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.