Abstract
The idea of the right to mobility has been fundamental to modern Western citizenship and is expressed in many legal and government documents. Although there is widespread acceptance regarding the importance of mobility in older adults, there have been few attempts to develop ethical and theoretical tools to portray mobility (in)equalities in old age. This paper develops a novel conceptualisation of kinetic values focusing on older adults whose ability to move has been restricted for internal and external reasons. Informed by the phenomenological theory of kinaesthesia, I suggest that kinetic values are related to four principal dimensions: self-motion, being-moved, co-motion, and forced movement. I assume that these dimensions can address the key dilemma of human dignity among older adults who suffer from losing their autonomy and agency through their mobility impairments and who are at risk of being confined to their homes. To concretise the formulation of kinetic values, I study movement as part of technological equipment and urban infrastructure to examine what kinds of kinetic values mobility services and assistive robots convey for older adults in smart urban environments. By bridging disciplines, the phenomenological approach provides a novel understanding of mobility and the interplay among assistive technologies, kinaesthesia, and urban technological infrastructure. The approach suggests that kinetic values should be interpreted more comprehensively so that kinaesthesia can become better identified as a positive life-promoting practice.
Highlights
The idea of having the right to mobility has been fundamental to modern Western citizenship and is expressed in many legal and government documents, including the Universal J
How can liberal discourse be avoided when discussing fundamental social and cultural values associated with movement? How can we outline the complexity of kinetic values related to the good life from an ethical and existential perspective?
I argued that the previous ethical conceptualisations of bodily integrity and discussions of right to mobility do not provide a sufficient theoretical basis when speaking of mobilityequalities in old age
Summary
The idea of having the right to mobility has been fundamental to modern Western citizenship and is expressed in many legal and government documents, including the Universal. I study ageing from the perspective of the phenomenology of the body; in particular, my approach sheds light on why kinaesthesia and movement need special attention from the ethical point of view in discussing mobility (in)equalities in old age. Some of this work explores the principles and guidelines of ‘roboethics’ in general (Borenstein and Pearson 2010; Vallor 2016), but most scholars examine issues, such as attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and reciprocity in elderly care (Coeckelbergh 2010; Sharkey and Sharkey 2012; Sparrow and Sparrow 2006; Turkle 2011) In these ethical discussions, there has been little interest in considering how care robots make or do not make adult bodies feel capable of moving or losing control of their own movements, though many new solutions assist the user’s movements. The politics of mobility should be about a ‘quantitative’ resource and outline the ‘qualitative’ features of the movement that impact how people as mobile agents can live the good life
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