotations associated with the robot's appearance are positive in the case of the two humanoid robots, while Spot elicits opposite responses depending on the context of use (e.g. trust in an industrial facility/fear and outrage when employed by the police in an underfunded neighbourhood). 3) Kaspar and Zeno play a positive role in a therapeutic setting, as affective mediators between neurotypical adults and children diagnosed with ASD, but the claim that they help children to recognise emotions is overstated. 4) Fears connected with weaponised robots built by other companies in imitation of Spot invite reflections on the mutual shaping between technology, society and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diotima criticizes, but does not refute, Aristophanes' thesis that love is desire for completeness. Her argument incorporates that thesis within a more complex theory: eros is desire for the permanent possession of the good, and hence also desire for immortality. Aristophanes cannot account for the aspirations entailed in the desire for fame or in the desire for knowledge. Such aspirations can be understood only with reference to the good. However, the paper shows how time plays a fundamental role in the original pursuit of wholeness at the center of Aristophanes' myth of the two halves. Diotima appropriates his thesis when she describes the urge to leave behind something similar to what one has been. The desire for immortality is nothing but a desire for completeness pursued by mortal nature against the never-ending destruction of time.

The Phaedrus's Palinode ascribes to the wing the double function of lifting the soul towards truth while itself being nourished by truth. The paper concentrates on the role Socrates ascribes to the wing in the structure and 'physiology' of the soul--mortal and divine---as well as on the role it plays in Socrates' subsequent phenomenological description of failing in love. The experience of love described in Socrates' first speech--an experience dominated by envy--is examined in light of Socrates' Palinode, by reference to Socrates' account of the different ways souls can relate to truth before incarnation.

The paper critically discusses the thesis, originally put forth by Taylor (2006), that there is a (mostly benign) form of envy whose target is the good possessed by someone else. Section 2 analyzes the distinction between object-envy and state-envy, discusses the connection between object-envy and benign envy, and develops the ethical consequences that follow from the thesis that envy is never benign. Section 3 presents a thought experiment with five variations developed from the basic elements of objectenvy: an agent, a good the agent desires but lacks, and a person who possesses the good. The variations generate emotions like longing, sadness, happiness for, admiration, covetousness, self-disappointment, but they do not generate envy. Section 4 concentrates on envious self-reproach and shows that its nature and genesis are different from the self-disappointment one may experience in other forms of selfassessment. Section 5 argues that the so-called sour-grape syndrome serves different goals when it is connected to a good one lacks and when it is connected to envious comparisons. Section 6 maintains that what looks like benign envy can be better understood as emulous admiration. In conclusion, the paper argues that object-envy is not a useful concept. The desired goods are not valued in themselves when a person feels envy. Rather, they are taken to signal the superior recognition enjoyed by someone else within the reference group that is currently deemed important by the agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]