Care robots are likely to perform increasingly sophisticated caring activities that some will consider comforting and valuable. They will get increasingly humanlike and lifelike. This paper addresses the conceptual question: Even if robots can assist and ease people’s suffering, can such machines provide humanistic care? Arguably, humanistic care is the most humanly distinctive and deepest form of care there is. As such, it may be thought to show most starkly the gulf between human and robot caregiving. The paper argues that humanistic caregiving is indeed a distinctive form of ‘affective’ care dependent on certain uniquely human characteristics or aspects of our humanity which can provide a profound kind of comfort to suffering people. It then argues that there is an important conceptual sense in which robots cannot provide humanistic care. Nonetheless, the paper subsequently suggests that we may recognize a useful sense in which robots, of a suitably anthropomorphic type, can provide humanistic care. Robots might ‘express’ to people with physical, social, or emotional needs the kind of humanistic care that only human beings can provide but that sufferers can nonetheless receive comfort from precisely because of what is expressed to them. Although this sense of humanistic robot care is derivative from uniquely human care, and although it is wide open to social and ethical criticism, it is nonetheless an idea worth clarifying for anyone interested in the possibilities and limits of robot care.

护理机器人可能会执行越来越复杂的护理活动，有些人会认为这些活动令人欣慰且有价值。他们将变得越来越人性化和栩栩如生。本文解决了概念性问题：即使机器人可以帮助和减轻人们的痛苦，这些机器能否提供人文关怀？关心？可以说，人文关怀是最具人性化和最深刻的关怀形式。因此，它可能被认为最明显地显示了人类和机器人护理之间的鸿沟。该论文认为，人文关怀确实是一种独特的“情感”关怀形式，它依赖于某些独特的人类特征或我们人性的某些方面，可以为受苦的人提供一种深刻的安慰。然后它论证了机器人不能提供人文关怀的重要概念意义。尽管如此，该论文随后表明，我们可能会认识到一种有用的意义，即适当拟人化的机器人可以提供人文关怀。机器人可能会向身体、社交、或情感上需要那种只有人类才能提供的人文关怀，但正是因为向他们表达了什么，患者才能从中得到安慰。尽管这种人文机器人护理意识源于独特的人类护理，尽管它对社会和伦理批评持开放态度，但对于任何对机器人护理的可能性和局限性感兴趣的人来说，它仍然是一个值得澄清的想法。